Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 03:33, 12 September 2009

I won't have regular internet access until the middle of October. is taking a short wikibreak and will be back on Misplaced Pages soon.

Please note: to avoid duplication, I'll reply to queries about Citation bot on this page.

Archives

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

/DOI bot

Congratulations

Regardless of my view at your request, congratulations on your adminship and no hard feelings. If you need any help or advice, my talk page's always unprotected. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 08:52, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Congrats from me too! --Philcha (talk) 17:41, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

And from me too. Ruslik (talk) 19:22, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Best wishes also from my side! Daniel Mietchen (talk) 16:06, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Taking the p.... out of anthropocentrism again

You might be amused by Talk:Kidney#Too_anthropocentric. It all started when I thought I'd better get clear about the difference between protonephridia and metanephridia in annelids (which I've started on at last). --Philcha (talk) 17:41, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

-If we did that, then, what do we do with "anthroocentrism"?--Mr Fink (talk) 19:02, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Go to work oon an egg :-) --Philcha (talk) 19:13, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Possible proposed Wikiproject of interest

Hi, I noticed your recent contributions on swimming, namely fixing the massive human-bias in the article. I was wondering if you'd be interested in a Wikiproject I'm trying to get off the ground, Wikiproject - Organismal biomechanics, dealing with, well, organismal biomechanics such as locomotion, prey capture, etc. There's a list of proposed pages within the scope of the project on my user page. Thanks for fixing the swimming article; that was on my to-do list and I was postponing it because I'm more a terrestrial locomotion person. Mokele (talk) 19:17, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the support - I've created WikiProject_Organismal_Biomechanics, and thought I should drop by and let you know it's open for business. Cheers! Mokele (talk) 04:08, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

A few broken cite dois

Hi. There are a few broken cite dois at Ice sheet dynamics. I'm not sure how to fix that but you'll probably know it at first glance. Enjoy! - Nabla (talk) 20:37, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

 Fixed Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 21:00, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Great! Thanks. - Nabla (talk) 21:41, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Reftool

Hey Martin. Is Reftool down? I just put it in my monobook.js, and I tried running it on United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri... but it runs forever. – Quadell 20:34, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, it seems to work on other articles, so I guess it's not down in general. But I came upon another issue. When I run it on Isma'il Sidqi, it removes a reference. – Quadell 20:45, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

It needs a lot of work. My author-detection algorithm needs completing first; improvements are in the pipeline, though! Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 23:30, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

• Google Scholar search doesn't seem to be working... II | (t - c) 17:45, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

  Hm. I've not touched it, so hopefully it'll be back in action soon. If not, I'll investigate tomorrow. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 19:57, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Snowball Earth

Hi Martin - we could use some input as to why you say that Snowball Earth has recently lost following at Talk:Snowball Earth - thanks.

And congrats on your adminship - I look forward to newer and better versions of citation bot. Awickert (talk) 02:46, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Citation Bot blocked

Hey, following this report, and seeing the comments on that same potential bug on Bot talk I erred on the side of caution and blocked it. Mfield (Oi!) 04:48, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Is it still down? It doesn't seem to go past the initial startup message and there's nothing in contribs...LeadSongDog come howl 23:54, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

It's been fixed. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 15:07, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

And there were cries of joy heard....LeadSongDog come howl 04:19, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Citation bot and special characters

Hi Marten. Citation bot doesn't seem to be able to handle articles like Botan Dōrō. – Quadell 22:27, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Toolserver mail

the email address you have listed for the Toolserver is bouncing. please update this with a current email address. kate.

just edit $HOME/.forward and write the new address there. kate.

Annelid

I'm now doing the phylogeny bit of Annelid, and would be really, really grateful if you could suggest how the "relationships between annelids" cladogram could be improved. It's based on Annelid phylogeny and the status of Sipuncula and Echiura, and the enlarged version of their cladogram.

I was thinking of doing Polychaete next, as the CE specimens are described as polychaetes, but after annelid phylogeny I might switch to something simple like quantum chromodynamics! --Philcha (talk) 22:25, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

From a presentation point of view the cladogram does little for me either. It looks better in the original with colour-code line and blocks. I may stick with the text, which explains the paraphyly at each level.

By review paper do you mean, e.g. this one from 2004? The messenger (K.M. Halanych, who seems involved on over 50% of recent mol phylo studies of annelids) and the message are much the same, except that the 2004 paper focusses more on relationships between phyla, while the 2007 one is about relationships within Annelida, including any other taxa it swallows.

I was sceptical about mol phylo while working on Cambrian explosion, because the dates for the proto-deutero split varied so widely (one with an error margin whose lower limit lay in the Ordovician, do you remember that one?), and mol phylo estimates of the divergence times for mammal orders were much earlier than the fossil record indicated (see Evolution of mammals). However phylo trees produced by mol phylo are looking more credible all the time: practicioners have learned to avoid critters with anomalous mutation rates, like Caenorhabditis elegans (the "common laboratory nematode"); a combination of wider data available and hugely improved computer performance has made it possible in the last 5 years or so to use datasets of several genes from tens of taxa, and to sensitivity-test conclusions; and, as one proponent said, with just 4 character values and no nulls, scoring is a lot less subjective (although my impression is that sequence alignment is not quite an exact science).

It also seems inconsistent to accept the Lophotrochozoa-Ecdysozoa split, which is based on mol phylo, and reject the use of mol phylo for the next level down. Also morphological studies seem to have made little progress with annelids. The main one I can remember is Rouse (1997). For all that Rouse is one of top authorities on annelids, his 1997 paper essentially classified annelids by lifestyle, which would not wash with arthropods.

And Rouse now accepts the mol phylo ideas, see his "The Annelida and their close relatives" (1998, revised 2001) in D.T. Anderson's Invertebrate Zoology (OUP) pp. 176–179 and Segmented worms: bristleworms, ragworms, earthworms, leeches and their allies (ToLweb, 2002). --Philcha (talk) 15:06, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

PS how about if I skip the representations of Aciculata etc, in the cladogram and simplify the tree and just label them "various "polycheates""? --Philcha (talk) 15:10, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

What do you know? Quite a lot, IIRC.

Re "no killer tree", the 2007 study's analysis of 11 genes across a dozens of taxa incl 9 outgroups pushed its computer right to the limit, and the system ran out of memory at one point. --Philcha (talk) 15:51, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Hi, Martin. If you have time could you please have a look at Annelid#Evolutionary_history. I've simplified the "reraltionships withn annelids" cladogram, collapsing branches that contain only members of the traditional "Polychaeta", and highlighting the results that do most damage to the traditional classification. I've also added an "in context" bit about Lophotrochozoa and Ecdysozoa.

I was originally thinking of doing Polychaete next as that's how the Early Cambrian annelids have been classified, but now I'm unsure as it seems all I can do point out that it's now synonymous with "annelid", althought the earliest annelid fossils have the type of body shape typical o f "polychaetes".

The other possible next step is Bryozoa, which are interesting as the earliest fossils are Ordovician but mol phylo analyses place them as the most basal extant Lophotrochozoans. Any thoughts? --Philcha (talk) 18:19, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

"Knowing how much you love anthropocentricism-bashing" - ROFL. In fact it made me so cheerful actually I tried a little diplomacy at Talk:Human_swimming#Limited_scope_of_article - wonders never cease.

Thanks for your encouraging comments re annelid phylo. I agree the 2nd para is jam-packed, but don't see what can sensibly be left out. I'm close to the stage where I leave an article for a week or two then come back and check out what I actually wrote rather than what I thought I was writing.

If I highlighted the polychaetes, I'd have to use a different colour, as all non-polychaetes are already highlighted!

Re Cambrian explosion, I thought you didn't play the FA game any more. Given your keenness on DYK, are you sure you aren't an ad-man manqué?

Before setting any targets, you might want to check whether Cambrian explosion would qualify as topical in connection with the 100th anniversary of the discovery of the Burgess Shale in Aug. I'd have thought Burgess Shale was a better prospect, although it would be necessary to check for any non-paleo significance per the "comprehensive coverage" requirement, and to check its regulatory status (conservation regs, Indi Native American rights, etc.). Improving Burgess Shale would entail producing a decent "Cambrian explosion lite" section, but for once that might be easier than the full thing - when we were both working on Cambrian explosion the main differences between us were about level of detail. I dunno much about taphonomy and diagenesis (and can't spell Dobz-whats-his-face), but the details of those topics should perhaps be covered in Burgess shale type fauna and /or Burgess shale type preservation.

However I confess the more I see of FAC - well, I'd have no patience with MOS quibbles (see for example Talk:Jim Baxter/GA1). However if you can put up with me getting as grouchy as the typical FA reviewer ... I suppose the way to start would be an outline on the Talk page, like the one I produced for Evolutionary history of life, and a "Sources" section, also on the Talk page. --Philcha (talk) 20:53, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Re "more to it than dinosaurs", yes, I've had to be rather firm about that in discussions about the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction.

Are you serious about getting Burgess shale to FA? If so, I'll be happy to knock out a 1st-draft structure outline. Then we can knock it about a bit, and then start searching for sources. I also know a geologist who's been helpful before (after I "sold" him the extinctions annotated image template for Dutch WP, so I did get a good price for it) plus a couple of evolutionists and a very good writer we can ask for comments.

It would be great to work with you again - Cambrian explosion was fun, even (? especially) when we argued, and I confess I'm finding invert zoo rather lonely.--Philcha (talk) 21:45, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

citation bot

I followed the instruction on adding the citation bot to my toolbox, but I don't see the widget.--Ccson (talk) 14:48, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Me too. What exactly should we see in the toolbox? – ukexpat (talk) 15:04, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

It's working fine for me. Try clearing your cache or restarting your browser. You'll see a 'reference formatting' section appear below the toolbox sidebar section. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 17:13, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Supressing redirects

Just FYI, redirects should typically not be suppressed when moving articles (except in cases of vandalism reverts). It makes it harder to figure out what happened, as with your recent move of Swimming to Human swimming. –xeno (talk) 15:49, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Hm, no, I don't think anyone has penned it yet... I'll try and whip something up. Also, I think we should reverse your bold page move and move "Human swimming" back to "Swimming", but I can't think of a good name for where "Swimming" should go... "Swimming (biomechanics)" or "Swimming (motion)" or "Swimming (biology)" - something like that. See the talk page for reasoning... –xeno (talk) 17:08, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

I've penned WP:SUPPRESS, I also note there is some information in the mediawiki pagemove instructions Note to admins: The "leave a redirect behind" option should only be unchecked when reverting pagemove vandalism or if there is a very good reason to do so, as this will break any links to the current title, and may make the page harder to find. . –xeno (talk) 18:00, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Barnstar of Peace

		The Barnstar of Peace
		I award both you and User:Karnesky this Barnstar of Peace for working together at Misplaced Pages:Bots/Requests for approval/Citation bot 4 to iron out the bot's scope and specifications. Differences on bot approval pages too often turn personal. Though you came from different perspectives, you were both courteous, descriptive, and willing to compromise. I strive to follow your example. – Quadell 12:46, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Burgess shale

Hi, Martin, 1st draft outline at Talk:Burgess_Shale#Outline_for_rewrite. Your turn! --Philcha (talk) 23:28, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Is it a good idea to include "BS" in edit summaries :-)

I think we need comments on the outline from a few others - do you know of anyone else who has a useful level of knowledge and interest?

We probably ought to start writing within a couple of weeks, to give us time to adapt to the sources we find & any comments we get - Evolutionary history of life didn't follow its outline very closely, mainly because the sources took over at some points. --Philcha (talk) 05:30, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Talk:Burgess_Shale#Sources now has a decent collection of ammo - I think we're ready to rumble. Who shoots what (with which & to whom?) --Philcha (talk)

It keeps striking me that it might be a good idea to get Burgess shale type fauna to at least GA first, pref FA. That way we can do the fauna at whatever length we consider appropriate, and then summarise that in Burgess Shale. However we might first want to consider the scope and content of the fauna article:

• Burgess shale type fauna says "While many are also preserved in a similar fashion to the Burgess shale, the term "Burgess shale type fauna" covers assemblages based on taxonomic criteria only" but the ref (Orr, Benton & Briggs, 2003; "Post-Cambrian closure of the deep-water slope-basin taphonomic window") says " Most of these Cambrian faunas have been termed "Burgess Shale type" on the basis of either taxonomic (Conway Morris, 1989) or taphonomic (Butterfield, 1990, 1995) similarities; the two criteria are not necessarily synonymous". My impression is that "Burgess shale type fauna" is a lot less defined than " Burgess Shale type preservation" and I'd be very happy to avoid it.
• There's enough about the strictly BS fauna for an article in its own right: distribution of types of critter (by major clase, ~= phylum plus stem-group; easily-recognised vs "weird wonders"; hard vs cuticular vs really soft); "stars of the show" (top-of-the bill: Marella and Opabinia); the theory bit.

Either way we may have refs to start either Burgess Shale or a fauna article immediately. --Philcha (talk) 19:26, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure about "Cambrian fauna", as there are also plenty of "a Cambrian fauna from X" in the literature. Google got me Tardigrades as ‘Stem-Group Arthropods’: The Evidence from the Cambrian Fauna (Budd; 2001), Ediacarian sponge spicule clusters from southwestern Mongolia and the origins of the Cambrian fauna (Brasier, Green & Shields; 1997), (Jablonski & Sepkoski; 1996) and I suppose there are plenty more that use the term in a similar sense to what I think you intend. I think the things that bother me are: the SSFs are Cambrian fauna too, but I don't think you mean to include these; we'd have to explain that (ignoring SSFs) there's a typical Cambrian Fauna that differs from the typical Paleozoic Fauna, and in what ways, which means we'd also to explain "Paleozoic Fauna" by comparison with Mesozoic Fauna; I don't actually know how much post-Burgess Cambrian faunas (plural, small "f") resembled or differed from the BS fauna. --Philcha (talk) 21:59, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

These terminological issues are one reason why I think we'd be better off having a "critters" article solely on the Burgess. Other reasons: Sirius Passet appears not to be fully analysed, but the animals analysed so far appear significantly different; Chengjiang is beginning to look different, e.g the first fish, and I get the impression that it's nowhere near exhausted, so I'd be unsurprised if other fossils appear that are unique to Chengjiang or at least not found at Burgess / Sirius. So I'd still prefer an article on fossils found specifically in the Burgess Shale. --Philcha (talk) 23:42, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I can look it over late May. If you are still writing let me know. --KP Botany (talk) 04:33, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Fossils of the Burgess Shale looks good - we'll have to say a bit about the taphonomy in order to explain a few of the interpretations issues. I may take 2-3 days to start, as I'm having a go at Next (novel) having just read the book, and must resume GA-reviewing Origin of Species now that its main editors have clarifed what they want out of the review (apart from a "pass" of course). Then I'll focus on the Burgess for a while. --Philcha (talk) 19:20, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I've just outlined a poss structure at Talk:Fossils of the Burgess Shale - what do you think? --Philcha (talk) 20:27, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Anthropocentricism watch

I've raised this as a general issue at Misplaced Pages:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#Anthropocentrism. --Philcha (talk) 13:01, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Most recent instances:

• Embryological development - GrRRRRRR! --Philcha (talk) 13:01, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Oxidation of atmosphere

Tim Vickers just informed me about "Great Oxidation Event Dethroned?" (Science, Apr 2009), an editorial which links to the actual article. Since you've warned me before that hypotheses about ocean and atmosphere chemistry have short shelf-lives, I wonder what you think of this. --Philcha (talk) 17:44, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Fossils of the Burgess Shale

Hi, Martin, I think I'm getting the geology to about the right level of detail for this article (Burgess Shale may need more). One important gap at present is the number and locations of beds included. I found an article in a Canadian geology journal, but that's free only to IPs in Canada, so I skipped over it and foolishly didn't note its url. Then I remembered that you now have a Canadian IP! I have a feeling Collins (co-)wrote it. If you could add something about this point, that would be great. --Philcha (talk) 05:56, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Congrats on the Fossil record of fire DYK!

I've added a heading "Comparison with earlier and later faunas" at Fossils of the Burgess Shale, after noticing SCM's commnets (1986) that the BS represents a "pause for breath" between the CEx and the Ordovician radiation; hence the BS fauna are different from the typical Paleozoic marine fauna. Since you got Ediacara biota to FA and have edited about the Ordovician radiation, I think you're better placed than I am to handle this.

PS I hope my restructuring and expansion of your material on the "census" section hasn't offended you. After reading through SCM(1986) and Caron & Jackson (2008) I though it would be misleading not to make clear the limitations of both studies, notably that the (Greater) Phyllopod Bed is not the whole of the Burgess Shale, as is implied by omission in most "popular" presentations. --Philcha (talk) 10:09, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid I'm unhappy about using {{cite jstor}} and {{cite doi}} if someone else (e.g. me) has already entered citation details by other means. For example:

• I've seen {{cite doi}} include in authors' names the footnote numbers that link to correspondence / email addr on the abstract pages.
• What if JSTOR does off-air?
• What if the merged in citation params do not match the style of e.g. {{cite book}} instances in the same article? It's the kind of rubbish that FA reviewers pick on (which they will, because only a handful of en.WP editors besides you and me are in a position to discuss the content). --Philcha (talk) 17:21, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Re "how about I volunteer ...", I never saw that and you didn't write it :-) --Philcha (talk) 19:40, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the info about Sirius Passet taphonomy and about the dating uncertainties of the Cm lagerstaetten, which are much greater than I realised (silly me, given the state of Cm stratigraphy). Since BS preservation took a long holiday in the Late Ediacaran and retired by the end of the Cambrian, it looks like comparison of faunas isn't an option. Are there any other topics you think need to be covered? --Philcha (talk) 15:39, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi, Martin. I've redrafted "Theoretical significance" and posted some comments at Talk:Fossils_of_the_Burgess_Shale#Significance - your turn! When do you think we should get Aleksey to look it over, and whom else should we invite? --Philcha (talk) 20:33, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Fossil record of fire

On April 28, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Fossil record of fire, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Shubinator (talk) 04:33, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Brachiomonas

In the Brachiomonas article, you wrote there are two species currently recognized, but you listed three. Please revise the number of species recognized or indicate which species is no longer recognized. --Zeamays (talk) 15:33, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The E=mc² Barnstar
		For all the science articles you created today, I award this barnstar to you, Smith609. Yes, your scientific contributions are noticed and appreciated! Rosiestep (talk) 21:15, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Why, thank you (-: Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 21:40, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Amoeba (genus)

Nearly two weeks ago, your edit put {{wrongtitle}} in the taxobox. I assume that is not necessary? Johnuniq (talk) 02:48, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

It doesn't have to be in the taxobox, but the template needs to be somewhere to enforce the correct italicisation of the page title. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 14:55, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

GA Sweeps invitation

Hello, I hope you are doing well. I am sending you this message since you are listed as a GA reviewer. I would like to invite you to consider helping with the GA sweeps process. Sweeps helps to ensure that the oldest GAs still meet the criteria, and improve the quality of GAs overall. Unfortunately, last month only two articles were reviewed. This is definitely a low point after our peak at the beginning of the process when 163 articles were reviewed in September 2007. After nearly two years, the running total has just passed the 50% mark. In order to expediate the reviewing, several changes have been made to the process. A new worklist has been created, detailing which articles are left to review. All exempt and previously reviewed articles have already been removed from the list. Instead of reviewing by topic, you can consider picking and choosing whichever articles interest you.

We are always looking for new members to assist with the remaining articles, so if you are interested or know of anybody that can assist, please visit the GA sweeps page. In addition, for every member that reviews 100 articles or has a significant impact on the process, s/he will get an award when they reach that threshold. If only 14 editors achieve this feat starting now, we would be done with Sweeps! Of course, having more people reviewing less articles would be better for all involved, so please consider asking others to help out. Feel free to stop by and only review a few articles, something's better than nothing! Take a look at the list, and see what articles interest you. Let's work to complete Sweeps so that efforts can be fully focused on the backlog at GAN. If you have any questions about the process, reviewing, or need help with a particular article, please contact me or OhanaUnited and we'll be happy to help. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 07:38, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

More Burgess Shale stuff

Hi, Martin, I'm Googling to find more stuff for the Burgess Shale - especially geology, strtatigraphy and all the other stuff I know even less about than the fossils. Some of it appears to be in Canadian journals that are free to Canadian IPs - which I think includes you now! Could you possibly send me copies of:

• The Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale and its relationship to the Stephen Formation in the southern Canadian Rocky Mountains (Terence P. Fletcher and Desmond H. Collins; Can. J. Earth Sci. 35 #4 pp 413–436; 1998; doi:10.1139/cjes-35-4-413)
• The Burgess Shale and associated Cambrian formations west of the Fossil Gully Fault Zone on Mount Stephen, British Columbia (Terence P. Fletcher and Desmond H. Collins; Can. J. Earth Sci. 40(12): 1823–1838 (2003) | doi:10.1139/e03-057 )--Philcha (talk) 00:27, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Burgess Shale and Cambrian critters

Hi, Martin. Thanks for the papers! I think I may have understood just about enough to see how the Burgess Shale relates to other shales of about the same age on the W side of the Rockies, but that's my limit.

If you still want to get 1 or more articles to FA this autumn, we need to work out what we're doing and then do it. Burgess Shale is now squeezed between Fossils of the Burgess Shale and Burgess Shale Formation, which you created earlier this month. I guess you intend Burgess Shale Formation to do the heavy geology. Fossils of the Burgess Shale is now looking nearly complete. It looks to me like Burgess Shale should be a summary of the other 2 articles, plus more on geography, history of discovery and "exploration", conservation status, etc.

If I've got that right, it looks like Burgess Shale Formation needs to be brought up to something like GA level, perhaps just in our judgement rather than waiting for review, so that we know what there is for Burgess Shale to summarise, plus text and refs we can paste and adapt. I'm not sure I can help much with Burgess Shale Formation, except perhaps in checking that a non-geologist can half-understand it. If getting Burgess Shale Formation in decent shape is a prerequisite for enhancing Burgess Shale and getting that promoted, I think we are already short of time.

Getting Fossils of the Burgess Shale to GA and then FA may be a more realistic prospect. I've posted thoughts at Talk:Fossils_of_the_Burgess_Shale#To_do on what I think is left to do in Fossils of the Burgess Shale - plus the lead, of course :-)

What are your thoughts on strategy and timescale? --Philcha (talk) 06:55, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I think Fossils of the Burgess Shale is an easier target. Is the "significant reworking in the pipeline" related to Fossils of the Burgess Shale?

Why do you think GA involves bureacracy? My own experience, on both scientific and other topics, is that I've had much faster response at GA review than at Project reviews. Or do you have specific people in mind to examine the scope and depth of content? Or other specific aspects of the article? --Philcha (talk) 21:35, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Cite web

Your edit of Template:Cite web is being discussed. See this. --droll  03:42, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

And there's a query for you on Template talk:Cite episode as well. Cheers, — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:02, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Note there is still a couple of problems at Cite episode, if you'll take a look. Both in that same section, and the new one below it. Thanks. — Huntster (t • @ • c) 01:50, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Italic titles

Hi, I noticed that you seem to been involved in organising the code for making the titles of species/genus articles italicised. I've started using this on species/genus articles and I personally think that it is a great idea. I posted on the tree of life talk page about this because people don't seem to be aware that you can do it or how to do it. The thread is here. I've noticed that in the previous discussions concerning this there have been concerns about it not being possible to do it to all articles and therefore they are wary to do so. I think that the methods listed on that thread seem to cover all eventualities and it seems that the majority of editors are in favour of it. Someone is concerned however that it will disrupt other people's programs that use WP as a source of data. As I'm not too experienced here I could do with some advice on how to try and work out some form of consensus on this issue. I posted on WP:MOS too a few days ago but no-one there has replied. There have been previous posts at the village pump too but again they didn't get anywhere. Do you have any ideas? Cheers Smartse (talk) 13:28, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Actually (per your note on the WP:Tree of life talk page), correcting the italics on the taxobox won't italicize the title automatically. You'll have to do both! You probably already knew that, but just in case you didn't...  ; ) MeegsC | Talk 15:05, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but unfortunately, it turns out that removing the name from the taxobox causes major problems for some parsers (i.e. causing them to crash, generate garbage, etc.), so we've been asked not to do that by some of the programmers. See higher up in the discussion on the Tree of Life page. MeegsC | Talk 21:46, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Baragwanathia

Can I just draw your attention to the following in an edit you made to the article on Baragwanathia in October 2007, which has just come to my attention: "These extinct terrestrial vascular plants of the ?Late Silurian has stems ..."

This is grammatically incorrect. But also it obscures the predominantly Early Devonian nature of the genus, and it is the genus that the article is about. Two out of the three species are Early Devonian, and the type specimens of the other (type) species are all Early Devonian.

Maybe you would like to tidy it up? MisterCDE (talk) 06:58, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Oh ... and I've just noticed ... "Baragwanathia longifolia" page now redirects to "Baragwanathia". Was that you? Are we now redirecting species pages to genus pages? MisterCDE (talk) 07:04, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the update. As stated in my original article , and now moved to taxobox, there are two named species of Baragwanathia and one in open nomenclature. Rickards should not really be taken as a source for anything other than the (highly controversial) Silurian date for the earliest specimens. The other references in the article, by Hueber and Hao and Gensel, are paleobotanical works that clearly state the Early Devonian age of most specimens (and although I don't know which article by Rickards you are referring to ... the one in Geol Mag circa 2000 perhaps? I am fairly certain he fully accepts that the type specimens of B. longifolia are Pragian .... well into the Early Devonian). MisterCDE (talk) 00:11, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Template talk:Citation/core

• You may wanna look at Template talk:Citation/core Ling.Nut (talk) 17:26, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Contraction (grammar) (and possibly elsewhere)

Hi. Would you like to look again at this edit? The New version had its first edition in 2005. The editorial team is printed after the Preface-- Stevenson A (proj. mgr); Roberts R (chief editorial consultant). The Preface acknowledges the past contribution of Robert Ritter, the compiler of the Oxford Guide to Style . Cheers Bjenks (talk) 04:47, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Template Cite Book

In the talk page there I've suggested a change in how urls are handled - so that titles can include links. Editing a template is beyond my current skill level. Could you please take a look at the suggestion, is it reasonable? Thanks tooold (talk) 15:49, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Burgess shale fossils

Hi, Martin. Are you still interested in getting Fossils of the Burgess Shale to FA? I remeber you said you had ideas for some significant enhancements. I see you've edited Burgess Shale type preservation recently - are you aiming to use that as a "main" article for Fossils of the Burgess Shale? --Philcha (talk) 21:48, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

I hope the real-world business has been rewarding rather than hassle. As for citation-formattng, some people at WP have an infinite capacity for nit-picking. Back in my professional history it was stressful enough working on a project with only 26 sponsors! Ever considered replying, "OK, here you are, it's yours to fix and maintain"?

Re Fossils of the Burgess Shale, are there specific things you'd like me to look into? And if so, will you be around for consultation? --Philcha (talk) 16:44, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Ip user changing alga taxoboxes

Ip user 213.214.136.54 has today made more than 500 edits to algae taxoboxes. Most of the edits have consisted in changing regnum Archaeplastida to Chromalveolata, and divisio Ochrophyta to Heterokontophyta, but there's been some other changes as well. The IP has also changed some of the subpages to Anybot. I have no idea whether the edits are valid or not, our page on Chromalveolata indicates that there is some controversy about the group. Is Anybot doing these edits without being logged in, or what? Could you have a look into it? Thanks, --NorwegianBlue 12:47, 13 June 2009 (UTC).

The bot has made serious errors and even has not followed the taxonomy presented in AlgaeBase. The AlgaeBase does not classify the fixed articles under kingdom Archaeplastida. 213.214.136.54 (talk) 13:32, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

I've not touched Anybot for a couple of months. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 16:13, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Anybot's algae articles are serious problems

I reviewed a large number of algae articles created by Anybot. I see now, though, that the later ones are User/ articles and may not be a problem yet. Every algae article I reviewed by Anybot has had at least 2 major problems in it. This is beyond the scope of a casual editor to fix. I posted at the help desk, because I really do not know what to do about it.

You should go in and pare down the articles to a single sentence, don't use terms like "alga" in articles about a diatom or coccolith, use crustose to distinguish crustose green/brown/or red algae, but don't use "thalloid" for brown alga as a general catch-all term, and define thalloid versus crustose in the brown alga article, if you're going to distinguish in this manner, define and link medulla if you're going to use it, don't use "only taxonomically valid species" without a link to a definition (wikipedia is a lay encyclopedia, just say there is only one known species), change the taxoboxes to reflect wikipedia taxonomies as currently used, remove all statements that appear to indicate the species list is the number of species or number of accepted species in the genus (except for monotypic species), don't create articles from genera where AlgaeBase does not list any accepted species, list endemism when AlgaeBase includes the information, and indicate in all articles when you are dealing with an extinct species. I only counted situations where the resulting article is incorrect, not deficient, as "problems." --Contributions/69.226.103.13 (talk) 20:56, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I assumed, as a graduate student in evolutionary biology, you would have been eager to deal quickly and thoroughly with any scientific errors you made. --69.226.103.13 (talk) 08:10, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

As a graduate student in evolutionary biology, I am occasionally quite busy. This is one of those occasions; things are unlikely to settle down before October. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 13:14, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

In that case, would you object to me blocking Anybot until October? Running bots is a serious responsibility that requires being responsive to problems when they occur. As the Bot Policy states: "Bot operators should ensure that they will be able to meet any inquiries resulting from the bot's operation cordially, promptly, and appropriately. This is a condition of operation of bots in general." If you are unable to participate in discussions concerning your bot (such as this thread at WikiProject Plants), it would be advisable to discontinue using bots to edit Misplaced Pages. Kaldari (talk) 19:06, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

I've blocked it myself; somebody has been running the bot without my knowledge. I was not aware that it had been run since April. (I'm not actually sure how that is possible; I have now disabled all bot scripts. Please alert me if it makes any further edits.) Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 21:07, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

I wish you would change your mind about your level of responsibility in correcting these errors; after all, you've made 100s of edits since a serious error (bacteria classified as eukaryotes) was first pointed out to you.

--69.226.103.13 (talk) 19:19, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

I have offered to make the corrections, but you have refused to elaborate on precisely what corrections are necessary as per my request. Your continued rudeness is doing little to warm me to your cause. Perhaps you could provide me with a suggestion of when I should write the corrective script? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 21:03, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

I started reviewing the articles from the start of anybot. Every article I have reviewed has numerous errors, and there are a large number of different types of errors. For example, an early article on a member of the red algae, a major and important member says, "The thalli take a crustose form; dichotomous branches are formed. The medulla has a filamentous construction."

I am not trying to be rude, but you've created 6000 bad articles about taxa you are not familiar with and don't see any urgency in correcting the issue. I found the articles after getting a paper that had some nonsense in it about a common fossil diatom. I found dozens of web pages with this same error, all copied from wikipedia.

The articles should be pared down to a single sentence with only the division and/or class in the taxobox. All of the articles. You should also write a script that undoes any reversions of text your bot did by creating redirects over existing disambiguation pages. You should also have the script verified; meaning, it should not run until someone has carefully checked and okayed every edit made in a sample run.

It's not my cause, by the way. It's our cause as writers of wikipedia. As science writers on wikipedia we should be writing verifiable articles with reliable content. --69.226.103.13 (talk) 21:45, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

It appears that Anybot has also overwritten some existing articles with redirects to algae genuses. See this diff for example. Kaldari (talk) 21:18, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Is there any way to roll back all of Anybot's edits since the end of April? This would seem to be the best solution to the current predicament. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 21:30, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Categories in template

Please note my edit to Template:Graptolite timeline. If you have any questions, please contact me first on my talk page. Debresser (talk) 23:13, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Italics in titles? (for taxa of genus level and below)

Hi Martin, would you consider giving your opinion at this issue at: . Thanks, Invertzoo (talk) 22:50, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth

I think you attempted to do something useful, in spite of how it turned out. The algae and single-celled photosynthetic marine organisms are poorly represented on wikipedia. The reason for this is, in part, what tripped you up: they are complex organisms with evolutionary relationships that are not fully understood. Maybe bot owners could have articles checked for factual accuracy in test runs in the future. --69.226.103.13 (talk) 03:25, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Just wanted to say thanks for cleaning up Anybot's most egregious errors (where it replaced articles with redirects). The effort is appreciated. Kaldari (talk) 16:10, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

The experts probably leave in frustration. I think a phycologist with knowledge of AlgaeBase could have helped you out early on by giving clear guidelines via higher level taxa. This would have required recoding for the red algae, coccoliths, Chromalveolata, and Excavata, and non-plankton, but I think it would have worked. Forbid the bot to write morphological descriptions for red algae. Copy higher level taxonomies from approved established articles. Not allow any non-alpha characters in names. Possibly you could work with other bot writers to get a general understanding about this. Also, you know, AlgaeBase makes it look simple because they use submitted taxonomies. If you don't know algae well you might miss their lack of internal consistency. That plus wikipedia's own spells disaster with AlgaeBase as a source, a bot writing, and no one checking. C'est la vie. I have a fall date with Napoleon in Moscow to research. --69.226.103.13 (talk) 22:51, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Question

Could your user account be corrupted? Or could it be being accessed by someone else? According to you anybot was not run by you after April. Apparently this was anybot's re-emergence edit. This edit was made between these two edits of yours and . If you weren't running the bot, how was it operating? --69.226.103.13 (talk) 06:13, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

A bot is an automated script, written in a language such as (in my case) PHP. You are probably familiar with PHP scripts - they are used to create the output of many web pages, including Misplaced Pages. In the case of Anybot, the web page output is secondary to the bot activity. Because the script automatically logs in to a WP account and performs edits by loading pages in a similar fashion to a human editor, but without human input. As I had hidden the scripts thoroughly and had not considered the fact that out-of-date scripts could be harmful, I had not taken precautions to stop anybody but me from running them. The most likely explanation is that somebody somehow found the script (although I've no idea how they would track it down as I don't recall advertising its location anywhere) and (without necessarily knowing what it did) ran it. To prevent this happening again, I have found all copies of the script and put in a 'STOP' line at their start, so that it can't be run. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 13:11, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Template Italiclink

template:Italiclink has a bug, see the discussion page for details. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Xtraeme (talk • contribs) 19:30, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Templates

Hello, I've noticed you participate at a lot of template talk pages. With all that experience, do you know a way to fix this by any chance? Thanks, Rambo's Revenge (talk) 00:14, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks you, that seems to have done the trick and you've taught me some more coding for the future :) Much appreciated, Rambo's Revenge (talk) 13:58, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

See here. Just letting you know I undid your most recent edit to the above as it seemed to break things again. Was there something problematic with the previous version? Rambo's Revenge (talk) 17:04, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Palaeontology/Articles by quality statistics

Hi- I'm trying to help you out with the above page. I had to rename about 10 categories (GA, FA, etc.) to get the table to work. However, the assessment totals are still lower than they should be because the assessment row template and the table have to have the "NA-Class" and "NA-importance" added into the templates. I see that you designed those templates, could you fix & update them for us? TYVM!! --Funandtrvl (talk) 01:07, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Done, but isn't it the case that anything which is NA class will also be NA importance? If that's right, then a little re-designing could remove a lot of zeros from the table; let me know if I am correct and I'll go about it. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 02:49, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

I actually have seen Template-Class be of Top-Importance, in this case, NA-Class, Top-importance. BTW, the WPBM template has been updated for quality/importance intersection, see Template:WPBannerMeta/hooks/qualimpintersect. I had to revert your template revision, because there was no closing "includeonly" tag and Category:All palaeontology articles is not needed anymore for the 'talk' pages, since Category:WikiProject Palaeontology articles is populated by the template by the "main cat" parameter. Since the WP template only goes on talk pages, in order to have an "all.. articles" cat, I've seen projects use a "portal" template which can be added to every article page in the mainspace in the "see also" section, with the hidden cat of "all... articles". This would be a suggested solution, and a bot could tag all articles with a "portal" template in cat:paleontology. --Funandtrvl (talk) 16:43, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

It would be better to avoid having to use custom classes for WPBM, is there a way to standardize the ABQS table by using "Unassessed ... articles" instead of "Unknown-Class" which is not the default for WPBM? (There was a discussion about the default "Unassessed ... articles" at Template talk:WPBM, but I can't locate it, right now. Thanks. --Funandtrvl (talk) 16:56, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean. Could you be more precise? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 19:47, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Okay, Template:Assessment totals is updated to reflect the current category page names. However, on the Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Palaeontology/Articles by quality statistics page, in the "Assessed" row for the Category:NA-importance Palaeontology articles column, it is showing "7", but there are "15" articles in that category. Can you figure out why the column total doesn't add up correctly? Thanks much. --Funandtrvl (talk) 05:01, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Algae list bot etc.

As said on the talk page of Hesperian (since this applies to you as well): It is a shame the articles had to get deleted, but of course since they were littered with errors it was the right thing to do. Do you mind if I place that list of Algae (User:Anybot/AfD) over at WP:MISSING? I am not sure if there will be a line of people just waiting to make those articles, but it might get a small number of them get created? This is of course until (hopefully?) you will have enough time for Misplaced Pages and the bot will re ad the articles back again without errors. Cheers!Calaka (talk) 11:13, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

More Query

Do you have any information about Camptostroma we could add to the article? Also, you think my reconstruction of Echmatocrinus is too echinoderm-y looking to use in its article? And I have a bunch of homalozoan reconstructions we can use, at least, we can as soon we get around to starting Homalozoa.--Mr Fink (talk) 16:46, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Anybot - source code?

I was wondering if the source code for Anybot is publically available? I've recently come to a situation where I need to import a number of articles into a local mediawiki installation, and was wondering if I could use something like Anybot to get the job done. Thanks.--Elysianfields44 (talk) 05:04, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Reference formatter

Hello. First, thank you!: your reference formatter have eased the work of a lot of people writing about science. However, I think there is a problem with your tool, because it have not been working properly since several days, regardless of the current Toolserver issue. Regards, --Retama (talk) 18:47, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

When people say Reference formatter, do they mean the Google Scholar Universal Citation Assistant? It is currently redirecting to the standard Google page when I search with it. II | (t - c) 00:01, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I noticed that you'd made a Greasemonkey script instead (User:Smith609/Scholar). Might want to add a link to your userpage about that. It's still giving me that "Searching URL for information..." indefinitely, and I can't condense the citation. Thanks for all your work. II | (t - c) 00:12, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Could you clarify? I'm not quite sure what you mean there. Feel free to add links whereever you feel prudent! Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 01:30, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

When I try to Wikify a citation on Google Scholar, it will have a little loading thing (black dots going around in a circle) to the right of a statement such as "Trying to expand citation info using CrossRef..." or "Searching URL for information...". The black dots never stop going around. The thing never stops trying to load, even though the page is done. Perhaps because of that, if I try to reload the citation (clicking condensed under Misplaced Pages formatting, for example - next to With), it doesn't reload correctly. It just introduces some junk characters. I can send you a screenshot if that would make it easier - I guess you're not getting the same thing. It's very noticeable. II | (t - c) 17:18, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I'll look into that. Might be a couple of days before I get the chance. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 17:26, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Also, I hadn't noticed that you'd added the WP:SCHOLAR link to your userpage. So that's not an issue. II | (t - c) 17:19, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Link template and internal URLs

Have you been following Template talk:Link #Internal URLs? Your wisdom and input there would be appreciated. Eubulides (talk) 16:59, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Microformats

Great work in the COinS templates. On your return, you may be interested in microformats on Wikipeida, too. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 22:27, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Citation bot and special characters

Citation bot could not format the article Ševčenko's law due to the special characters involved; it said it did not exist. Just FYI. Awickert (talk) 18:54, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Deletion of File:Cooksonia fossil.JPG

Hi Smith609! You nominated the image for deletion. Would you please tell us here commons:Commons:Deletion requests/File:Cooksonia fossil.JPG if you took the image? Thank you :-) --MGA73 (talk) 20:59, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Cite Book in bibliographies

Could I ask you to please take a look at Use of 'Cite Book' in bibliographies; to see if you can make that possible, or suggest an alternative? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 22:32, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I think the solution is to create a new parameter called 'hidden-author' which creates a 'blank' author field, and no metadata. I'll do this when I return from field work, if no-one else does first. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 23:25, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. I specifically wanted to be able to suppress display of the author's name, but still have it emitted in COinS. No rush - this is already a year or two old! Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 23:32, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

May I remind you of this? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 20:19, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh yes! I had forgotten. I'll try to make a start later this week... Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 20:57, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Another reminder, as requested. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 20:52, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh, sorry I didn't tell you - I've done this; see Template:Cite_book/doc#Description: parameter 'author-mask'. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 13:29, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. I am grateful, but I used it here and it still doesn't address the issue of the placement of the date referred to in Use of 'Cite Book' in bibliographies; and I can't see many editors liking the prefixing of list items such as that with an em-dash. I think we need the format used in the subsequent lines in Lister-Kaye's page, but with COinS. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 20:30, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

History of the Burgess Shale

Satirical dog! "love writing ledes" indeed :-) On the plus side, welcome back! How was the conference?

I've written a first-draft lead, but I suggest you rethink the scope of the article or even whether it should be a standalone article. I think we need another "task force" approach to work out the structure and division of labour in articles relating to the Burgess Shale. Fossils of the Burgess Shale very probably deserves to be a separate article, as it's the "payload" for the Burgess Shale and concentrates almost exclusively on the paleontology. For the rest of the package, I suggest you consider:

• How it got its name! Every where I see Mt. Stephen and others, Kicking Horse Pass, etc. but where did "Burgess" come from?
• Chronology of discovery. The sources used at Fossils of the Burgess Shale and those used at History of the Burgess Shale don't appear to match up.
• Where should we emphasise the traditonal "Burgess Shale" and where the Burgess Shale Formation, which is rather larger?
• How to we get some good sources and expertise on the geology? The papers you sent me left me convinced that someone (? anyone) is better qualified than me to write about the geology, although I might be useful in making the result intelligible to non-specialists.

Finally, do you stil have ambitions to get Fossils of the Burgess Shale to FA?

Apart from that, take it easy, I can see you've had a busy time :-) --Philcha (talk) 07:07, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Bryozoa

Hi, Martin. Can you spare the time to look at Bryozoa, especially the phylogeny section. The situation presented by the sources looks as big a mess as at Halwaxiid - another fine mess I've got myself into!

Specifically: is the phylogeny section an intelligible summary of the complications; if that content is OK, what would you think of renaming Bryozoa to Entoprocta and making Bryozoa a "disambiguation article", explaining the difficulties about memebership and relationships of "Bryozoa"? --Philcha (talk) 12:06, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi, Martin, thanks for the prompt reply. Yes, I've been working hard, and the critters are making my brain hurt. I'm not putting too much trust in any one analysis, as my impression is that there's uncertainty at 2 levels of the tree above Ectoprocta - whether Ectoprocta are closest to Entoprocta or to Brachiopoda and Phoronida, and whether Brachiopoda and Phoronida are closer to Annelida & Mollusca or to deuterostomes. My impression is that general zoologsts and phylogenists (? neologism) generally support the Lophphorata + Lophotrochozoa structure, but the reservations of McKinney (a specialist in ectoprocts) and Nielsen (who attends and contributes to conferences on the critters) carry some weight. So I've tried to make the article agnostic - does it come across that way?

Re the article names, let me know that you think of this:

• The contents of "Bryozoa" have fluctuated ever since the discovery of the Entoprocta in the mid-19th cent, and the debate continues. So "Bryozoa" is ambiguous.
• Nevertheless "Bryozoa" has been synonymous with "Ectoprocta" in most literature since 1869, both neo and paleo, including 101-level textbooks. Thus readers will generally be more familiar with "Bryozoa" than with "Ectoprocta" (or "Entoprocta", which seems to have received even less study). The scope for confusing readers is huge.
• Since the debate continues, the safest course is to use the unambiguous although confusingly similar "Ectoprocta" and "Entoprocta" for the main articles.
• Simply redirecting Bryozoa to Ectoprocta would be misleading.
• Hence I'd make Bryozoa a summary of the history of the taxonomic and phylogenetic debates, largely as a "(mental) heath warning" for readers.
• Bryozoa can then be modified in either direction if the debate is actually resolved. --Philcha (talk) 21:55, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

DYK review

Hello! Your submission of History of the Burgess Shale at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and there still are some issues that may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! JN466 23:24, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Re: Template:Completed article

Hi there, just wondering if this template is still needed, as Template:Article pretty much does the same thing. -- œ 03:12, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Template:Article is not an adequate replacement. See ]. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 04:42, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Template glitch

The addition of the AuthorMask parameter seems to have entirely broken the author display in {{Cite book}} and {{Cite journal}} (see all the example output on both template pages). Appreciate if you could take another look. Maralia (talk) 02:47, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. For the time being, I've undone your edits so the templates work correctly. wadester16 03:12, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm no expert at programming templates, but it looks like this may be fixed by adding a pipe after the second instance of author-mask. Thus, the line would look like: |AuthorMask = {{{author-mask|{{{authormask|}}}}}} Zach425 /contribs 03:21, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Whoops. Many apologies. I've installed your fix, and it seems to be working. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 15:36, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response and action. wadester16 16:48, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

DYK for History of the Burgess Shale

On August 19, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article History of the Burgess Shale, which you created or substantially expanded. You are welcome to check how many hits your article got while on the front page (here's how) and add it to DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 10:01, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Skolithos

Why do you not trust the Russian scientists???

Sören Jensen, Mary L. Droser and James G. Gehling. (2006). "A Critical Look at the Ediacaran Trace Fossil Record". In: S. Xiao and A.J. Kaufman (eds.), Neoproterozoic Geobiology and Paleobiology, 115–157: "The most convincing Ediacaran Skolithos so far described is S. declinatus from the White Sea Area (Fedonkin, 1985)."

Taphonomy of the Skolithos declinatus http://vendian.net76.net/skolithos_taphonomy.jpg Aleksey (Alnagov (talk) 11:30, 29 August 2009 (UTC))

I apologise if I was wrong. Aleksey (Alnagov (talk) 09:01, 30 August 2009 (UTC))

Template:Cite conference

I've requested at Cite conference that the code be updated. I'm dropping you this note because you were the last to edit the template and might be interested in it. I used the {{editprotected}} template on the talk page. If you have time please take a look. Thanks. –droll  20:46, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks especially for catching my omission of the includeonly close tag. –droll  23:14, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Request

I'd like to request your expertise and possibly an edit. I proposed another improvement on Template_talk:Citation_error#Request. But this time I am not completely sure this will work. Could you have a good look, please. I would, actually, just try it out. That would take just a few minutes. But I am no admin... Debresser (talk) 18:11, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

The question is solved there and the edit implemented. Debresser (talk) 18:24, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Templates for deletion nomination of Template:12C

Template:12C has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. Locos epraix ~ Beastepraix 17:04, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Issues with Citation bot

It appears to me that you are taking a long time to respond to Citation bot bugs, if and when you do reply, and that there may be questions about whether or not an addition or change is approved. I have asked BAG members to look into this. I would like all issues dealt with before the bot continues running. I think this bot is very useful, but I think it would be more useful if you scaled back, fixed everything, then ran it.

In particular I have asked that other experienced bot operators go to Citation bot's bug page and see what they can contribute to fixing issues with the bot. Outside of this, clearing up approvals for specific tasks when questions arise would be helpful, in my opinion. --69.225.12.99 (talk) 22:20, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

One issue that is bugging me is that the Citation bot has been running for several days now, with no apparent oversight, and has added a lot of ISSNs and months that many editors oppose. Who's going to undo all this mess? Surely we shouldn't have to clean it up all by hand. Eubulides (talk) 03:33, 12 September 2009 (UTC)