Pvirgatum

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Again, welcome!  - Simplelasagna (talk) 20:25, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Panicum virgatum

Thank you for your interest in improving the Panicum virgatum article. Your username suggests you have a particular interest in this topic. Please be aware that Wikipedia is an encylopedia with detailed policies and guidelines to govern everything we do, but only a tiny fraction (perhaps 100,000) of our 48,348,366 registered users (and a comparable number of unregistered users) have read very far into the friendly manuals yet. Since a person cannot easily tell by merely looking at an article whether it complies with Wikipedia's rules, one should always try to look up the applicable documented rules rather than merely following the example set by previous editors of an article. I removed the Seed suppliers section, because:

• It is not a standard section in WP:LAYOUT.
• It appears to violate Wikipedia:Lists, which says a list in Wikipedia should point to entities for which Wikipedia has articles, or might eventually have them. Few or none of the seed vendors appear to be notable enough to be subjects of their own articles. They might be, but there is no hint that they are going to be. Lists should not link to external sites, but to Wikipedia articles.
• It violates WP:EL. Wikipedia is not a linkfarm, nor a platform for advertising. See Wikipedia:Spam event horizon for a summary of the undesirable process by which inexperienced but often well-meaning Wikipedia editors tend to spam up an article.
• Raw external links are less desirable than footnote citations.
• The list did not even follow list format.
• Wikipedia is not a suitable venue for writing a how-to guide for growing switchgrass. If someone wants to grow switchgrass, they will need to look elsewhere. Wikibooks might possibly be a suitable venue for writing a grower's guide to switchgrass, and we could link to it from the Panicum virgatum article with the {{Wikibooks}} template. However, Wikibooks also gets squirrelly about how-to guides, I think. Personally I have some discomfort with Wikipedia's rejection of procedural knowledge; I think that is somewhat elitist. Not everyone is a gentleman scholar who reads for mere intellectual amusement - many people also have to work for a living, and they need information too. However, that's a larger issue than I can resolve. Other wikis specialize in procedural knowledge, for example wikiHow.
• The list would almost certainly not survive a featured article review.

For your convenience, I userfied the Seed suppliers section at User:Pvirgatum/Sandbox. For a general introduction to Wikipedia, please read Wikipedia: The Missing Manual. It will help you avoid many conflicts with Wikipedia editors whose behavior might otherwise seem mysterious. --Teratornis (talk) 23:55, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

A how-to wiki specifically about growing plants

See:

• Wikipedia:Help desk#user talk pages - can I tell them about another wiki? (permanent link)

I mentioned your work to the site owner: User talk:RaffiKojian#Plants wiki. --Teratornis (talk) 00:19, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

More details are here:

• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants#Plant and Garden wiki (non-WP)

--Teratornis (talk) 00:40, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Appropedia

You may be interested in Appropedia, which accepts how-to information about sustainable development topics including biofuels. --Teratornis (talk) 21:48, 9 July 2009 (UTC)