I have been working on Category:Ecozones. The information that has determined the divisions is a little from en:Ecozone and a little from http://www.tdwg.org/TDWG_geo2.pdf <-- the map information starts on page 121. I have been trying to use the system for locating plants and it works pretty well.
I started that because I want to make the creation of range maps for plant and animal articles easier to make -- that was a long time ago though, heh. Category:Afrotropic was starting to look like something (last time that I looked at it). I am stuck though with Category:Palearctic due to the differences in size between some of the second level political divisions. I think that I split Russia into four on one of the maps -- it is a very sad attempt though, compared to other maps I have seen here.
The information about where plant and animal species tends to be gathered according to politically divided sections of this planet; even if the plants and animals don't live according to them.
On the world map, if a species is native to New Zealand and to an area which is part of Russia or China or the United States or Canada (the biggest problems with the world maps which are divided by levels of politics) the map looks kind of silly with all of Russia highlighted and is not that informative. It is easy to kind of make the area with a little experience with Inkscape or whatever application -- it ends up being like when I tried to divide Russia though and might look amateurish.
hmm... I am not sure to have understood your problem. I try : you have a map of Palearctic zone (or the world map), with a second level division, and you want to build an <imagemap>, with poly coordinates which matches with those level divisions. I'm right, or wrong ? Sémhur13:15, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Very close (I think), I need a world map with some of the larger areas broken into the next level of political divisions (Russia, China, United States, Canada, Mexico, maybe Brazil and also Greenland -- which I did and is probably not too bad. And a map of that part of the earth that is in between England and Japan (which could be taken from the world map like I had). Europe is already into small enough pieces. The divisions I need are based on land area more than political level, I might not understand or use the terminology correctly. -- carol (talk) 02:45, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm just really busy in "real life" this time of year. If there's something I can help you with, please let me know in the most direct language you can muster. While I do get a kick out of puzzles and word games, I really can't justify taking time away from the crops, goats, and other things this time of year. I'm also frankly dissapointed in your behavior on Wikipedia (you should have done more, rather than leaving it to me and a few others to apologize for you), so I'd appreciate it if you could just leave me be for a while. Sound OK? I'll have much more time to play come November :). --SB_Johnny | talk23:46, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps I wasn't clear. Please stay off my talkpage... I'm trying to do productive things, and getting 4 baffling messages from you while I'm trying to upload isn't helpful. I can arrange a forced wikibreak for you if you need some time to understand this. --SB_Johnny | talk09:48, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, but I was not playing so that might be a part of your bafflement and mine for what should have been a simple message of please unblock that other user. What will you start to play in November? Are you the owner of the user name Juiced lemon? -- carol (talk) 09:53, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You know Carol, it's rather difficult to believe that you don't know what happened with JL, since you were leaving large numbers of messages on his talk page at the time. Since you seem to need a reminder, he was indef-blocked in December (by me), and the block will be lifted if/when he finds a mentor and/or agrees to some groundrules (similar to your situation on en.wp).
WTF does that mean? I'm sure I've never heard the term.
Biogeography is a very interesting area. I started some notes on the biogeography of W.A. at the other place, but the project lapsed.
Anyhow, long story short, W.A. is not a biogeographical unit. It is traditionally divided into three biogeographic regiosn: southwest, northern and eremaean. There is a finer scale division into phytogeographic districts, which are essentially the same as the IBRA regions, for which I have created maps.
The Australia category is very well covered. I have some problems with the TDWG scheme sometimes because they name some of their areas like "Brazil". I put Biocountry at the end of some of the problem names for their areas. Did you see that document? -- carol (talk) 06:46, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I'm familiar with it.[1][2][etc] I just didn't realise that was what you were doing. The WGSRPD does not define ecoregions/bioregions; it proposes a database schema that compromises between biogeographic and political factors. Basically it recognises that people will want to record and query the flora of political national and/or subnational entities like Western Australia, even though that is nonsense from a biogeographical viewpoint. It is an eminently suitable source upon which to base a category structure, for flora anyhow.
I grant you that the TDWG's semantics for Western Australia is not the same as the Australian Government's semantics. But personally I don't think distinct category trees are warranted. For political purposes we treat Western Australia as politically defined; for biological purposes we treat it as defined by biologists; and both cases can happily coexist under Category:Western Australia.
Finally, it has been a while since I perused that document, and I don't want to download it on my current connection. Does it really use the term biocountry, or is that your own invention? If the former, do they really apply it to subnational entities?
I have been working with similar things for the whole world. Yes, they are different because what you are suggesting contains many many many other subcategories which are not related to the Ecology of an area. Subcategories which belong to the area and should not be removed; but I am working on things for plants and such and I am not going to start to try to divide the world into the portions the size of the ranges on your maps. I think I pulled the word Biocountry from that document. It is a morphing of two things though, the Ecozones which were almost abandoned and that document which you should have seen when I first saw it, I think. How long has it been since you were active with the Plant Project?
The media here portrays Australia to be somewhat free thinkers and a little chauvinistic, is that an accurate description? -- carol (talk) 12:01, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
How about you set up a Category tree that shows the Ecology of the world, Geography, Plants, Animals and get back to me with your recommendations? -- carol (talk) 12:06, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
When I do I certainly won't be taking a recommendation for exchange of data between regional herbaria, promoting it to a system of ecoregions covering all kingdoms of biota, and then confabulating a name to describe it. But I'm busy doing other stuff right now, so you just carry on. If you fuck it up, at least you can say that you fucked it up all on your own. Hesperian12:35, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I see what the intenton was. However, the way the script currently works it stores the category based on the filename (one filename one category). --Dschwen (talk) 21:53, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Over-hinted I thought that the day that QICBot duplicated the images at that location was actually a hint to the answer to my previous question of how to put a single image into two or more galleries (subject and technical is the usual case for this). It is a week where I am questioning if productive information is being freely exchanged; please forgive the perception of a hint.
It made sense as the way to handle it. Could the images be stored in an array for their intended gallery instead? It sounds like a little bit of a rewrite though.... -- carol (talk) 22:31, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Carol, thank you for your concern regarding Juiced lemon. I'll will forward your message to him by email. He was blocked on December 6th, 2007 (see here) by SB Johnny who did this on his own without seeking consensus first. However, his decision remained undisputed under his admin colleagues (see here) even if some of them felt somewhat uneasy. I tried some negotiations on back channels which were unsuccessful. Too bad that Juiced lemon can no longer contribute to the category system of this project. Regards, AFBorchert (talk) 19:58, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I know, this message was added in May 2008 but the block is much older, i.e. from December 6th, 2007, see the block log. SB Johnny didn't close the talk page immediately as he hoped that Juiced lemon would follow his terms. In that case, Johnny would have unblocked him. Hence, it wasn't a permanent ban but an indefinite block which effectively became an infinite block. --AFBorchert (talk) 23:06, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Carol,
This thread has not yet (and seems unlikely to) come to a clear consensus. I think you could help getting there though if you could provide us with an example of how you see the eco-region categories could be merged into the existing category structure? It may be evident for you, but I will be frank and admit, that it is not that evident for me. You have recently enquired several users concerning their understanding and/or intelligence. I will gladly admit that my intelligence level is probably 10 dB lower than yours, so I'll appreciate an simple-minded explanation for the slow thinking user. Preferably short, concise and with a specific example. Thank you. -- Slaunger (talk) 10:17, 7 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think your intelligence is any different than mine. I don't think that the existing structure can merge and I am confused that people think it needs to. The Ecozones category contains Geography, Plants and Animals. Flora of and Fauna of was a way to get all of the different instances of categories from everywhere and put them there.
I think that photographers might say "I took this photograph of this flower while in Austria" and place it in "Flora of Austria", they won't even have to identify it and determine if it is native or not; having it put where it was found growing should at least be helpful if anyone wants to find it to identify it.
On the otherhand, I think that people writing botany articles about a species which is native to Austria might understand to make the species a subcategory of "Flora of Austria" or if it is native to all of Middle Europe, then subcategorize it into "Flora of Middle Europe". Unlike the people who maintain the "Plants of" categories, the subcategorization of native species will be encouraged. Even with the first few articles that I wrote, it was clear that the species were native to some areas and introduced to areas.
I don't think that there needs to be any merging. If people want to clean up the Plants of categories and Trees of categories and let the Plants of category people know that they cannot remove species subcategories from them -- have at it.
I think that there needs to be a halt put on people who edit categories without mentioning it to the person/people who made the category less than a few hours before. I also learned some respect for the people who maintain the Plants of categories. Any species categories that I make will never be subcategorized there.
I never questioned your intelligence. You have always been communicative and discussions have gone well. I typically question intelligence levels when trying to initiate a conversation with anyone who is continuing to revert something I created without discussing it with me and even then, it is not an actual question, it is more like an expression of frustration. -- carol (talk) 10:35, 7 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The intelligence part was mostly to indicate that I would appreciate a straightforward, on-topic answer without the usual spin-offs in completely opposite directions making it difficult to keep a discussion on track. And I must say that your reply here seems much more understandable and useful than other recent contributions. So, I appreciate that;-)
I agree with you that there are different kinds of use cases for the categories depending on the individual users knowledge about botany. Personally I always try to organize my plant images such they are both categorized according to the region in which they were observed and associated with the relevant species gallery. Due to the recent always categorize discussion, in the future that will mean, that I (reluctantly) categorize to the relevant species category. I have until know used a category like Category:Plants of Greenland to indicate the regional origin of each specific image. It seems like other users like you and Ies rather would like to use the Plants of/Flora of type of categories as placeholders for species articles. Is that correctly understood? Or is that the way you distinguish between plants of and flora of? That the "Flora of" cats should be species placeholders, whereas the "Plants of" should be image placeholders? I am confused about this.
Much of the science that I saw of botany had to do with the native status and it was interesting how some of the species migrated. Everything from "introduced" to "invasive" seems to have to do with money and politics. The category for Plants of Greenland is a special case among the Plants of category for other areas. For some reason it was left alone. -- cms
I am not interested in interfering with the people who maintain all of the other Plants of category in which are not made the way that Ies and WayneRay insisted on making them. I suspect they have a good thing going as I observed from their aggressive actions disembling categories which were subcategorized into them. -- cms
Did you follow the most recent discussions in Commons talk:Categories vs Galleries? For me, this discussion is now turning into a constructive, consensus seeking ones, where the extremist opinions are being rounded off. One of the editors you are so keen on ranting have participated in that debate in a very constructive manner in my opinion, and it seems like a reasonable resolution is being reached, which is accepted by all. And from admin side there is support for blocking users who do further decatting. So, do you not think this issue is being resolved in a good way? I do, and I think it would be helpful if you ceased the repeated rants against those users.
For the same reason I think it is time to reconsider if the two parallel category structures should be merged. I do not really see a conflict anymore. -sl
I am personally concerned about making all the associations between species and regions (be it political or ecological) as it seems for me like encyclopedical information, which is better maintained in the Wikipedia articles. Having the species association to regions on Commons is for me redundant work, which increases the overall maintenance work for keeping the associations updated. The two worlds will always be inconsistent and resources used for keeping it right will be split instead of focusing the energy on maintaining this information in a single place. Having plant images categorized to the regios where they were taken is on the other hand not information which needs to be maintained as it is static and indisputable information.
I liked to work on both though. Writing the article and making the category while the information was in my mind. Or finding citations for the article (several that I did not write but were filled with information from who knows where?) and cleaning up the commons instance of them. Also, making it easier for others to upload into the category. I also think that a collection of flora for areas is easier to find things in. I am using maps made by people who think about these things as well. -- cms
I still think it is too redundant to Wikipedia information and that it increases the total maintenance workload and lead to inconsistencies rather than value. Confusing too as you are directed to images, which are not from the region. -- Slaunger (talk) 10:33, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If users really insist to do these species-region associations I think that should be done in special categories dedicated for the purpose. like, e.g., Category:Plants species endemic to Austria. By keeping such clean categories, the maintenance of these could also easier be bot-assisted in a smart future.
For as many articles as I have authored or found citations for, I am unclear what the word "endemic" means. Do you know what that word means? -- cms
He, he. Got me there. I copy pasted it from elsewhere, where an editor I trust had used that term. I assumed that it means "naturally occurring in...". But based on your question I looked endemic up and saw that in Danish it is called "endemisk", which did not help much either. Anyway, I have found out that it means "native to" or "prevailing in", so i guess the term very well covers what it is about. It probably not a good term though as hardly noone understands it, so Category:Plant species native to Greenland would probably be better? -- sl
In continuation of this species-region topic, I am concerned about the specific example you give with categorizing a species endemic to Middle Europe to that higher level category (only?) as that means it will not be in Category:Flora of Austria, which is I think misleading when you are looking for species in Austria.
It is not a perfect system. It is to the best of my experience optimal for photographers who know where they took a photograph of a flower and for people who are authoring an article on any of the other wiki to make the category look nice and locate the species in the Ecozone tree. Optimal is not perfect. -- cms
I'm inclined to consider it more confusing than optimal ;-) -- sl
You mention that you are confused (there is a lot of confusion around it seems) why a merge of the eco-zone work would be warranted. Well I do not know if we are speaking about the same thing. But it is my opinion that it should be possible to browse to the relevant ecoregion from a plant image, provided it is properly categorized and that this should be reversible in a pretty clear manner.
Is the problem that Ies and WayneRay do not want to be left alone to maintain the Plants categories (with the exception of the Plants of Greenland category)? There is no "merge". If one day, I see that all of the Plants of categories have disappeared and have found themselves and their painfully and pain-giving galleries merged into Flora of, it should not change anything I have done. -- cms
I think these conflict can be avoided if the discussion is taken up front with the editors. It seems for that there is a will to be more forthcoming than previously. The likelihood of sucess increases the more forthcoming your request is.... -- Slaunger (talk) 10:33, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That requires that there is a link path between the two, and I fear this could easily be broken is there is both a "Flora of" and a "Plants of" category. It appears to me that you are in favor of "Flora of" categories because - out of convenience - that makes it possible for you to avoid interaction with "Plants of.." users, who apparently have different objectives (Are these the same few users you have mentioned before, and exactly what is the difference in opinion between the "Plants of" editors and your goals with the "Flora of" categories)?
It is difficult to know what the problem is when the only communication for months and months and months is to have recently made categories desembled. If they tell you what motivated them to do that without communication, do let me know. -- cms
I think it is just assumed good faith work interpretation of guidelines, which have been in COM:TOL for two years. -- sl
For me it seems far from logical to maintain parallel "Plants of" and "Flora of" categories. Which of the two should not-so-regular users use when uploading new images?
Good question. I can't answer that. If they make a gallery and put it into a plants of category, it is in a Flora of subcategory. If they put it into a Flora of category, it is there. If they simply put it into a species subcategory then it is there. I tried to optimize, I have tried to be nice about it, I have tried to think of how this would be easier if I were uploading an image and wanted it to be quickly located in the correct areas. All of the maintenance problems associated with galleries are also associated with categories. -- cms
I am not going to do anything to maintain the Plants of categories. Consider that, it is a simple solution. -- cms
Ehm, I consider it an avoidance of getting an optimal and clear category structure. -- sl
It would be vandalism though wouldn't it? If I were to start to remove galleries from their categorization -- it would be vandalism. I have had my work vandalized recently. It is interesting how the vandalization is encouraged and attempts to communicate are discouraged. -- cms
I like the report that Ies and WayneRay needed the images to be put into species subcategories so that they knew what images should go into the galleries. I find that to be so void of logic that I do not believe that the actual people said that. -- cms
Rant, rant, rant. This is past now. Let's move on. The solution is that only one of them exists in the end. Then there will be no doubt which one should be used. -- ~sl
(tab reset)Do you know for certain that everyone of your photographs of plants in Greenland are native to the area? Greenland is kind of an ideal location for ease of knowing that, however. I know that I am putting locations on species via United States government funded web sites about species which are natively located in Europe -- USA spends a lot of money on war, so does Europe though and a lot of Europes funds go to recovery (I am thinking about the information via the economics of getting it and sharing it). I have no problem correcting the information when I have access to the Flora that is closer to where the species are native to. It is where the science is going though, my tendency to want to locate them by location is very linked to my tendency to enjoy how the science is getting away from being simply a name-game.
I know for certain that all the images, which I have placed in Category:Plants of Greenland are claimed to be native to Greenland independently in two different flora books I have, which are specific to the flora of Greenland, and it is also consistent with a third, more authoritative source, which I borrowed for a period at the local public library. I have a series of photos of a white variant of Papaver radicatum, which was located near a settlement. I have not uploaded those yet. I do not recall the species name of this one, but it is described as variant, which has been introduced and which is only found close settlements and towns. Its true origin is Siberia as far as I recall. -- Slaunger (talk) 11:29, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That is really cool and very thorough of you. I was a gardener in Northern climates -- so knowing which plants came from similar climates was a big deal to me. I found a variety of tobacco, for instance, which should have grown where I was gardening (some problems with their placement in my garden though) and other things. Where I am now, drought tolerant species are more important as there is often no precipitation from April through November sometimes. Native location is important on a lot of different levels; I am somewhat jealous of your hard copy of the information for this. -- carol (talk) 11:45, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well, thank you. Do you mean you envy the books? The sources are stated on my user page with ISBN numbers. It is no. 1, 2, and 4 I was referring to. The books are in Danish, except #2, which is dual languange Danish and Greenlandic! -- Slaunger (talk) 12:43, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
These thoughts I have come from trying to manage a very very large species that has gone through many subdivision attempts this century. It wasn't from attempting to manage one genus with one species in it. The name changes that I was having the most problems with before I was blocked on English wikipedia were higher in the taxonomy trees; the templates make it easier for both galleries and categories to change this quickly.
Is it time to write, uploading should not be asking for aggressive actions and uploading should be easy and writing articles for whatever language wikipedia and cleaning the category here should be encouraged and made to be as easy as possible? That is really all that I was thinking when I started this.
The range maps -- the taxonomy templates on most of the encyclopedia wikis have a place for them. It is not duplicated information to me; I find the categories at wikipedia to be mostly useless, but I go there for information and the articles I am interested in that are related are also linked to in the article that I am reading that makes me interested in it.
As a user of commons images, it is really frustrating to go from a category here to a category there, also. -- carol (talk) 11:09, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You're welcome, I guess you just are forgetful if the image is a derivative of one already existing on Commons :) It happens. :) -Nard18:05, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Carolspears- I am a bit dubious about this new "New Zealand North / South" category tree you have created. Could I ask you to consider changing those categories to North / South Island? I know that technically, this would leave out outlying islands - but as far as I am aware, "New Zealand North" and "South" aren't terms used much at all. Ingolfson (talk) 02:43, 12 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That is the reason they are used. To be different from the terms that are always used. So that the islands are not technically left out, due to previous definitions. I have had problems with other locations in the two maps I am using where the defined area is not the same as a previously defined area and a word needs to be added to it to distinguish from the original area.
Is there a problem with these areas of different definition having a different name? I have tried to think of some; if I haven't thought of any it doesn't mean that they don't exist. -- carol (talk) 03:04, 12 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, let me try that again. No, you don't need to re-upload anything. As far as I am aware, I only deleted pages that are redundant to the DjVu files. If you should happen to notice, whilst not checking, that I am wrong, you still won't have to re-upload anything, as I am able to restore any erroneously deleted files. Hesperian12:11, 12 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Two positive answers is one more than one positive answer. I tried to say that I believed you and that I was going to find less boring things to do than to check up on what you said. Thanks again. -- carol (talk) 12:14, 12 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Carol can explain the new process at QIC I'd like to know how this became this via this. To me there was 1 support the original promotion and 1 oppose, yet you changed the support to a decline and then closed the CR. Gnangarra07:48, 13 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
First of all, I was unaware until yesterday that QICBot was digging up the /Discuss images from the regular gallery and depositing them into CR. Even the last batch of totals I made, I thought that a real human being had moved them and the the real beings tend to change what look like comments into a "vote".
I was also, perhaps, not in the right frame of mind to be doing that. I was perhaps, due to problems with an australian user of this wiki and my patience also put into a mood which was not the right frame of mind for anything.
Having you point this out expedited something which was beginning to occur to me. Now, I am going to suggest that it is not Dschwen who is making the bot but instead Mbz1, a user who went last year from "not having a nice photoshop" to this year writing wiki software, using Photoshop to an abuse of it even and now writing in Python -- an unusual jump for a "self proclaimed" little old woman. Depending on your age, I am a "little old woman" (46 years later this year); I have some idea of what can be expected from my age group; I expect less from them than I do from myself, btw. It also makes me think if any of the nominations there are real at all, like honest people (like me mostly) that would like to have their images reviewed. Check out the discussion at Dschwens talk page.
I apologize for any problems that I created while tallying the votes. If you have the time and the sensibility to dig them out of the archives (not just yours also, all of the ones that were mis-handled this way), you should do that. It would be nice at least for me, to think that this wiki isn't just a bunch of bots and bot writers.
I noticed it had been bottardised since I have been uncommonly quiet at QIC I thought I'd ask one who seems be part of the furniture. I'd say them that have passed in to the great archives in the skies should be left to rest in peace and keep any eye on the future. Gnangarra12:00, 13 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I must say that when I read something like "one who seems be part of the furniture" and it hurts, it is not me being offended, it is me reading the truth. I have to say though, even if I was working on my web site or doing something else, a little look at the images in QI is kind of a nice break. I actually would not mind having a year where that fire hose hook up qualifies as the weirdest f@#$ing thing this year....
Have shovel will dig, you are one of the feature pieces without your presence the room would dissolve into one those climate controlled, neon lit, sterile bot enclaves favored by the men in suits. Gnangarra12:49, 13 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hey! I take that personally. *adjusting tie*. I can turn off QICbot anytime of you want a less bottardised (that's not seriously derived from bastardised, is it?) experience. I'll certainly take you up on that Have shovel will dig... ;-) --Dschwen (talk) 17:25, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
And meanwhile, my brain got stuck on this nomination: Commons:Quality_images_candidates#July_02.2C2008 the description says Rentilly and my brain filled in the left out stuff to make it "Rentel Ly----" and what I am most sorry about is the absence of thinking that people do stuff on these wiki because it is cool or good or interesting and always that they do things for reasons other than what it says on the "doorway". -- carol (talk) 18:42, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It is more than the usual of obtuse I guess. I had a problem with interwiki links when I first "jumped into the cold water" here. There is a welcome template that is full of good information and not too much to be overwhelming. Then there is another moment (perhaps) when the software starts to make more sense. I barely understand what it is that I meant by now as well. Sorry about that. -- carol (talk) 18:36, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your review of the image. I have to agree that the image does look a bit dark at thumbnail, however, in full res IMO its ok. I thank you for your kind comments about my kaaba image. Performing the hajj is surely a great experience, with people of all kinds in one place worshipping at one level. Regards, Muhammad14:13, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I would rather wait until the shit removes itself from the fan at English wikipedia before I get too involved in anything different anywhere else. -- carol (talk) 01:00, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi carol,
no need to apologize :) there were some problem with my signatures on QIC page anyways, so thanks to you, I just fixed them. Benh (talk) 08:29, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Aww! I thought you had done that on purpose! It was going to be interesting to watch as (I think) QICBot supported the driveby users.
Carol, I'll be quite frank with you: I blocked you for a day last time because you were in real danger of getting blocked for much longer. I will likely not be involved at all in the next block, because I'm involved in a conflict resolution elsewhere, and really don't have time to properly follow whatever it is that's brought you up on COM:AN/U again.
All I can offer you now is a simple bit of advice: avoid "speaking" in the imperative mode. Commons is created by a community of equals, and no-one (including you, I suspect) wants to be told what to do. And yes, I recognize the hypocracy of me saying that to you, but sometimes you need to stand between opinions and maxims.
Your contributions are valuable, but not indespensable. Commons is a collaboraive creation, and collaboration takes understanding, respect, empathy, and civility. --SB_Johnny | talk16:54, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your note :-). I know you're trying to do your part to make commons a better place, but every day (perhaps) yet another person will discover commons and want to do the same. That's what I meant by "expendable": commons would go on without you if you left tomorrow, just as it would go on without me tomorow. That's the fun part of it too: your efforts, my efforts, and everyone's efforts will be built upon by others, even if we can't (for whatever reason) be a part of that future. --SB_Johnny | talk
hmm, I would say that it was incorrectly categorized. Shells and fossils of shells are called animals, if I need to be defensive. The image looks more like a shell than a plant.
Should I fix it or are you fixing mis-categorized images or simply looking for them? I am sorry that I made that mistake -- the feeling is more sorry than defensive even. I did the same thing with an image of a park. The park is in South America (I think) and I put it into Washington (state). I actually make mistakes, I can tell you of others! :) -- carol (talk) 09:46, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I just got your message about the image map. I'm not sure what the problem is or what you want, but I removed the comments from the imagemap and it displays. Viriditas (talk) 14:53, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes indeedy! I saw the messages here and on the chance it was someone having another big problem with a little thing I did or didn't do, I took my good mood and thanked you for the repair. I have found it easier to actually have the good mood and work while in that than it is to remember that I had this once and try to work with the memory. :)
I'm not sure to have understand exactly what you need, by the way I'm really busy and I can't code something for you right now. Try asking Bryan or some other Bot coder that you can find on this page. --Filnik\b[Rr]ock\b!?12:50, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I needed a break and answered a question -- although it could be argued that my answer was not yet an actual answer. Further, if the goal with your signature was to remind me of my own lack of knowledge and experience with regexp, you succeeded :) -- carol (talk) 22:01, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No, if I am allowed to throw in my comment here, LaTeX or TeX do not support regular expressions. This looks more like a Perl regular expression, \b representing a boundary, i.e. the beginning or the end of a word, [rR] an "r" or "R", and the "!" is optional as it is followed by a question mark. --AFBorchert (talk) 04:57, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The \b looked like LaTeX; I had some good days with that in the last century when I needed to turn papers in. I wanted to download http://xkcd.com/451/ and in the fourth frame, strike out the "Literary Criticism" and put "Perl Programmer" there. The resident perl programmer, interestingly enough, said that this was not-fitting there.... -- carol (talk) 05:09, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it shouldn't take eight papers and two books to figure out that someone is not a Perl expert, I guess it is more in the range of 10 seconds :) --AFBorchert (talk) 06:31, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps it is more of an essay of when I tried to write perl, put it down and then went back to it 2-6 months later :) carol (talk) 06:55, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There were a few moments where my brain had kind of a looping problem trying to determine what shape, color, era, etc would make a generic automobile photograph. I had heard about an hour or so of painfully cheesy mostly piano versions of mostly Australian artists before reading that problem; in that collection was "Theme to Mahogany (Do You Know Where You Are Going To)" which I thought might have been an ONJ hit (it was almost the same era). I wrote that and then looked up the artist.</end of complicated answer>
A mistake I made. The idea of an image of a generic car baffled me -- I grew up approximately 30 miles from Motown and should not have made the Diana Ross mistake.
Equally worth mentioning: 1)I cannot play piano not even up to cheesy standards and 2)they played one canned version of a great song by an Aussie band which I suspect that as long as it can be recognized, it cannot ever be ranked as cheesy. That, was not a challenge, btw. -- carol (talk) 02:09, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Other than the references to the bug and images problems I listed, I don't understand you at all. I don't have access to your SVN system. Just Bugzilla. Nor do I understand your A-List stuff. Will (Talk - contribs) 05:39, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
"Both images were created with the Inkscape July 24, 2008 nightly build." I misunderstood that. I did not know that Inkscape was now building "nightly". And the last thing that I ever want to have as mine is the Subversion versioning system -- anyone has access to downloading from it. I assumed that you were building your own version. -- carol (talk) 05:43, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Installed? I don't have a local server. The images I gave are on Commons. It was their System:Version that I got the version from. I had no clue what to use for the OS. So I made that my local OS as I don't know what the Commons server runs. Will (Talk - contribs) 05:53, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for taking the time to look at the photo and categorise it. I am thinking it is a type of vetch. ... Similar to Magnoliopsida > Fabales > Fabaceae The flower part seems to be close to a Lotus (Faboideae), but the leaf is closer to a yellow vetch. I cannot find any picture elsewhere that is close to the flowers I found. It did turn out to be a good summer day. A little cloud cover to keep things not too hot, no rain (yet) and it was a wonderful walk in the prairies and down by the riverbank. Kind Regards SriMesh | talk03:15, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I saw in in the recent uploads. Where I would rather be, they call it "Crown Vetch" I think -- although it doesn't usually get so tall in Michigan. Hmm, I might have been on the wrong page in the book -- they call it Coronia varia. Thanks for mentioning this. I tend to make more mistakes when I get enthusiastic and I am for very good reasons, enthusiastic of almost anything that reminds me of where I would rather be. -- carol (talk) 03:19, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That is definitely a Calendula, one of my favorites. I have no way of knowing which species though and this particular genus has been the subject of much cultivation manipulation; I almost put it into the genus category when it first went up for FP but instead opted to observe how it went while there. And, well, I was actually stuck on what the white flowers are there also. Feverfew or chamomile or baby's breath (as I learned while gardening) and I didn't look up the genus for those but will now.
These calendulas are part of a group of plants the gardners call "cut flowers" meaning that if you pick one or cut one from the plant, more will grow there and the plant will be healthier. When I see these, I try to take especially the seed heads off so that the plant will survive and flourish. -- carol (talk) 19:05, 1 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, the white flowers are feverfew. I categorized it. Almost all of the time in QIC, identification is demanded. It is I think the right thing to do if the image is supposed to represent the cream of the images here :) -- carol (talk) 19:09, 1 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you so much! Ever since I've gotten my new camera I can't help taking photos of flowers and plants, but I rarely know what they 'specifically' are. Hopefully that'll change someday when I have a real yard to garden... rootology (T) 05:41, 2 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Not a problem. Knowing how to categorize images of unidentified plants might be one of those things that an admin here should know, I don't know for certain about that though. Spending time manually categorizing uncategorized images was a very good way for me to "see the commons" though, and the structure it attempts to have.
Try also to point that camera at some of the less beautiful plants; the weeds. That calendula, I am in strong favor of that being developed and "cultivated" because it is already beautiful and the petals are one of the most healing things I have ever encountered -- close to being more like magic in how quickly they work and the cultivation of those is directed at producing plants with even more of that. Most of the really interesting images are of the native weeds, unless commons is going to be yet another gardening catalog. It can be both (and maybe should be) but if it is going to be one or the other I would opt for the more scientific images. The beauty of the garden variety of plants tends to make them very photogenic. Category:Malva neglecta is an example of this, perhaps. It is not native where I found it growing. Four of those photographs are mine in that category. Perhaps there are more in the gallery (there is one more photograph there), but compare that with Category:Malva sylvestris a garden species and variety, native to some locations sure, but highly photogenic and available for photographs. The one that I took photographs of typically gets removed from gardens.
On the acquisition of cameras. My college friend, who became married and had children. Whose husband had a job and came home from that job and prepared dinner for the children and then cleaned up after dinner -- this friend acquired yet another new camera a few years ago and asked a surprised me if I didn't agree that she deserved it. I actually didn't think that she deserved it, I tend to be in favor of a working together towards deservingness not an abusing a situation for deservingness. Do you think she deserved the new camera? -- carol (talk) 05:59, 2 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I just wanted to let you know that your comments could very easily be perceived as offensive. Given the extremely controversial atmosphere surrounding your behaviour here, you would do well to pay closer attention to the words you use. Secondly, I'd recommend that you avoid even the appearance of harassing administrators or other users with useless user talk posts - if you persist, someone will get fed up, and you will end up blocked. I know you wish to continue as a contributor here, so please don't put people in that position. — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb01:00, 2 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
First of all, if you explain the "extremely controversial atmosphere" and what I had to do with it, I will find it easier to understand what it is you see.
Second of all, most all of my homosexual friends were not "gay" in that they were very able to communicate and while not being aggressive also not being overly sensitive to names. You think that I am unusual that way?
Third of all, the word is being used right now with a request to assist me in changing it. How to change something when the mere writing it is a problem? And I was and am being literally "passive aggressive" when I ask for a name change. My friends and acquaintences from that culture probably would agree with the definition, so who am I offending? People who are passive-aggressive? They can stop doing that and commons will start to function. -- carol (talk) 01:05, 2 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The problem here (to me) is that this is such a worn out problem to be having. Such a problem that I wonder if it is a cue to start using the same word only in Chinese (from 7 years ago by now) so there isn't any problems. But the problem with that is that it starts to cease as the instant off button it currently works like. It is nice to have an off button that doesn't need priviledges to push and can be pushed by a person who knows (kind of) what is going on and is too busy with other things to be effective with the real access to the real offbutton.
I have actually been wondering where to put it and shouldn't there be a bot first before a user space is obtained for it? -- carol (talk) 11:25, 2 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
OK - I know nothing about this - I merely patrol new galleries regularly (& it isn't a gallery). I had no idea what you intended it for.
Where to put it. I made one suggestion while trying to figure out where to put it and an admin told me that this was an inappropriate place or inappropriate suggestion I can't remember which was more inappropriate by now. All I know now is where I am not supposed to put it. -- carol (talk) 12:20, 2 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ah well - now you know where not to put it we can move on to the next stage :)
More seriously - what is it for? Are you creating a bot, is it a proposal for some bot work? If it is not a user should it be Commons:somewhere or indeed Commons talk:somewhere? --Herbytalk thyme12:25, 2 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I talked to three of the bot writers I knew and had spoken with before. One is thinking about how to make it work without the need for a human to make the templates (I think), the other has not responded and the other is considering it (or thinking about it, one or the other response). The templates are cool. The commons categories for plants should at least look more uniform. And galleries, should the gallery makers decide to use the templates. -- carol (talk) 19:55, 2 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting analogy. I finally figured out what the problem was. The "warnings", unfortunately, are no help knowing what's wrong with the image. (Turns out, it reads the pic & ignores the label. Go figure.) I guess I wait for the old ones to get deleted & try again. If you like those, have another look; there's a cream '50 Ford, or will be soon, along with the '57, & a very nice BRG Henry J with contrasting hood spike & doorpulls is coming. (That skirted Merc is mighty nice, with good striping.) Best part for me was, I got all these in one day, yesterday (!), at a local show/swap meet. And that wasn't everything there! Ciao. Trekphiler (talk) 03:42, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, even without a car around it. That 318 engine; an old friend -- powered one of the two cars I made safely go over 100mph (well, the dodge bodies from 1971 were not so safe for those behind me, I guess)!!! (Or the Dodge 360 engine) -- carol (talk) 04:13, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Can't help you with a 318, or a Dart, but I did get a Valiant. And I've got a 340 somewhere (not great quality). I think the '65-7s are the nicest, & give me a 340; not so common, & the number has a certain magic for me.
On image search, I'd love to have something like it to search the web with. (I've heard of something like it, but can't find a name...). Trekphiler (talk) 04:51, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Honestly, I have a very difficult time knowing a Valiant from a Dart and my problem with the Ford engines were from driving 80s Escorts in the 90s -- my joke is that those engines would be more reliable and easier to maintain if I could simply hang a bottle of oil from the antennae like the interveineous drip gizzmos the doctors on television use (haven't seen much of that in real life, actually). They were the vehicular equivalent to a bic lighter that gets used while it is useful and then replaced and I enjoy vehicles more than that.
And now I know that Valiant is not a Ford, although there is a Ford from that era that looks a lot like Dart and Valiant! I thought maybe a Fairmont but that is also a thunderbird (apparently). Dart and Valiant -- my first thought is always, "hey, look at that little old lady car" which is how much I really know about these things. Given the number of car models that have been produced in the 1900s, I know almost nothing. -- carol (talk) 06:10, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Categorizing your images today has been fun and enjoyable like a parade of the product of the best years of my states production; my grandpa, my uncles and my neighbors (Michigan girl). I have also learned the name of the shape of that rear-end that I liked on the Mercury but did not like on the Cadillac. That being said, that model of Seville was getting 30mpg before other Michigan designed and produced vehicles were, so perhaps the engineers were always looking at the wrong thing -- the top end shouldn't need to worry as much.
Putting a combustible engine on four wheels did more to change this continent than any other invention or idea -- even rock & roll and even indoor plumbing which is still kind of a personal thing (and people installed that where they were, not it allowed them to move far away from work) and even more than home computers. I really like cars, not love them -- except for those few that I drove. Even those damn Escorts, it was a relationship that was interrupted by the constant need of oil for those engines.
The image matching magic -- I have no idea how it works and I might even had read an explanation of it. It might be image porportion and byte size only, but it works really well!
Can't help cutting corners. I'm trying to get the quarter view & the frame's not wide 'nuf. Blame the camera. (That's a good excuse, right? ;)) On the 3 deuces, I don't think that's classic Tripower; they were on Chevys (if the usual rodder's habit of stuffing a 350 in almost everything is still current...). They were under the hood of a couple of '34 3-windows (the chrome hats on that blue number with the round lights, if it's up yet, the "barred" top on that beautiful chopped bronze-orange number). Thanks for the cat work; I never remember that.... And the '36/'38 is a '38; I think it got uploaded under a wrong ID & I haven't been able to fix it... If you can delete the "'36", feel free. Trekphiler (talk) 21:55 & 21:59, 8 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Finding categories for interesting images is a good way to look at interesting images and to also learn the structure here and I really had little experience with the automobile section here. It is (or should be) volunteer work here and I was happy to volunteer. I got to dig through my brain a little and question the reasons 1)I considered most of the muscle cars to be "little old lady cars" and 2)the reason for things like knowing Dart is Chrysler but not Valiant and similar. 1)It was little old ladies who drove those cars while new in Michigan (the little old lady from Pottersville Michigan instead of what the beach boys wrote). My grandma drove a 1970 Nova, for example. 2)Knowing an owner of a Dart was not enough to remember the car. Knowing the engine in it was, for me, enough. Two tours of interesting places (the commons automobile tree and my brain) for free! Yay!
The cut corners make it difficult for replication of the profiles. Wow, does that sound like a first line for bad science fiction? -- carol (talk) 22:03, 8 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Resistance is futile (& if you saw Jeri Ryan in ST:V, you had to ask, "Who's resisting?" ;) ) Hope you had fun looking. (I could spend days searching images....) Re the 3 deuces (not that it matters, but I can't resist sharing stuff I know. ;) ) I read somewhere it's not as hard tuning 'em as has been made out. IIRC, the trick is to get the "main" one set right, & the others in relation to it; once it's right, the others are easier. Of course, I read this quite awhile ago & I don't have the article in front of me, so don't run out & try it at home... I'll bet most of the X-bodies (Nova & clones) & Darts/Valiants were 6s driven as grocery getters; it was the V8 option, & hence the fact you could stuff in a 327/350/400 or 318/340/360 without cutting it up, or giving the game away, made them pop for rodders. (That's what I like about a 340 in a '65. Also because you won't see one every day.) Cheers. Trekphiler (talk) 22:23, 8 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
So I should probably create or locate the Chevy engines and make certain they belong there. Just for my own knowledge and understanding of these images, that is 3 distributor caps per engine? I am having a difficult time dividing 8 cyclinders evenly by 3. My experience with firing order was really a bad experience and my understanding that the engine needs to be wired correctly did not come easy!
I should look through those images again. There was another vehicle which looked more like models that were 2 years different than the one in the description. Viewing the photographs and sorting them for here was not the same as being there, I think. Different situations. -- carol (talk) 22:22, 8 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'd avoid categorizing 'em as Chevy; these aren't stock (I don't think) on the Chevys in question, tho Chevy did offer a 3 deuce layout (IIRC); don't rely on my memory. How about "carburetors" or "fuel systems"? Or "custom car" (which certainly fits)?
As for 6 into 8 (& it's 6 barrels, or chokes), I've had some trouble with understanding that, too.... It helps to recall they're feeding a common plenum (the intake manifold), same as a 4-bbl, & one carb (the center one, I think, but don't quote me) feeds 4 combustion chambers, while the others feed 2 each. It's a trick setup, but not ideal; I've seen four deuce manifolds, too. & picture the GMC L6, with the Fenton (?) intake, with five carbs (5 deuces, I think... Yow.) Does it look cool!
And if you can (I haven't figured out how...), can you nom the pic This pic for deletion? I uploaded a cropped shot, so it's not needed. Thanx. Trekphiler (talk) 23:00, 8 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I can but I am disappointed to do so. My first thought upon seeing that image was a joke "Canadian military haircut" <-- kind of like the continuation of this thing where I was suggesting that a Viet Nam military photograph was fake due to the United States Military not being among the first to accept the Beatles Hair-care tips.
Having an image online has been taken advantage of, I am certain of this. This has been going on around me with images of people I have seen so I have no idea what has happened with the images of me that are online and people who have seen that. The recent example for me here (and here is extremely close to where many of the computer related technology companies have huge office buildings) I mentioned that I had seen a photographers photograph on their personal web site. Within hours, a person was in my path who was very similar to that person only 10 or 15 years older. In my mind, whatever idiot system that does stuff like this had to be shown where the image was and the clincher of it is that even while viewing images of others, both feet need to be firmly planted in the reality plane.
Ancient history, if it were not for the photographs that were exchanged of my linux friends; when I was in a different country how would I have known them? One of them had a book and an author page on the publishers web site with a photograph. My belief in the publishers has failed since then and I believe that the person I met was the real one and the publisher had some quacked up scam going on and should perhaps be investigated for abuse. The commons A-list photographers, many of them do not have photographs of themselves here but are inclined to type strongly of photographic opinions and such and locate themselves in the case their services as photographer are requested. But who would request a strong individual who was too much of a wuss to put his photograph with his strong type and how would they know they were getting the real thing?
In summary, I am going to give you a few hours to reconsider. Please think about how many "dangerous people" are in the world you know and also how incredibly unabled the manipulators of similar information have been working in my life (ie, I had to point out the photograph -- not that they were able to find it on their own). Also, if there starts to be a problem in your life that you can blame reasonably on that photograph, I think that all you would need to do is to get your hair cut differently and the problems would cease. And knowing who you are, you knowing yourself, is a task that never ends so far as I can see.
Personally, I think that the internet is overly-filled with strongly opinionated anonymous people. It is people who don't seem to have their feet both in a reality plane. -- carol (talk) 23:21, 8 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
<--I think you may have misread my meaning. I'm not so much concerned about my privacy as I am with the quality of the pic. It's an unnecessary distraction from the subject, namely the taillight. I shot it for that, not to be in it'; deleting myself deletes the distraction. I'd say the same if I had a finger on the lens, or something, & so, take it down? Trekphiler (talk) 05:41, 9 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your comment about photoshop vs camera and images.... I used the next camera image, and I believe I have the size now. I won't crop it smaller till you folks tell me if I have it or not. Kind Regards....SriMesh | talk04:07, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks again for your words. I tried to compare to a few other pics. I didn't know they also reviewed at flickr, I will keep plodding along. Sometims tis good to do just to learn a thing or two. SriMesh | talk10:29, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I liked the images of the line drawings of the plants you uploaded and was interested to know if you were the artist. -- carol (talk) 10:31, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
re: Question from an onlooker who is considering if it is good or not to re-interrupt here. How do you get "FrankB" from "Fabartus"? -- carol (talk) 20:26, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
Aside from being an informal guy...?
By being "over-late" in deciding that having your real surname and initials available all over via google was not the smartest idea. Sorry about the delay... RL roared unexpectedly. // FrankB12:55, 6 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
In the google episode of 60 minutes the googemp said something about how google tends to emphasize negative when it comes to real names. I claim that there is only so much negative and if there were less anonymity online, the negative would fade into something more real. A nice mix of mostly good with the occasional embarrassment or gag; as real people tend to be made of. The judgement of those who have no name, no identity, no way to recognize them and perhaps without those things, no soul -- the judgement of this type of entity is worth to me what ever all of those negatives adds up to. Lack of accountability rarely improves things or people.
That seems like a lot of pre-coffee pandering bordering on whining. However, that being said, the commons photographers here have made there locations available in the case that they might be requested to take photographs. If I were to look into that as an option, how would I know I was getting that photographer? Oh, unless they were volunteering, but are they? And then, do I really want a volunteer who is not the real thing?
Thanks for getting back with this, I have no idea if this is what you were really getting at. The first few thoughts in my day are often about something else. Heh. -- carol (talk) 18:11, 6 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yesterday, I almost put the cherry on top of this cake. Then I noticed our buzzy ant working in the area, so I decided not to ruin the work. --Foroa (talk) 12:58, 8 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Shakespeare engravings, while not uncommon, aren't really indexed, so it's a bit of the luck of the draw. Certainly, it's a great scene, and I don't doubt there's versions of it, but I can't give you any timescale on when or if I'd find one. Adam Cuerden (talk) 18:32, 8 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If you could give me the original image (that one actually has a pretty good view of my old friend the "Master cylinder" who taught me that brakes are a luxury that should not be taken for granted and that functioning wheel cylinders are as important as the Master cylinder and caused me to replace my brother and step brother as mechanics with a stool and a specialty bleeder wrench....) I might be able to give it a nicer appearance. -- carol (talk) 02:09, 9 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That one's unmodified (I think; let me check my photo files). Also, about the 3 deuces, Poncho had the Tripower, FYI. As noted, I don't know if there was a Pontiac plant in the chopped '34 or the Deuce. And listen to the Master; most rodders focus on going fast (engine mods), never thinking (until too late, often) of the need to slow down & stop afterward. Build the brakes first & the beautiful new baby will stay off the fenceposts & guardrails.... Trekphiler (talk) 18:06 & 18:26, 17 August 2008 (UTC) (Sorry for the delay responding, I wasn't watching...)[reply]
If I've got another version of the 'cuda pic, I can't find it. (Could be I adjusted the contrast & didn't save an unaltered version. They were all pretty dark.) Trekphiler (talk) 18:28, 17 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
"Technology sometimes moves too fast, but sometimes it is stopped prematurely -- like if I started to have a problem with my work being obsolete and caused the nicer model to not be made. I am more interested in things working well than in maintaining something I thought was the best approach. Do you think that I am the only person like this?"
Replace "technology" with "the study of evolutionary biology, classification and phylogeny of birds", then I'm in ;-) Work has presently hit a snag. I think I know why, and if I'm lucky and my present research goes well, from next year on I can get a shot at scientifically deonstrating why we're getting the "nonsensical" results we get.
But I might be wrong, the issue might be genuinely unsolveable. Ah well, it has to be given a try.
BTW you might want to contact User:Sarefo. He's currently on vacation, but he's both a professional bio-freak and coder, and he might be interested in the debate too (he has taken part in the cat-vs-gallery discussion time and again). He's quite good in what he does and your ideas might make him come up with some approach to a solution. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 02:55, 9 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have plenty of solution! My problem is the not real problems that persist in being argued. My current favorite is "categorization at the species level will mess everything up". It is an open-ended statement that needs the "everything" portion filled in by the reader of this "problem". It is not such a bad way to find problems before they exist but I have been doing that and I am unable to find a problem that will make that statement accurate at all (slightly accurate or extremely accurate or anything in between). Empty categories are images that are needed, not a mess -- a need. I learned of the different trees while sorting through the Malvaceae, Cronquist doesn't have subfamilies and only a few of the tribes appear in that system. I actually think it would be interesting to have the species and genus who had their names changed and position moved by later classification appear in a display of the antiquated system. The information on display would help to show the reasons the system is antiquated and what it is that is being used to circumscribe the genera and kin since then.
And the subtle encouragement to stop taking photographs of Malva sylvestris and to get more of the others (one example I can think of right now) -- if empty species categories exist it starts to become fun to be the first to get the photograph and put it in there (and make the gallery as well if that is what the contributor is inclined to do). Monotypical genera can have their own category and they should have species subcategories as well! One member does not make the genus not exist and it should exist so it can appear in the simple lists of genera which are possible.
My problem with statistics is similar to the problem I have here. That statistics is built on existing data. The categorization software only suggests categories that exist. Foroa the category expert here mentioned that English wikipedia has a tradition of the second uploader of an image (or article i guess) is supposed to make the category for it. I am uncertain of the usefulness of this for categorizing articles but for images which are here, could be here soon or would be really great to have if you can get a photograph of it -- that tradition is a pain in the process.
All that being said, it would be nice if I could jump to the problem at hand which is the need for all of the non-genera named genera categories. Like Category:Arenaria (plant). I like how wikispecies has named them with the family name in the parenthesis so it would be Category:Arenaria (Caryophyllaceae) and much easier to manage with the templates. And the templates that I made can take the genus part of the species name as input and use the "commons specific" version where necessary. Do you know if such a list exists here yet? -- carol (talk) 03:18, 9 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Starting with domain and going through all the steps (tribe, subfamily, clade, etc.) what would be the longest path possible (even if it's a very rare exception)? This is pretty much all I know.
APGII has added the Clade "idea" to the tree and I am fairly certain that it will remain there or be expanded on for APGIII, it seems to have replaced "Class" or "Classis" and "Phylum" in the tree. This is paste from the ones that I have been working with recently and it has some of the "steps" I have seen:
I have been using that "." to separate the subcategories of the next in the more modern tree. Category:Malvaceae is an example of that. In APGII and in Strasburger, subfamilies exist and they are displayed there with the "." to sort them from the rest. In Cronquist, there is no subfamily so those are the tribes which existed for Cronquist. Other genera were included in those tribes and it seems like eventually it would be interesting to have them show in that list. OH! And then I changed what I was doing for Category:Asteraceae and started to use the "<" to sort those tribes with. The subfamilies there are sorted with a space because it looks nicer and I have been learning as I go....
I suggested at your talk page that just doing it to find out how many are upset and if they can provide a good reason to undo it seems like it will be more advantageous to finding any real problems that actually exist from it is going to be more efficient and real than asking and finding the fake problems. I did not actually state it that way though at your talk page. It seems easier to have problems anonymously online than it is to achieve anonymously online and I would love to be proven wrong about that!! (The cat indexed thing seems like an idea that did not go anywhere and just still remains because a means to undo it did not exist yet or there was no inspiration to clean it up.)
Thanks. I think I'm starting to get it. I have really easy way to move those "cat indexed" categories to the real category. I can send my bot out to remove the "(cat indexed)". Or just have SieBot do it. I'll do a couple and see if I get in trouble. And you're right, to get anything done here, you have to be bold. Do it first, then discuss. The best way to get people attention is to do something wrong. :) Rocket000(talk)06:49, 9 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Carol. As one of the admins who have to clean up all the renaming-actions (e.g. replacing them in all the projects and deleting the duplicates), could you please just rename images that really need renaming. That means images that have a cryptic or missleading name, but not images that already have a proper name that you don't find satisfying enough. Thanks. -- Cecil (talk) 19:53, 9 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I am looking at the (Orchidaceae) in the list that is in your sandbox; this question is related to things I am thinking about now. They seem to have defaulted to use the family name in all of the genera names -- since I am still manually categorizing things, I kind of don't like that. On the otherhand, it is more uniform and has all of the appeal that a default behavior has but it is also a little on the boring side for those same appealing things.
Do you think that all of the genera names need to include the family name also (which would make templates crazy, perhaps)? If you asked me yesterday, I would say "Hell yes, move that category" because I don't mind the "If you were looking for viola the instrument you can find it here" style redirection.
Today my thought is "Disambiguation pages seem more fitting for when there are three or more existing categories for the same name" and the odds for two are 50% so a disambiguation page would mean that 100% would have to go to a different category to get to the images but with the name used by one of them, only 50% would have to go to a different category. Does that make sense? -- carol (talk) 21:46, 9 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, that makes sense. On the en.wp they teach us never to disambiguate in advance, but of course we're missing many common things, like viola (the instrument), so maybe a little planning in advance will save us work in the future. But keep in mind moving categories is quick and easy with bots. Rocket000(talk)21:58, 9 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, the bot moving things is really nice and I find myself thinking about actual use. I say move that category! Perhaps more people will look for the instrument (due to the fact that there are so many of the flower photographs) maybe not, it is difficult to say. Obviously there are and will be a lot more photographs of the flowers (they bloom in the spring and usually in places where seeing them is an emotional thing and the cameras will get aimed and photographs will be taken because of the seasons and all). I am going to even suggest that more photographs will be uploaded here of that genus than are ever actually needed even, due to the blooming in spring thing.
Yeah, that will get the job done too, but it can take forever. If I didn't notice them, I wouldn't have restarted my bot (it was the Ts and almost done with it's very seldom category redirect run). It also sleeps for 8 seconds in between edits and 4 between queries. I sent a some of the big ones to SieBot, otherwise it would've taken all night. (And if I wasn't around, it could've taken weeks with no bot running yet. :) Rocket000(talk)03:10, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I equated it to putting things in front of the vacuum sweeper while it was being operated by someone else, then I went to FPC and commented on the Dali images that is there. And now that you mention it, I guess I could have made the list the same way and showed it to Siebot operators.... it was just one of those moments. I trust that you could have ran through my edit history and undo things if it they were too wrong or if a simpler way was known to you.
Although I appreciate the thought, please don't edit my taxa lists or galleries. For one thing, they are sync'ed with copies on en:, but more importantly they are auto-generated by running a shell script over my master list of plant images. So anybody else's changes will be erased in the next update. Stan Shebs (talk) 05:21, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I apologize for the intrusion. In my mind, the changes that were being made would possibly not show in a watch list and if the update I made was not wanted, at least it would be seen in a watched watch list and easily undone. It would be kind of nice if links to moved galleries that should be ignored could be made to not appear in the "What links here".
Do you want to know something very sad about those galleries I moved? Nothing at any wikipedia links to them -- just your personal gallery. -- carol (talk) 06:01, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
They have categories for unidentified plants. If I were uploading that image, I would have put it into Category:Unidentified Asteraceae because it looks like a sunflower or a daisy. I have plenty of people who are easily annoyed, if that is a goal (and often, not a bad goal, in my humble opinion) but I have yet to find many who are willing and able to identify plant species. I am just a beginner at it myself (although in the 1990s I started to be really good at the plants near to where I lived then and I can spot mature catnip growing while passing it on the expressway at speeds exceeding 80mpg</brag>). I think that the Unidentified categories get looked at when people are bored so putting it there at least allows it to be found by people who are thinking that this is a good task to attempt.
It starts to seem like it would be nice to have a commons area similar to Help Desk for stuff like this. I have been making a category for species with missing images here Category:Species needing images and the plant and insect identification; auto make and year, etc. Maintenance/upgrade kinds of activities that need more interaction than just admins and bot functionality. As soon as one of the bots that can make the empty species categories here does, there should be a lot of images in that category.... -- carol (talk) 04:08, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your help, Carol; hopefully someone will see it and recognise it (and hopefully give it a better filename; that was the best I could come up with after several minutes). I think your idea of an identification help desk is a really good one, BTW; if only because I have a "new" toy and would love to take more photographs of plants (the great thing about plants is, like butterflies, they don't require much talent to get a pretty photo out of them, which suits me down to the ground, wink). Again, thank you for your time, and for the smile. :) Lewis Collard! (lol, internet) 04:44, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Enjoy your new toy. My jealousy makes me evil maybe. It does seem that I live in a world in which performance/ability is equal to failure and I need to not be in this world any longer and back into one in which evolution has been in a positive direction. -- carol (talk) 04:48, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Right now, it is just the last 5 to 6 years and my biggest regret was in making younger people feel too confident or too good about the few things they could do. By "ugly filter" do you imply that I should "wed" or "mate" for success? All of that work and a brand new century and still that is the only option? Had I known that it would be the option, I perhaps would not have studied to learn, worked long difficult hours so I could figure out that it would be unwise to be a single mom with that job (and learned how to prevent that). Ugly is when someone who makes 5 times the amount a year doing next to nothing tells you three years after an amazing and good success that one should not get involved without financial stability. I am deeply sorry that I attempted to raise the self-respect of such a person when the ground was more equal. Perhaps new information will change this 'view' of things but five years later the information had better be good and long lasting. I had access to a nice canon for about 15 minutes in 2004 -- that camera took great photographs. I did not have a chance to remember how to manually set it so that I could say I took a great photograph. 5 to 6 years of a down grade in life for so far no good reason is nothing to be nice about!! I am extremely jealous of your camera but would prefer a different model :)
No, by "ugly filter" I meant there is so much in this world that is beautiful and true, you need to think more on these things. Filter out all the ugliness and the world can be a very beautiful place. "Whatever things are true, whatever things are honorable, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report; if there is any virtue, and if there is any praise, think about these things."
The camera's not much to be jealous of, anyway; 2000 technology (hey, if you're strict about things, that's not even the 21st century...) for less than a fifth of the price of dinner with Jimbo. That wasn't showing off or anything, and I'm sorry if that's how it came across. Although I take pride, somewhat, in being several years behind everyone else (I wonder, sometimes, how I got stuck in the 1970s, the decade before I was born). I'm in love with it, but in a kind of rehabilitated-technophobe-way, not in a "my camera can beat your camera" way... Lewis Collard! (lol, internet) 05:45, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I was looking at a bird and my eyes could see the yellow spot on his wing, just barely. I "filled out the order form" for a camera set up that would have been able to see this bird clearly. Since that time, it is almost nothing for me to be able to close my eyes mostly and "feel" the camera in my hand and the weight of the lens with it. I am also sorry that in 2002 I complained about having taken a photograph of every square inch of the path by the railroad tracks where I lived then. Four to six seasons there compared to the 2 that are here mean that the chance of the beautiful days (changing from one season to another is quite something) are that much greater. The beauty of manicured lawns here -- they are beautiful but without a small patch of wild untamed growing things here and there -- the lack of contrast makes it a little difficult to remember that manicured lawns are beautiful. I wanted to live in a college/university town. I am in a neighborhood of people who have mated and are raising children. This is beautiful also, but it is 5 years of a beautiful I am not interested in. If my "ugly filter" is plugged by 42 years of a different kind of beauty, then it is my memory of things I really enjoyed and changes of the seasons and also the looking forward. Looking forward to a slight improvement in a life I was enjoying was really something. Being thrust into this sham of life that has been these last five years in California I think that if I remove the memories which are mostly what I wanted to continue to see, that I will shrivel and die.
Everyone sees different things as beautiful. I loved where I was. I thought I would be seeing the world and returning to my home, where I wanted to live and be. Instead, I got five years of an idiot telling me that I had not accomplished anything. I already have a mom who plays that part in my life, I really did not need another person for this and a world in which either of those people are allowed to get away with that kind of thing, in my mind is a world that should soon disappear. I am interested to return to my homeland and count how many of the credentialed teachers in the public schools are able to manage a classroom of high schoolers who have just consumed ecstasy --> THAT will be beautiful!
Not just that, but I can do the whole alphabet, too! ;)
The unkind things people have said and done to you, I see it kinda like the Windows 95 CD I have sitting around. Yes, it's horrible, and such things should never happen, at least not to the good people in this world. But that CD-ROM, is pretty impotent just sitting there. I hate that expression "don't give them rent-free space in your head" (or however it goes), but there's some truth to it. People (at least those without baseball bats, etc) can only hurt you as much as you let them; and they can only make this world a less beautiful place than it can be insofar as you let them, too. Maybe that's naive on my part; but for me, no amount of horrible things people have said will outweigh the starlings zerg-rushing my garden in the morning, or a sunset, or a "weed" (is there a distinction between weeds and "real" plants? because some of them are more beautiful than anything people plant deliberately, and apparently some states think my buddleja is a "noxious weed") poking its way through a neatly manicured lawn. YMMV.
With all that said, is there a reason you haven't moved back already? Also, have you ever wondered what happens if you try and indent a conversation all the way over to the right margin? I have. Lewis Collard! (lol, internet) 06:33, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is perhaps "farther than I have gone to the right side than ever before", heh. I asked Dschwen to javascript hack QIC so it would behave even more like the worlds slowest game of Space Invaders ever. That each new nomination cause the margin to move to one side and then the other for a set pixel width. Any player there already gets eight days to "shoot the down falling things".... I was writing about the weeds at your page. I am totally prepared to take my weed seeds back with me when I go. I think I grabbed some weird grass seed as well -- but I thought I would be returning more quickly then. How come everyone was so happy when you came back to the commons, btw. In your own words.... -- carol (talk) 06:49, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That's a better question than you know. Honestly, I don't know either.
Everytime I see the words "Doom" and "*nix" together, my hair gets a little more grey. I wonder if this makes a noise when it happens-- carol (talk) 07:18, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Every time someone else remembers Doom, I feel just that little bit younger. The sound that makes is like the sigh I make when I remember I'm not anymore, just played backwards. Lewis Collard! (lol, internet) 07:34, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
GIMPs IRC channel began life as a small doom ircnet. The inhabitants then were very intelligent and well, very beautiful in a rude yet truthful kind of way. And here is the kind of thing that is plugging up my ugly filter. When last I was on that same channel, the "new" inhabitants of it were "play-acting" television characters. I have no idea where to look to how that started -- look to the media? I guess that the movie for Spiderman made "having the appearance of a dork" to be cool, but play acting television characters kind of exposes the lack of dork, at least for the 20 years and older crowd. Quoting movies and television is a different matter entirely and that is not what I am complaining about and not at all what is clogging my ugly filter here. There is more, but that is a really good example of all of the problems. OH! And debian wanting me not to build software! What the hell? I liked linux and there is nothing about GPL that is about not building software and somewhere, Debian lost track of that and Ubuntu never seemed to understand that (the xkcd that exposed them as being windows with a few extra themes was point on in my opinion). Memories of Michigan and plans for Linux from scratch are the only things that clean that filter. Google losing the famous #doom email and rewriting GIMPs first announcements, I am certain have a lot to do with the downgrade of the intelligence of the irc channel now and the user groups and the really foobarred community. Damn, I would really like to be able to pull that email out for one who could appreciate it. Collard, thank you for dropping by with that flower. I needed an easy smile but got a difficult one instead; much much longer lasting those are. -- :} carol (talk) 07:51, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You're very welcome. And hey, I know that feeling; I stopped by for an easy answer and got...well, this. :) But similarly, the answers you aren't expecting can be the best ones. I can't say much against Ubuntu; I use Xubuntu and I'm rather happy with it, but like sausages (or Wikipedia featured articles), it's probably best for me that I don't see how it gets made... Lewis Collard! (lol, internet) 08:26, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Another reason to stop this template idea is that a taxon can only have children of the same rank. But it is not because a family can contain tribes + genus. Liné1 (talk) 16:20, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Are you suggesting that these people who have an "auth" named Pro.Bally, are paid by colleges and universities and by the governments of different countries for their scientific credientials and abilities and integrity have been abusing the science? -- carol (talk) 23:12, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I started with information from a web site that says they are sequencing the dna of these plants. I really cannot do better than that. And that major problem that was mentioned earlier is almost managed now, easy, with the switch thing.
Feel free to join wikispecies. They already invent new classifications. They provide only one classification per taxon + never say which classification they follow + mix classifications. Really good work. There are many wiki contributor that are ashamed of them. Wikifrance is even considering to avoid links to wikispecies.
Sorry, that was just my sense of humor. I wasn't serious. That sucks Wikispecies does that, but hey, that's how I was taught in college. Rocket000(talk)00:09, 14 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure I understand what you're doing here. You have it in Category:Plantae by family, yet it's a tribe. You also have it in the family category. And it's a hidden category, but seems to be a content category. You're also using new sort keys! How do you expect me to learn like this? Rocket000(talk)11:46, 14 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Although, it is categorized in two places in the same branch -- the category that contains tribes is "plantae by family" (even the families are "plantae") -- carol (talk) 19:22, 14 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I looked over your contributions and it looks to me that you are a house fool here. Maybe not. At least the fools were smart, and bright, and funny. You are not. Once you told me that I shoul wipe my monitor to see better. You know what, even with my monitor I see that you need to wipe your mouth (looks dirty to me) and maybe just shut up once and for all.
I run the risk of having a partial project left here without anyone caring to pick it up or understanding it enough to do that. This has happened before. I leave the things I have touched in a nicer way, at least, usually. If that is a fool, there should be more house fools. There have been enough times that I saw I saw spots on images and they were spooge on the monitor; if it is suggested to me to check for this, I tend to check for that.
When something works, that should not be considered foolish. Thank you for your opinion, btw. My mouth is fine.
What do you mean? Who is "they"? And ... what classification system for the Solanaceae are you referring to in your subfamily/tribus-categories? I.e. Acnistus would be in tribus Physaleae if you're referring to Olmsteads system, but he doesn't recognize Solaneae at tribus-level as you're using it for Solanum and Jaltomata. --Carstor (talk) 14:37, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
First of all "they" would be everyone who uploads images of this nature. The second question is interesting enough for me to request a url for further reading. -- carol (talk) 14:53, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, it seems that I was wrong with the Solaneae (I just checked with the (then erroneous) german article de:Systematik der Nachtschattengewächse earlier, not with the according article by Richard Olmstead (1999)). For some basic literature about Solanaceae-systematics I'd refer to Armando Hunzikers "Genera of the Solanaceae" (2001) which shows a systematic approach mainly based on morphological features and for a phylogenetic approach the quite new article "A Summary of Molecular Systematic Research in Solanaceae: 1982-2006." (2007) by Richard Olmstead and Lynn Bohs. After recognizing my mistake I guess you're referring to a mixture of the system of Olmstead from 1999 and 2007 (the last one only uses informal taxonomic levels so in the strict sense it can't be used for a classification)? Nevertheless it's quite important to state at least somewhere to which system you are referring to and to state where and why you diverge from that system. And ... what I pointed out at the TOL-discussion: Mixing two approaches in one systematic tree is never a good solution, while pointing out alternatives is recommendable. BTW: The "Included genera" list in Category:Solanaceae seems to refer to another system as well, as you included i.e. Lycopersicon and Cyphomandra, who are (according to the current classification within Commons, your defintion of Solaneae and the point of view of phylogenetic approaches) are a part of Solanum. But maybe we should discuss this whole issue at the TOL-discussion page?! --Carstor (talk) 15:29, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No need to be sorry, unless it makes the exchange of information flow better. I agree that much of this discussion belongs at that other area with the exception of the explanation from you of what uploaders did before. I think that belongs here. -- carol (talk) 00:00, 19 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not quite sure what you mean!? Uploaders usually know what species the plant on their pictures belong to, so I guess they where searching for a category and/or gallery that matches this name and included the picture there. If the picture is the first picture of a genus, they can either put it in the family-category (and hopefully someone else creates the genus-category and gallery) or they do it by theirselves. So at this point they don't have to care about systematic concepts at family-level or above. I think the most problematic issues belong to changes on genus or species-level (i.e. Lycopersicon -> Solanum or a lot of widley used but not valid names within Solanum - Solanum laxum is more well known as Solanum jasminoides in botanical gardens or nurseries but that's not the valid name anymore). Neither should uploaders care that much about subfamily-concepts - these classifications are more often subject to change so it might be even harder to keep these information up to date. And (as pointed out in the discussion on the TOL page) commons isn't a reference for taxonomic problems, so we shouldn't put to much effort in this. --Carstor (talk) 05:43, 19 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
My experience is that the information that was here was all over the place (in format and in logic). I am getting my information from a web site which is, I think, sequencing the plants. They too have done some things that others do not like but there you go, it seems that if anything gets done, there will be a group of people who do not like it and are willing to discuss the matter to a certain death.
I don't think that uploaders should have to worry about 1)getting the correct information when uploading and the way it is now, they have to if they are uploading the first image of a species. When there is a problem name, it can be put into the description in either the gallery or the category and that will eventually find its way into the search engine memory and come up in a search for it -- the same with common names.
I also do not suspect nor will I fight to say that everything that I have done is perfect. Show me or anyone who is well-versed with the template technology here the mistake and it can be repaired often at the template level and affect everything quickly. If you do not like one or another of the trees that are being represented in the templates, the other trees are there for quick navigation along the desired tree and further work could be done on the taxonomy navigation template that would enable hiding of them. Automatic categorization is such a huge plus that it should be difficult to argue against that, especially when the templates can be used for either category pages or galleries.
The concept of using templates for categorizing isn't that bad ... that wasn't the reason for me to start this discussion. I just think, the taxonomic concepts you're using are to complicated. Instead of helping uploaders they might confuse them. All an uploader should know is the genus and the species the picture belongs to, and if it's the first picture of a genus maybe the family. Right now the user needs to know the subfamily or the tribe. Unlike the family of a plant this is an information that is very seldom provided i.e. in botanical gardens. Additional within many families (as in the Solanaceae) there are still a lot of changes in those classifications as new research results are found. Therefore I'd suggest not to include subfamily and tribe information into the category-tree or the templates. Best wishes, --Carstor (talk) 14:08, 19 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Once the bot creates the genus categories and puts the instructions along with the template to use on the discussion page for the genus -- what could be more simple? -- carol (talk) 14:12, 19 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The additional ability to use this interface as a database in addition to being an image container. One of the more impressive categories I have seen recently and it will make me smile to look at it again is Category:Species of Asteraceae and Category:Genera of Asteraceae -- names entered by people/contributors here, voluntarily and now regrouped into an interesting list. Once the bot fills in the missing genera categories, not only will we have a complete listing of the genera of Asteraceae, but also a good idea of what images are needed. It is to me, very beautiful that an uploader of an image of a known species which yet does not have a gallery or a category here, upload the image, apply the template that is found on the genus talk page and add that species to the collection. All of the same problems of the species not actually existing are still a problem (the same with galleries and the way uploaders were "encouraged" to work until recently) but the ease that ensues from managing the images like the database it is very wonderful and what software was intended to do. -- carol (talk) 14:30, 19 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not familiar with infrafamiliar Asteraceae systematics, but as far as I know subfamily definitions there are much more settled as in other families like the Solanaceae and because of the size of the family the subfamily classification is far more used than elsewhere. And there is no question that templates can help organizing categories. But you still couldn't give me a reason why there is a need to create subcategories in subfamily and tribe level when this classification system is not widely used ... --Carstor (talk) 17:09, 19 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The simple answer is that it is how the web site I have been using (one of the web sites, actually) has presented this information; the not so simple answer is that the task becomes interesting enough to complete when the three systems are to be displayed. It becomes like a very complex puzzle instead of a simple one easy enough for a small child. All of the genus are in the subfamily trees and also in the family name for the one that you have been referencing papers that I do not have access to -- I simply do not understand your problem :) -- carol (talk) 19:59, 19 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Just to summarize:
with this method, uploaders need only know the genus and the instructions for the rest of the task are on the talk page for that (after the bots run through).
clearly you do not like the subfamilies in , and the information has been presented in a way for those who do not like subfamilies in Category:Solanaceae and even though the information is presented there in a way that those who do not like subfamilies there, you are still not happy because the information is also presented in the subfamilies....
you haven't answered the question of what were/are the instructions for uploaders before this system. Until this is answered clearly by those complaining about this new system, there is no way to evaluate the gains and losses.
I think I've answered your question here. My problem with the system is that it's not clear to which taxonomic approach you're referring to (at Category:Solanales you're also mixing different systems) and there are a lot of inconsistencies within your changes. --Carstor (talk) 21:29, 19 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It is seen with flowers but not in Zambia, where it is too dry in winter and those fleshy leaves wither and disappear, to come back at the next rainy season a few weeks after flowering. Lycaon (talk) 13:51, 19 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Some of these plants are incredibly resilient to their environment! Regardless of how the VI for the single image turns out, a set that shows this plants resiliency and beauty would be a very nice collection in my humble opinion. -- carol (talk) 13:55, 19 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
<sigh> This picture was taken 20 years ago, and next time I will be there will be 2010, and probably during the wrong season ;-(. Lycaon (talk) 15:04, 19 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Heh, I must say that as an unborn and even not yet conceived being (-7 years by my calculations) you were already a very very good photographer! Have you considered that another person might take that photograph? -- carol (talk) 15:10, 19 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I will blame Alves and the Tagus song for any miscalculations I made. Using those same calculations on me, I am too young to drink alcohol yet plenty old to drive. (4 oz of wine which caused the need to upload the same image ~4 times before the correct image was uploaded is a definite part of that calculation) 20 years ago, I took my photograph of lightening and did not hit the school bus that was at the bottom of the hill when my brakes failed. The observatory burnt down that year and life in the renovated convent wasn't going so well. Thanks for the memories? -- carol (talk) 15:32, 19 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
When I was writing articles I would search on Flickr for them. They are not always tagged with the genus name or species though so the search was interesting and more often than here, the plant was misnamed. I got a batch of images from a picasa gallery that had a government project number on it. That was rare and weird though, since picasa doesn't deal with licenses that I have seen. I found those searching for one of the {{{auth}}} who is still alive and who I was writing an article for. I would have never even looked at the picasa images due to the lack of license. USDA Plants has images, but their photographs are all small, often marked with a copyright, many of them are just licensed for educational use and generally of terrible quality. They have line drawings from two collections, both licensed for use here -- it is not rare but at least unusual that those images are not already here. Then finally, if it grows in Hawaii it can be found in http://www.hear.org/search/ and I usually find the species images via google from there (not that search page). They license those images with one of the cc licenses. Image:Hedera helix.jpg is from there. -- carol (talk) 03:41, 23 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That is an interesting task, more interesting that I would have first thought when I did that for a while; is there going to be a problem with empty cateogries? -- carol (talk) 14:54, 23 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Heh, my mind is more on giving hotcat a place to put things. I am also really anxious to have a software make the rest of the genus categories and put the instructions on the talk page. What will remain as a red link in the older system is that much more interesting than what I have been doing (relative measurement of interesting makes for nicer sounding text about this....) -- carol (talk) 06:12, 24 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
TimVickers gave you an opportunity to remove an uncivil and unnecessary comment and you chose not to do so.[4] As you know very well, you may be blocked for comments of that sort. They anger people and you can make your points without them. Please desist. Walter Siegmund(talk)22:58, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I find the perception of an insult to be mildly interesting. Could you detail other things which you consider to be an insult? -- carol (talk) 05:50, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Here is an exercise for both of us. You rephrase my comment here to have the same message but not anger you and I will read it and see if I can determine what your problem is and the reason your fuse is so short and attached to a non-problem. (fuse being an analogy for people who are easily angered). -- carol (talk) 06:07, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I copied your last two comments from my talk page and place them above to keep the discussion together. Please review, and take to heart, W:WP:CIVIL. Incivility is a barrier to effective communication. Commons:Talk page guidelines, especially its advice to be concise and to make others feel welcome (even longtime participants; even those you dislike), may be helpful to you as well. I don't think I can be more clear than those pages which are the work of many editors and represent that consensus of the community on these matters. Walter Siegmund(talk)14:31, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think most people would view the suggestion that you were kissing somebody's ass as an insult. If you somehow didn't mean this to be insulting, I'd recommend you think much more carefully in the future about how other people might interpret your words. TimVickers (talk) 17:03, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I copied your last two comments from my talk page and place them above to keep the discussion together. Please review, and take to heart, W:WP:CIVIL. Incivility is a barrier to effective communication. Commons:Talk page guidelines, especially its advice to be concise and to make others feel welcome (even longtime participants; even those you dislike), may be helpful to you as well. I don't think I can be more clear than those pages which are the work of many editors and represent that consensus of the community on these matters. Walter Siegmund(talk)14:31, 27 August 2008 (UTC)!!!![reply]
I'm sorry, but it has become clear to me that I have not the skill to communicate effectively with you.[5] I'm not happy about that, but I like to think that I know my limitations. Walter Siegmund(talk)18:41, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hello Carol. I wanted to ask you about this page with list of botanical categories. It was tagged for speedy deletion by a bot. So, what is the page about and do you think it should be moved to one of your user pages instead? Thanks --Kimse (talk) 04:59, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
"This is a list of the approximately 1500 genera that were included at one point in the family of Compositae or Asteraceae." I suspect that if any one was not able to understand this statement, they should search online for information about it. We have categories here for places I have never been to or even heard of, there are galleries for lands that had political divisions that no longer exist. These galleries should be deleted or moved to the talk pages of the people who made them? After you look online for information about plants and classification systems, do feel free to help to improve that one sentence that I put onto that page that is an explanation of the contents. I do not think the article (links to categories) belongs in my talk area anymore than the person who wrote the atlas for Yugoslavia needs to "own" that but if you think so, I suggest to start with much older articles than this one and begin to move things more logically. -- carol (talk) 06:36, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There's no reason to get upset about a simple question, Carol. All I asked is to clarify to me what the page is about since it was tagged for speedy deletion by a bot. And since I didn't delete the page but wanted to get more information from its original creator, should tell you that we care and take every user's contribution seriously.
The page in question is an empty gallery. Categories and galleries related to the historic nation of Yugoslavia have images in them, therefore, the above mentioned gallery has been tagged for speedy deletion by a bot since it has only a list of categories and not a single image in it. That's why I asked your opinion on what to do with the page since it doesn't seem to be within the project scope of Commons — especially check out the first paragraph Wikimedia Commons is a "media file repository" — and that's why I asked you if you think the page should be moved to your personal user space (example: User:CarolSpears/Compositae species). I'm not saying it should be deleted, but please let me know the importance of the page and the reason of its creation. Thanks --Kimse (talk) 22:14, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I am not upset, I am more curious the reason you did and still need explanation of what that page is. Indeed it is not a gallery. Also, I did not make that list originally; it was made in the 1980s. Instead of suggesting that it be moved and that I am upset, perhaps you can tell me what you know of botany so I can more easily understand what it is that you do not understand.
Here is a question about people who assume upsetness, in this case you. If I am indeed not upset as you implied does this mean in this case that you might be upset? If asking what part of a sentence should be improved to assist you into understanding what the page is makes you upset, do you think that you should be making decisions and suggestions about what belongs here or not? -- carol (talk) 05:47, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ouch, so cold! But thanks for the warm welcome on my talk page. Anyway, I'll leave the gallery be since I don't want to get personal and get into a sarcastic cold war over a collection of botanical categories. Best of luck to you and thanks for your contributions. Truly yours :) --Kimse (talk) 05:54, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for leaving it, botany is an interesting "science" which in my less than one year look at it I have determined that it is similar to taking a single frame from a movie and describing every piece of it and then taking another single frame from several minutes later and explaining every piece of that. Or, in other words, an exercise in futility with the one exception that no one alive right now will be around to see the end of this movie. The list of genera included into that family in the early 1980s is a fact, it is still being used to sort genus with and comical in its largeness (more than 1500 genus!!). The commons has three or four active taxonomy trees here and that is the same number I have seen used on the wikipedias whose images commons serve. The list is present to view and it is also helpful for "What Links Here" to see what genera there are now compared to what the genera was in this list from the 1980s. If you would like to know further about the futility of taxonomy, there are two articles from the magazine Scientific American which are fueling my enthusiasm with the two things I am trying to accomplish here. One article may or may not be online, but was about using a wiki-framework for more technical applications and the data set which is the images is a natural for demonstrations of this, in my opinion. The other article is available online, I call it canis soup but the real title is "What is a species".
Dear Madam,
I saw your partial reply to my question about the existence of failed Flickr images on Collard's talkpage. I don't understand this, I'm afraid. Mr. Collard had told me a few weeks ago that I cannot upload flickr images which have a no-commercial use restrictions and I have not done so. I only upload images with acceptable licenses like this Image:Mask of Amenemope1.jpg. In cases where the flickr image owner agreed to license the image freely, I always E-mail the flickr owner Wikimedia Commons exact license of his or her image. So, I am puzzled at the very existence of this cache of images which failed flickrbot reviews. Many had failed flickrbot reviews as early as March/April/May 2007. Their existence seems to break the spirit of the Commons rules on flickr images. Do you know why are they still exist...is it because they are being used on certain pages? It all seems rather confusing I'm afraid. With kind Regards from Canada, --Leoboudv (talk) 06:50, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Use of an improperly licensed image is not a justification. That category contains a backlog of files that need to be checked -- a bunch of Flickr images were retagged after having been checked and approved here recently. One of the stipulations of the cc license is that once applied it always exists and cannot be taken off. So that category is a collection of images which need to be checked to see that they were not approved previously and deleted if the license is not welcome here.
That category needs an active administrative hand to make the images and content on commons adhere to the simple site scope which is that some licenses are allowed and others are not. Until that is accomplished, other finer definitions of the site scope are much like flatulence on a windy day (pardon my analogy).
You are asking really good questions, btw. Thank you for being involved and please continue to ask these questions here and anywhere else! -- carol (talk) 07:16, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you Madam for clarifying that the use of improperly licensed images is not justifiable and that there is a large 'backlog' in dealing with such images. I uploaded a properly licensed image on Commons from the Gulbenkian museum specifically for Admin Dbachman to use for a Wikipedia article on Assyrian iconography. Dbachman is, IMO, one of the best Admins on Wikipedia--his knowledge of Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamian and Indian history, religion and culture is incredible. If you notice the edit he made, he included a nice gallery of two images. The image on the bottom right is the one I just uploaded which passed Flickr review...whereas the one on the bottom left did not. I suppose even the most brilliant people make mistakes since everyone is human. The real problem, however, is that such improperly licensed images exist which causes many people to think that they are legitimate sadly. Perhaps one solution to dealing with this backlog is to give the uploader of such images a fixed deadline of perhaps 3 weeks before the image is deleted. This would allow uploaders time to contact the actual flickr image owners to consider changing the license to something more acceptable such as Creative Commons 2.0. Anyway, its just an idea that a trusted user or Admin could consider. It was nice communicating with you Madam. Regards from Canada --Leoboudv (talk) 08:02, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, you are right that recently my bot marked a whole swathe of images for Flickr review, and some were erroneous. This was the case when the uploader on Commons is the same person as on Flickr, in which case the copyright status on Filckr is irrelevant to us.
Its nice to know that you trust my bot, however I don't trust it myself! NilfaBot does not review the copyright status of Flickr images, its task is to identify images from Flickr and tag those files for review. The actual review is then carried out by a person, or more likely, FlickreviewR. With regards to the image you mentioned the following is what happened:
It was uploaded in 2005, the license may or may not have been valid.
It was tagged for review by my bot.
FlickreviewR reviewed the image two months later, and found the license invalid.
Well, okay then. It looked as if the bot had approved the image and it really might be a case where I want to see a problem like the one I had (where the image had been licensed properly and the license changed after the approval). Thank you for being impartial and (now that I looked at it again) knowing what your bot does, heh. -- carol (talk) 09:12, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That's fine Carol. It is good to know that FlickreviewR's original judgements on the copyright status of images is not called into question by Nilfabot because if did, there would be a whole bunch of problematic images due to changes in flickr licenses. I know of one case where a Flick image owner (Hans) changed the license of an image back from cc 2.0 to 'all rights reserved' about 2-3 days after I E-mailed him the official WikiCommon's license for his image and showed him where it was being used on Wikipedia. That image Image:Sheshonq II mask2004.jpg was absolutely critical for the Wikipedia article on an Egyptian pharaoh....because no tourist took an image of it at the Cairo museum and then placed it on Commons. All photography at the Cairo museum has been banned since 2005. Sometimes a picture is a worth a thousand words. It is good to know that we can trust Flickerreview's judgements. Regards from Metro Vancouver where it is 2:35 AM. Time to sign off. Regards, --Leoboudv (talk) 09:36, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I've recently been tidying up Category:Caribbean and some of its sub-categories (Jamaica in particular). All was straight forward except for the "Nature of ..." categories which, amongst other things, contain a mixture of categories "Plants of ...", "Flora of ..." and (for some countries) both. This seemed rather confusing so I had a hunt around to try to discover why there was this mixture of two apparently very similar categories. My searches revealed nothing about how the situation had arisen (although in retrospect I was probably looking in the wrong namespaces). However, they did show that Category:Plants by country is well populated while Category:Flora by country is non existent. In the end, as all other sub-categories are grouped "... by country" (as indeed are almost all the "Flora of ..." within the Caribbean), I concluded (wrongly) that the "Flora of ..." categories must be historic left overs of some previous categorisation scheme and so placed a {{move|<destination page>|<reason>|<date>|<discussion page>}} on each to see if any one objected to them being moved. There were no objections so an administrator initiated the moves (a little more quickly than I'd expected it must be said). The rest you know about.
It is easy to verify rather than assume by looking at the history of the category. There are abandoned category schemes around, half made category schemes in which people seem to be relieved when they disappear. Also, there are administrators here who if I am new to commons -- the administrators are new to the commons in the extreme.
To be honest, I have no strong views either way about these categories but I do feel that we should give guidance to the non-specialist as to what each of the two categories is to be used for. To that end I'd like to put a message box or some introductory text into each "Plants of ..." and "Flora of ..." category under Caribbean (my area of interest). This is easy enough for the "Plants of ..." categories which are simple political groupings. The problem is, I have no idea what the inclusion criteria for the "Flora of ..." categories are.
My views on this to me are more in the realm of "this is obvious" as the category scheme was made while authoring plant articles and looking at a plethora of sites related to plants online. There is a good possibility that this feeling of "obviousness" in addition to the time spent creating the tree and filling it in gives the appearance of me having strong views on it.
So, the request. Would you please be kind enough to provide some words to describe/define the inclusion criteria for the Flora of categories? These need to be short and also simple enough to be understood by non-specialists like myself.
Sure, lets start with what the Plants of categories criteria is then as they met your requirements and also without documentation were able to encourage you to look to see where the subcategorization ended. It is in my opinion more efficient to look at what worked/functioned first to meet all of these requirements you have for this other set of categories.
For an example of the sort of thing I have in mind, please see User:Arbus Driver/Plants message box. That example is for a plant category. For a flora category the order of the sentences would be switched. The second sentence is my best guess but may well be a complete misunderstanding.
Once again, I suggest that we look at the reasons you opted to keep the "Plants of" categories and were able to follow that to know where it ended.
The following was copied here from User talk:Arbus Driver in an attempt to keep the discussion unfragmented:
While I am attempting to answer your questions, I have a couple of questions for you:
When you say "the Caribbean" what areas do you consider to be a part of that larger area?
Before requesting deletion, did you look at where the tree ended (like, what was the category a subcategory of) and at the edit history?
As requests for deletion of categories is kind of a strong hand being applied, I will assume that all of the questions you are asking about the Flora of categories the answers are known to you for the Plants of categories. So, here is an easy question for you to answer: What is the inclusion critera for the "Plants of" categories?
Hello again Carol. Can we focus here, please. I provided you with the history of recent events as a courtesy but going over it with a fine tooth comb is not going to move things forward. Except that is for one misunderstanding that needs clearing up - I at no point requested deletion of any "Flora of ..." categories, that would indeed have been strong, aggressive even. What I did do was attempt to initiate a discussion. Outside forces then took over.
Returning to the matter in hand, the key issue is to determine the inclusion criteria for the "Flora of ..." categories. Please understand that if this was obvious to me I'd not be asking for your help. So...
You ask what I think the inclusion criteria for "Plants of ..." is. Answer: "This category is for media (files) illustrating any plants growing in <country>, whether native or introduced."
Now over to you. What do you think the inclusion criteria for the "Flora of ..." categories is?
I never requested the deletion of any "Plants of" categories. I can tell you the exact reasons that I requested the deletion of several other categories. I investigated them. I looked at the file history. I looked to see what the creators of the categories have been doing lately. I looked at where those categories were subcategories to. I also noticed how much activity there was within them (if a species were to be subcategorized there, without communication, the watchers of those categories would disemble the subcategory and make a gallery of them). No where that I saw is their criteria or purpose published and yet, you opted to delete a set of categories who are at least beginning to be very well documented.
If you had shown up here saying "hello, before I delete what about this" or if you were here saying "what reason did you ask that such and such category be deleted?" But you are not doing that. You show up after your deletion request. You want me to document some categories more than the categories that you opted for are documented. I suggest that if you were to investigate before making a deletion request that 1)you would not have requested it and 2)you would not be here demanding me to do what you should have done before the request.
Nicely and with nothing but good intentions, I am asking that you do the investigation that you should have done before the deletion request. -- carol (talk) 14:28, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The following was copied here from User talk:Arbus Driver in an attempt to keep the discussion unfragmented:
These are questions about the "Plants of" categories. All the while I investigated this whole tree, either these exact questions were on my mind or similar questions like "what use could there possibly be in having a "Plants of Russia" category as well as a "Plants of New Caldonia". Other questions I had were "What reason are there no "Plants of Rhode Island" categories. Now, please understand that I asked these questions and still did not request a deletion. I searched for documentation but the people active in those trees were very very difficult to communicate with.
Had I made a decision that any one of those categories should be deleted, I would have let those active people know and provide the reasons for the deletion.
This is documentation on what to do before making a deletion request. I think that this is a better place for you to begin than in demanding that others do this work for you. I really think this. -- carol (talk) 14:50, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
And one more question here. Is the lack of an answer here because you do not know what land masses are included in "the Caribbean" that the "Plants of the Caribbean" covers? It is okay if that is the case, it is just evidence that you should research before requesting deletions and it takes this case to be perhaps more than just my opinion and into a place of being darn good advice. -- carol (talk) 14:52, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Er, Carol, I did not make a deletion request. That would have involved going through the RfD process. And I did do some research but it did not lead to a conclusion or to your name. Placing a move template on a category is a simply proposal to which anyone can respond or object - a way to find out if there is any objection. It is unfortunate that you were either not watching those pages or chose not to react.
But you are trying to change the subject.
The thing is that most of the sub-categories of most regional groupings are country based. This makes "Flora of ..." an odd one out. No harm in that but it does mean that the category deserves to be documented in a way that will make its purpose easily and transparently obvious to the non-expert/newcomer. And I am proposing to do the same for "Plants of..." for the sake of clarity (did you follow the link to User:Arbus Driver/Plants message box)?
Thus the key issue remains to determine the inclusion criteria for the "Flora of ..." categories. Please understand that if this was obvious to me I'd not be asking for your help. So...
You ask what I think the inclusion criteria for "Plants of ..." is. Answer: "This category is for media (files) illustrating any plants growing in <country>, whether native or introduced."
Now over to you. What do you think the inclusion criteria for the "Flora of ..." categories is?
You probably know this but I was wrong on those Commons images which failed flickr review. They would once have had an acceptable license until the flickr owners changed it according to Admin Nilfanion here I guess they have been grandfathered for the most part except for instances where they are useless/out of scope. This means the original deleted Assyrian winged genie image could have been used legitimately. Oh well, live and learn. Regards, --Leoboudv (talk) 08:59, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There was a series of Flickr images here that had been approved by a trusted user to have sufficient license yet when re-reviewed, the license at Flickr had changed which -- while difficult to prove with the exception of trusted users being trusted -- legally, the license once applies remains and not all adopters of the license understand this.
If the image was uploaded by FlickrLickr, then it originally had an acceptable license which it legally still retains. -- carol (talk) 09:38, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
According to the history of the deleted image, it was not uploaded by FlickrLickr, and has never passed a Flickr review (either by the bot or by a human). It was reviewed by the bot three months after the upload, and failed that review because it was already back then licensed as CC-BY-NC-SA. When there is no passed Flickr review, we cannot keep such images. Lupo11:05, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Also, "passed Flikr review" only means that a trusted user has confirmed that the Flikr licence was, at the time of checking, an allowable one for us. It does not prove that the Flikr user was actually entitled to release the image under that licence in the first polace. It does not act as a magic defence against deletion if it can be shown later that the image was actually a copyvio. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 13:39, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I for one can claim that I was somewhat blinded by my enthusiasm to keep an image like that one. It is impossible to get with a license now, if I understand that cairo stuff correctly and my enthusiasm blinded me while I had a chance to see the file history. Thank you for your time and patience through this! -- carol (talk) 14:32, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
