Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by OnorioCatenacci (talk | contribs) at 20:14, 31 May 2008 (→Archiving of discussion: Added note informing Sting about setting up of archiving bot.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Scope

Dose the project include wild pigeons, pigeon post, or anything to do with doves? Perhaps the scope should be relevant to both Doves and Pigeons, in which case the taskforce would need a different name. Snowman (talk) 10:38, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Just my opinions of course.

• Wild pigeons: no--there are articles for the various species of wild pigeons and this would definitely fall outside of the scope of domesticated pigeons. Domesticated pigeons in this context means birds derived from C. livia.If you're talking about feral pigeons then yes, I would say that that would fall within this scope but I think there's already a GA article covering that topic.

• Just because there is already a page, does not necessarily mean that it is not within the scope. I thought that wild pigeons (the nearest species only) might be included, because of the genetic similarities and origins of domesticated pigeons, which did not spring-up out of the blue. Snowman (talk) 12:18, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

• This is my point Snowmanradio; there is only one ancestral bird for all domesticated pigeons C. Livia. C. Livia is the nearest species and there's already a GA article on that subject. Certainly there are hundreds of other species of pigeons and doves but domesticated pigeons only refers to birds that all trace back to a common C. Livia ancestor. Or maybe I'm still misunderstanding you?--Onorio (talk) 21:12, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

• Pigeon post: yes, there would be an article on this I suppose.

• Also "Dickin Medal", "War time pigeon post". Snowman (talk) 12:18, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

• Both excellent suggestions. Cher Ami would also seem to fall within this purview as would GI Joe.--Onorio (talk) 21:12, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

• Doves: no--doves are related but different birds. This would be similar to saying a Parrot task force should include budgies and parakeets because they're related birds. They're all psittacines but they are different birds. I guess I would just see the scope as being sufficiently broad when you just consider domesticated pigeons. There are hundreds of breeds of domesticated pigeons and therefore a need for hundreds of articles just to cover the breeds alone--all that without discussing domesticated doves.

Excellent observation and excellent question, Snowmanradio.--Onorio (talk) 11:20, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

• Actually, I have been thinking that there should be a "Parrot" task force to include all parrots, big and small, over 300 species. Snowman (talk) 12:18, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

• Not be flippant but what's stopping you from simply creating such a task force? I mean, create it and if you're the only one interested in it then so be it. But I bet you'd find others that are interested in working on it too. I wanted to help with the Cockatiel article but it seems to me that it's mostly in need of citations and I have no reference books for those birds.--Onorio (talk) 21:12, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

The topic is too small probably. I have tested the support for WP:Aviculture and there is not quite enough support yet. Back to WP:Pigeons; there are several pigeon pages in Category:Aviculture and Category:Domestic pigeons. I had anticipated that WP:Pigeons would become part of WP:Aviculture, and a number of pigeon editors had expressed an interest in WP:Aviculture. Snowman (talk) 22:39, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Is there any reason it couldn't be when you create WP:Aviculture? I don't know if there's anything stopping it from moving under that umbrella if we all feel it's appropriate. I have to say Sting made a good point to me about the word aviculture tending to refer to hookbills and cage birds rather than all domesticated birds. Maybe aviculture should have a broader definition but it doesn't seem to right now. And that might be a consideration if an Aviculture WikiProject were to get started. For right now, I think it's better to have a Domesticated Pigeons task force and maybe have it be slightly less than optimal than wait for a perfect Aviculture/Domesticated Pigeons WikiProject hierarchy that may never come to pass. Make a small, imperfect start. --Onorio (talk) 23:13, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Project banner

Should there be a project banner to put on the talk pages? Snowman (talk) 09:44, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

We can get by with the {{BirdTalk}} template for now. I personally don't think we are big enough to become a separate wikiproject yet? When we eventually become a wikiproject then yes a banner would be good. No need to add articles to a task force category as that is better utilized as a user cat. Existing pigeon cats are suitable for our purposes.--Sting Buzz Me... 10:14, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Breed Standards

Sting and I already discussed this but just to put it here where it really belongs--when creating articles about the various breeds of domesticated pigeons, do not include breed standards. We decided this for three reasons:

1. The material in question is under copyright
2. Breed standards can vary between pigeon organizations
3. This is an encyclopedia and breed standards don't really have a proper place here.

Sting, feel free to correct me if I'm remembering wrong. As I said, I just thought this discussion belongs here rather than on our user talk pages.

Also, Sting, do you think this should be part of the user instructions on the task force page? --Onorio (talk) 09:37, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

No. Just edit out any standards from pigeon breed articles. A lot of the stubs were started off with blank standards that are invisible unless in edit mode. I've been deleting them as I come across them again.--Sting Buzz Me... 11:14, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I should add that a summary of a breed standard would be ok if an editor thinks an article requires it. Basically like any other article on Misplaced Pages it is consensus that decides what stays and goes. Disputed articles can wind up at AfD and there usually consensus decides the articles fate. Our biggest problem with our breed articles is the likelihood of editors (non-pigeon fans) deciding the subject is not notable enough for an encyclopedic article. I've been trying to reference breed articles as I get around to it. News reports of any big pigeon shows are important references for us. If you ever spot any news items on pigeons or pigeon exhibiting etc. Try and work them into an article or two.--Sting Buzz Me... 11:42, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Focus of task force

Do you all (Sting and Abbott) think it would be appropriate to focus our efforts on getting one article that falls within the scope of this project worked up to at least GA standards? I'm thinking either Pigeon keeping or Pigeon racing. I agree with Sting's prior assessment that Pigeon keeping needs work before we should even submit it for peer review. I think the section on commercial pigeon keeping is the area most in need of work; once that's a bit tighter I think it would be ok to submit the article for peer review--no doubt we'll get more things to work on out of the peer review but until that one section is a bit tighter I wouldn't even consider submitting the article for peer review. I would say we could get rid of it altogether but I really do think it's important that we at least make mention of the fact that pigeon keeping is not just a hobby pursuit.

I confess I'm a bit less familiar with Pigeon racing even though I tried to punch up the introductory paragraphs a bit. I'll try to take a look again at this article and see which portions of it need work and also look at the comments from the prior review to see what we can do from there. So do you all think we should focus on one of these two articles to punch them up for GA review or another article altogether or just go on about working whatever we care to work on? --Onorio (talk) 01:50, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not so sure about some of the wording you have used in the Pigeon racing article. Where you have, "Pigeon racing is a sport involving the release of specially trained racing pigeons, which then return to their homes over a carefully measured distance. The time it takes the animal to cover the specified distance is measured and the animals' rate of travel is calculated and compared with all of the other pigeons in the race to determine which animal returned at the highest rate of speed." I think this would look/read better as a shortened version as say, "Pigeon racing is a sport involving the release of trained racing pigeons, which return to their homes over a measured distance. The time it takes the animal to cover the distance is measured and the animals' rate of travel is compared with the other pigeons in the race to determine which animal returned the fastest." That way the lead stays as a summary and more can be covered later in the article under appropriate sections. I've moved a paragraph up as it follows on better with the mention of velocity. The (now) third paragragh could be trimmed up a lot also in my opinion.--Sting Buzz Me... 02:18, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Feel free to shorten it Sting. I think you already did shorten it up but I can't remember right now. I mean, sincerely, if I can improve something by simplifying it I usually go ahead and edit and if I've got something wrong, someone else can edit it right later on. How many times have you caught WP:MOS errors in things I've edited? I appreciate having someone with such a strong knowledge of WP conventions looking over my shoulder to make sure I don't go astray.

The edits in the (now) third paragraph could probably stand some work--I agree. Basically I was correcting the old paragraph which was incorrect. Pigeon racing was not invented in Belgium in the 19th century. Modern pigeon racing, with the clock and other paraphernalia was invented in Belgium in the 19th century. So, yes, if you can think of a better way to word that third paragraph, help yourself. I just knew that what was there before was incorrect.--Onorio (talk) 09:25, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Archiving of discussion

How does anyone feel about archiving conversation on this talk page older than say 1 month? Just curious what the feeling would be. It's not as if we've got a mountain of discussion here so there's no rush to decide but I thought I'd start a discussion of this issue.--Onorio (talk) 17:22, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes. Archiving this talk page is a good idea. Do you want to set up a bot to do it?--Sting Buzz Me... 09:53, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

This link might help User:MiszaBot/Archive HowTo. Cheers,--Sting Buzz Me... 10:58, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Sting. I'm a little behind in my replies. I'll take a look at that link you provided and get the archiving going.--Onorio (talk) 23:40, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi Sting. As I said before so far it looks like you and me are the task force. Since we both agreed to archiving, I set up the archiving bot to archive this page every 2 months. I don't anticipate such high volumes of traffic that we'll need it archived more often but adjust it if you feel it's appropriate. You have a lot more experience with WP than I do.--Onorio (talk) 20:14, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Pigeon equivalent of taxoboxes

I was thinking that it might be worth our while to work on creating template infoboxes akin to the taxoboxes for certain common pieces of information for the various breed articles. For instance a nicely formatted box something like this maybe:

Obviously this would be done as a template and dressed up a bit but I hope my point is apparent. And, of course, the content of the box would likely be more than just area of origin and breed group.

What's everyone's opinion?--Onorio (talk) 17:22, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

I've been wondering about info boxes for the breed articles? Perhaps something along similar lines to the dog breed articles. Example here Koolie. The infobox template is at Template:Infobox which gives:

Test Infobox

Caption for example.png
Header defined alone
Data defined alone
All three defined (header)
Label and data defined (label)	Label and data defined (data)
Below text
v t e

{{Infobox |name = Infobox/doc |title = Test Infobox |image = ] |caption = Caption for example.png |headerstyle = background:#ccf; |labelstyle = background:#ddf; |header1 = Header defined alone |label1 = |data1 = |header2 = |label2 = Label defined alone |data2 = |header3 = |label3 = |data3 = Data defined alone |header4 = All three defined (header) |label4 = All three defined (label) |data4 = All three defined (data) |header5 = |label5 = Label and data defined (label) |data5 = Label and data defined (data) |belowstyle = background:#ddf; |below = Below text }} So could adapt what we need from that template.--Sting Buzz Me... 10:05, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Again, sorry--a bit behind in my replies. I think that infobox you pointed at (the Koolie infobox) would be a great place to start. Are there any sort of color guidelines or layout guidelines that the parent Birds Wikiproject uses for taxoboxes? I'm assuming that we should follow their general color scheme or formatting scheme (fonts etc.) unless there's a strong reason not to.--Onorio (talk) 23:44, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure about colour guidelines? I think the bird "taxobox" won't suit individual pigeon breeds? I think Template:Infobox is the better one to use. Probably not much use putting an info box on a stub article in any case. The info box takes up too much of the article space on a stub sized article. I've seen pages get created with just an infobox! They look terrible and are put up for AfD real quick. Probably better to only use an infobox on an article once it gets expanded. I plan to start expanding some articles eventually, but it wont happen overnight. If you want to try putting an infobox on a breed article then do so. I'll see how it looks once you're done.--Sting Buzz Me... 03:28, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

I've just been searching through the breed articles and I found one that has an infobox of sorts. It's at German Colored Tail Owl. Pretty untidy looking code though. But it could give us some ideas?--Sting Buzz Me... 03:44, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

I think you're right. I think this would be a good starting point. I'll look at the code more closely when I can.--Onorio (talk) 09:37, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

New breed articles

I took some pictures at a recent show so I'm in the process of uploading to commons and then creating article stubs. Anyone please feel free to expand these articles as they are only going to be pretty basic clones at first. New ones are Ice Pigeon and King (pigeon). Also added a picture to the Birmingham Roller article.--Sting Buzz Me... 00:59, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Task force name

To be consistent with other task forces and the name of the Misplaced Pages article (Domestic Pigeon) and the Misplaced Pages category (Category:Domestic pigeons), this task force should be moved to Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Birds/Domestic Pigeon task force. GregManninLB (talk) 01:43, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

I think you mean Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Birds/Domesticated pigeon task force? I agree with the move. Any objections?--Sting Buzz Me... 11:09, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

I guess I should have registered my objection sooner. I wish I would have had time to comment on this. Looks as if I'm too late.

1. Actually as far as I'm concerned the article and the category should have been renamed--not the task force. "Domestic" can mean an animal native to a certain area--while "domesticated" has no such secondary meaning. Hence a passenger pigeon was a pigeon that was domestic to North America but it was never a domesticated pigeon. A Bruce's Green-Pigeon is a pigeon that is domestic to certain parts of Africa but as far as I know is not domesticated. I trust that the distinction is apparent.

The article and the category are named correctly. You can take that from someone with a whole lot more experience on the subject than you. Oh, and I think the word you're looking for is endemic.--Sting Buzz Me... 12:42, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

1. Maybe you could wait a little longer for consensus on an issue of this sort next time Sting? Especially considering that the suggestion came from someone not even affiliated with the task force. Maybe this change is easily reverted but it doesn't look like it. As far as I know it's hardly a minor edit and since we all "own" this task force, I would have rather waited for at least one opinion from someone else in the task force before you made the change. I think "be bold in editing" partially implies that the changes that are made are easily reverted and when they're not easily reverted one is a little less bold. --Onorio (talk) 12:28, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

No need to wait for consensus. The edit is easily, yes easily reverted. But you need to do it as a "move" so history is preserved. I'll only revert back again as the renaming was necessary because you got it wrong in the first place. Don't be worrying about people outside this task force having an input. If I want I can leave this task force (or put it up at AfD) and not bother with running anything by you or anyone else. No one needs to be a member of this task force before working on pigeon articles. This is Misplaced Pages. The encyclopedia that "anyone" can edit.--Sting Buzz Me... 12:42, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I did concede that the edit could be easily reversed. The phrase "Maybe this change is easily reverted" may have been somewhat ambiguous, I grant, but I thought it indicated that I understood the change could be easily undone. My objection was the fact that you took it upon yourself to make the change without really waiting for any consensus to build on the subject. That was my objection in a nutshell. And thinking about it a bit more, I suppose I didn't really have much cause to object since the "taskforce" seems to be basically you and me. So I am sorry that I let my mouth run before I properly thought things through and I hope you'll accept my apology for my nasty comments.--Onorio (talk) 22:16, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Apology accepted, but I didn't really take your comments as "nasty". I guess I was just a little angry because I felt that user GregManninLB (who has over 14,000 edits) had a good suggestion. When experienced editors like that give advice it is wise to pay attention. Anyhow, I probably reacted a bit negatively, so please accept my apology also.--Sting Buzz Me... 22:33, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh and I didn't mark the move as a "minor" edit.--Sting Buzz Me... 13:01, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh hang on I get you. Still need only small letter "p" though. So Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Birds/Domestic pigeon task force look any better?--Sting Buzz Me... 11:11, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

I've been bold. Just checking redirects.--Sting Buzz Me... 11:30, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

New breed articles

I've created a few more article stubs. Need expansion but it gives us a start. Nun (pigeon), Carneau, Ice Pigeon, English short faced tumbler, English long face tumbler, Magpie (pigeon), Turbit, Helmet (pigeon), American Giant Runt, Brunner Pouter I think that's it? I'll do more tomorrow.--Sting Buzz Me... 13:00, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Do you think it would make sense in that infobox we're developing to list alternate names for breeds? I've never heard a "Runt" referred to as an "American Giant Runt" before. Not that either name is necessarily correct or incorrect; I think it might be helpful to note that there are other names for breeds. What do you think?--Onorio (talk) 11:40, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, alternative names can be listed also. The American Giant Runt standard is in the Aussie standards book. It says that, "the Giant Runt was the result of USA breeders seeking a shorter typier bird." I took a picture of one at our recent show, and that is the picture used on the breed article. They are shown as American Giant Runts here and we also have "Roman Runts" but I neglected to get a picture of one of those. Maybe at the National in a couple of months time? Perhaps they only show them over there as "Giant Runts"? The ones here I believe have imported bloodlines, but I'd have to check on that to make sure. It would stand to reason that other areas use different names. The same as different places use alternative names for colors.--Sting Buzz Me... 12:22, 30 May 2008 (UTC)