Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dinosaurs/Archive 26

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Automatedly adding fossil taxa described in year categories

I was considering making a bot request to automatically add Category: Fossil taxa described in 2014 (or whatever year) to all of our relevant articles based on the years listed under the genus authority heading of the article infoboxes. Do you support this initiative? Abyssal (talk) 14:16, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Sounds nice. FunkMonk (talk) 14:53, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Portal:Paleozoic renominated for featured portal status

Today I renominated the Paleozoic Portal for featured portal status. The last nomination failed because no one, apparently, could be arsed to comment on it. :( Your comments and criticism are welcome at the new nomination page. Abyssal (talk) 03:07, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Leaflet For Wikiproject Dinosaurs At Wikimania 2014

Hi all,

My name is Adi Khajuria and I am helping out with Wikimania 2014 in London.

One of our initiatives is to create leaflets to increase the discoverability of various wikimedia projects, and showcase the breadth of activity within wikimedia. Any kind of project can have a physical paper leaflet designed - for free - as a tool to help recruit new contributors. These leaflets will be printed at Wikimania 2014, and the designs can be re-used in the future at other events and locations.

This is particularly aimed at highlighting less discoverable but successful projects, e.g:

• Active Wikiprojects: Wikiproject Medicine, WikiProject Video Games, Wikiproject Film

• Tech projects/Tools, which may be looking for either users or developers.

• Less known major projects: Wikinews, Wikidata, Wikivoyage, etc.

• Wiki Loves Parliaments, Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves ____

• Wikimedia thematic organisations, Wikiwomen’s Collaborative, The Signpost

For more information or to sign up for one for your project, go to: Project leaflets Adikhajuria (talk) 16:22, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

New photos from Patagonian dinosaurs

Hi, I want to share here this photos that have been taken for a user from the es:Wiki, Gastón Cuello, who lives in Argentina. These are from the Egidio Feruglio Museum in Trelew, and includes photos from the recently discovered giant titanosaur from Patagonia. So, here is the images of Tyrannotitan:

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  Teeth of Tyrannotitan found in the same site that the unnamed giant titanosaur

And the titanosaur fossils:

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I hope that some of these will be useful. --Rextron (talk) 20:50, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Nice, I'll add some of it! He has other interesting images too, many of them uncategorised, not sure what this is: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Museo_Egidio_Feruglio_010.JPG FunkMonk (talk) 20:54, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

I added the teeth of Tyrannotitan, these are from the same site of the titanosaur. I'll ask him about the identity of this sauropod.--Rextron (talk) 21:18, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

The mounted skeleton of the sauropod is Epachthosaurus.--Rextron (talk) 23:18, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

We should categorize dinosaur articles by stratigraphic source

Our current categorization scheme for articles on dinosaur genera (and prehistoric animals generally) is difficult to use and profoundly misleading. Apart from taxonomic categories, we tend to categorize taxa by their continental landmass of origin and their age to the period level. However, this categorization scheme lumps taxa with little in common together in overpopulated categories that are hard to navigate and serve little purpose. Categorizing dinosaurs by continent (example) is not especially useful because the dinosaurs in question may have lived hundreds of miles from each other and be separated by millions of years in time. Also, there are so many taxa in these categories that no one can be expected to read them all, so from a reader's perspective the category is useless. Categorizing taxa by time period (example) has similar problems. Since a period is tens of millions of years long, most of the animals that lived during a given period would not be contemporaries. This makes categorizing them together misleading as many readers probably don't understand the full scale of a geologic period and will come away thinking they lived side-by-side.

I think we can capture the benefits and avoid the pitfalls of the broad geographic and chronological categories by categorizing taxa by the formations in which they are found (eg creating categories like "Morrison Formation", "Yixian Formation", etc). This system would group chronologically contemporary or nearly contemporary taxa with taxa of similar geographic ranges in categories that are manageable in size for the reader. I'm okay with us keeping the geographic and chronological categories in addition to stratigraphic categories, but if we do so I really think they need to be much more specific, like categorizing taxa by country or age instead of continent and period. Abyssal (talk) 18:39, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Sounds good, at least initially as an additional category. Though this would be slightly redundant with "Paleobiota of..." articles. Dinoguy2 (talk) 11:22, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Awesome book!

Yesterday, I got Paleoart of Julius Csotonyi and this book is AWESOME!!:) There is not much text in this baby, but the pictures are just stellar!! Julius Csotonyi is one of the world greatest paleoartist, whose skill is rivalled by very few. We have some of his images on wikipedia, namely his Linhenykus and Dinosaur Park Formation fauna. If anyone who does not own this would like to see his glory, I can email them some scans of the images, once I get to scanning them. Some articles, such as Guanlong, Spinops, Ornithomimus and Utahraptor, are given an overview in it, and are illustrated amazingly. A recommendation to all dinosaur lovers who just love to see them restored to their fullest, Paleoart of Julius Csotonyi is just irreplaceable. IJReid (talk) 04:18, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

• "Dinosaur Art" was pretty good. I kind of prefer Raul Martin, I'm not too fond of the photoshopped plant photographs and that stuff... FunkMonk (talk) 19:21, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Commons template for inaccurate models

I see on commons we have a large number of the inaccurate restorations category filled up by models. I was wondering if someone with more template experience than I could create a new template, or just a new parameter for inaccurate models, that categorizes them in a category for inaccurate models. The new category would be images that are almost impossible to correct, unless the inaccuracies can be cropped out. This would greatly clear up the inaccurate restorations cat, which would make it quicker and easier to find and correct errors in illustrations. IJReid (talk) 23:37, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

I don't think any of the regulars can do it, try to ask the creator of the template. FunkMonk (talk) 23:42, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Just a question: Inaccurate according to whom? Do restorations change often over time? What about, hypothetically, species for which there is modern debate about "accurate restorations" The template in question: Template:Inaccurate paleoart, would be improved if there was a requirement to justify the claim of inaccuracy (e.g. "Inaccurate as per Smith, 2005, Journal of Paleontology". Otherwise, this could be construed as original research (e.g. some wikipedian thinks this is inaccurate but doesn't explain why.) It might be better just to clearly specify the date the restoration was created or published, and include relevant alternate restorations in any articles (e.g. "restoration1 from 1905." "Restoration 2 from 2005"). --Animalparty-- (talk) 00:06, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

There is already a parameter for outdated/historical restorations.[1] As for citations, yes, some of them already have them, would be nice if they all did. But in some cases with newer restorations, with for example unfeathered maniraptorans or pronated hands, there is really no discussion at this point. And some Commons images are also just so badly drawn as to be unusable. FunkMonk (talk) 00:11, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

I have requested to User:Calliopejen1, the creator, that both a references and a model parameter be added to the template, so we'll see what happens. IJReid (talk) 00:30, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

References can already be cited with links or just text referneces[2], not sure what parameter you would add. For a list of dinosaurs restoration guidelines with sources, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Dinosaurs/Image_review/To_Do_List#Guidelines_for_dinosaur_restorations FunkMonk (talk) 00:58, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

I think that the "reason=" parameter is fine as it is -- references can be added within that parameter. I guess I'm not sure what you mean by a "model" category -- do you mean 3D models? Calliopejen1 (talk) 01:54, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Calliopejen1 By that I mean a category that contains inaccurate dinosaur models, such as images in commons:Category:Dinosaur models, so yes, 3D models. IJReid (talk) 01:59, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Auca Mahuevo and Saltasaurus

I put here this message that I left in the talk page of Saltasaurus:

As far I know, the fossils from Saltasaurus coming from the Allen Formation, that is younger compared with the Anacleto Formation, where is located the Auca Mahuevo site. So, why are related here in the article? really exists remains that match with Saltasaurus in Auca Mahuevo?--Rextron (talk) 03:27, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Some images

I've noted that this user has uploaded some interesting dinosaur images in Commons, but I'm afraid that they have copyright... --Rextron (talk) 15:50, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Considering the uploader's talk page, they were likely lifted from [3] and [4], unfortunately. I'll nominate all three for deletion. jonkerz ♠talk 15:58, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, stuff like that is regularly updated, I have a suspicion that it is done by some kids who don't understand copyright. FunkMonk (talk) 21:48, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Datanglong

Someone just created an article for Datanglong, but it's pretty obviously a machine translation of the NL:WP version. I don't have time to fix it right now, but someone ought to take a look. J. Spencer (talk) 02:35, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

I've fixed some words and added the taxobox and references, but still needs work in the grammar. By the way, I couldn't link the Dutch version with Wikidata.--Rextron (talk) 18:45, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Thank you! A "big roofsauriër" just didn't seem to cut it in WP:EN. J. Spencer (talk) 18:38, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Currently trying to make the taxobox look better, myself; currently, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Taxonomy/Datanglong is what I've got for the phylogeny. Dromaeosaurus is best dinosaur (talk) 15:55, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal

Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Bringosaurus, no refs, hoax?

Apologies if I'm jumping the gun here but Bringosaurus seems suspect. The image is appropriated from DinoArt.com and I find no evidence on line, although there is an unnamed specimen with a similar locale described here. --Animalparty-- (talk) 04:57, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Most certainly a hoax. The image is of Coelophysis, which is apparently a relative, but the image itself obviously does not depict Bringosaurus. The author of the page is not a very common editor here (will look into that more). Nowadays, new dinosaur discoveries are given much publicity, but googling Bringosaurus only comes up with three results, at least two of which are wikipedia. It might be that the paper is in the process of being published, but even then I find no evidence of it, and the name Bringosaurus is a nomen nudum until the paper is published. Basically, once I check through the contributions of the author, I will come back here with what I think we should do. IJReid (talk) 14:14, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Yeh, all the users contributions revolve around "Bringosaurus", and he has only edited two articles. He modified Colalura Sandstone to add the genus, but that article is basically a stockpiling of WP:OR. Personally, I suspect that the user is just creating a page on a non-existent taxon, and stating that he is the author responsible for it. One correction to my above comment, turns out that "Bringosaurus" is actually a coelurosaurian, not even related to Coelophysis, and the image was completely OR. IJReid (talk) 14:23, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Make it extinct! FunkMonk (talk) 14:56, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Oh, joy, it's almost certainly User:Yewtharaptor by another name. Yewtharaptor is also back. Devote full scrutiny to this editor's additions; most of them are wishful thinking. J. Spencer (talk) 02:28, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Yewtharaptor has also just gifted the world with an incompetent machine translation of an article on the actual dinosaur Panguraptor, which I redirected to the genera list out of shame, and a half-dozen completely unreliable articles on Australian formations which cannot be speedily deleted because they are actual formations. J. Spencer (talk) 02:48, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

What if those Australian formation stubs were simply merged into a list?--Animalparty-- (talk)

It's not a bad idea, but rewriting Panguraptor should probably be the higher priority at the moment, based on what people will be looking for. J. Spencer (talk) 00:31, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Well, this "Bringosaurus" has been deleted. About Panguraptor, I'm almost sure that he used the Spanish version, which in turn is based in the Dutch article. I suggest not to use the Spanish version since that it have mistakes of translation too.--Rextron (talk) 06:03, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Expert attention

This is a notice about Category:Dinosaurs articles needing expert attention, which might be of interest to your WikiProject. It will take a while before the category is populated. Iceblock (talk) 23:11, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Steneosaurus obtusidens

Might be worth a look-through. Newly accepted draft passed a very basic check for copyright violations, etc., but has not seen expert review. --j⚛e decker^talk 05:13, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

There appears to be an issue with the Hot Articles list...

I'm trying to see if I can rectify this myself, but the Hot Articles section appears to have broken a bit. Dromaeosaurus is best dinosaur (talk) 17:54, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Aaaand repairs complete! The cause was a misplaced template part, by the way. Dromaeosaurus is best dinosaur (talk) 18:04, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

New article on Fosterovenator

I've started an article on Fosterovenator that could use some help. If anybody wants to, any help would be appreciated. Dromaeosaurus is best dinosaur (talk) 18:03, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

First step would be to add a citation. FunkMonk (talk) 18:18, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!

Oh, you'd better watch out, you'd better not cry, you'd better not pout, I'm telling you why Christmas Velociraptor is coming to town He sees you when you sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for your life's sake Oh, you'd better watch out, you'd better not cry, you'd better not pout, I'm telling you why Christmas Velociraptor is coming to town Merry Christmas, and watch out for the Christmas Velociraptor, IJReid (talk) 25 December 2014

• And happy new year! FunkMonk (talk) 19:47, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Resurrected dinosaur

Megapnosaurus (previously a redirect to Coelophysis) was recently restored as an article. You may want to take a look at it. jonkerz ♠talk 19:01, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

And now I've returned it to being a redirect; C.rhodesiensis and C.kayentakatae both have articles of their own, there's no need for a reduntant article for the synonymous name. "Megapnosaurus" is not relevant anymore, at least until someone publishes anything evidencing that it is separate from Coelophysis. It's not like "Brontosaurus", where the synonym is culturally significant; nobody really knows "Megapnosaurus" aside from the people who watched When Dinosaurs Roamed America. Perhaps a new vote may be in order, but I highly doubt it. Dromaeosaurus is best dinosaur (talk) 13:13, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!

Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:57, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Dinosaur Mailing List and Primary sources

1. I think the information on Primary references over-emphasizes primary sources and downplays the importance of scholarly secondary sources such as review articles and books that are often necessary to give balance and context and avoid undue weight, especially when primary sources (individual studies) conflict. Secondary sources and tertiary sources are actually preferred per WP:SECONDARY, even if for no other reason than to help decide which primary papers to cite and how often.
2. I think it is a bit misleading to state on the Project Page that Dinosaur Mailing List archives is a non-primary source: regardless of whether experts or general public contribute, it often contain primary information in the broadest sense (e.g. experts discussing things that are unpublished, offering their own speculation, and directly communicating to each other), even more primary than a published article, and hence may fall under user-generated sources. While the disclaimer about "not always be(ing) complete, current, and/or accurate" is laudable, it might also be stressed that DML should almost never be cited as a reliable source, since there is no peer-review on e-mail exchanges, with nods to WP:PRIMARY. --Animalparty-- (talk) 19:36, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

I think using the DML as source is similar to using blogs written by scientists as source, and that is permitted. Though I must admit, after having been on the list for some years, that much of it is utter garbage, with grown scientists acting like children every now and then. FunkMonk (talk) 20:06, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Permitted is different than encouraged. The fact that a single expert posts something or responds to something can easily be misrepresented, given undue weight, or be simply wrong (surely experts aren't above hasty or incomplete posts), and it seems questionable editorial practice to cite something like "Joe Scientist, 5th email response to "Thread about raptors" posted at 3 am", which could be cherry picked or taken out of context. Note WP:USERG states "Self-published material may sometimes be acceptable" (emphasis added), and this is where common sense and the caveats at WP:PRIMARY kick in. DML should be relatively far down on the list of sources to cite and conventionally-published sources should be preferred, even if they state the exact same thing.--Animalparty-- (talk) 20:42, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Thinking about it, I'm pretty sure DML would not be accepted as a reliable source at FAC. FunkMonk (talk) 19:57, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

The GA/FA chart

Just in case anyone missed it, many moons ago we made a chart - see Wikipedia:WikiProject_Dinosaurs/Dinosaur_collaboration#Chart - to give us an idea of what taxa we were covering etc. I think it might be missing some taxa though...? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 11:36, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Ouch, yeah, I've been updating this other list for FA/TFA continuously, so that should be ok, not GA and DYK though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Dinosaurs/Achievements FunkMonk (talk) 20:00, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Too much detail on Vertebrate fauna of the Maastrichtian stage

Recently a certain user has been expanding the descriptions on that page. While I appreciate their effort, the descriptions are way too long. Many of them have full paragraphs and unnecessary detail. Quilmesaurus's description lists all of its diagnostic features! This is not the place for that. Perhaps one of you could take a look at this? Shuvuuia (talk) 23:15, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

List of dinosaur specimens- should it remain?

The article List of dinosaur specimens seems problematic in that its implied scope arguably includes every specimen ever described. It was previously List of notable dinosaur specimens, which introduced POV issues, but even the current title seems a subjective exercise in pointing to arbitrary interesting fossils, contrary to the objective list selection criteria. Most of the specimens in the list are redirects, not stand-alone articles, and the list as a whole suffers from biases of geography and single source. My question is should we even have this list, or is it too subjective and unrealistic to maintain? Expansion, merging, converting to category, and deletion are some possibilities. --Animalparty-- (talk) 18:08, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Maybe we could rename it to List of notable fossil specimens, which would allow us to introduce stuff like Australopithecus, Tiktaalik and the like? Dromaeosaurus is best dinosaur (talk) 19:07, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Having Notable in the title is discouraged per WP:LISTNAME, and begs the question: notable to whom? To the paleontologist who discovers a specimen, or perhaps avid paleontology aficionados, every specimen is arguably important (e.g. "the first specimen of Foosaurus discovered in Fooistan from the Foosticene era", etc.), and true, subsequent primary literature may discuss individual specimens, but notability is something different, and I think it is questionable practice to have such massively open-ended lists; a specimen number redirect can weasel its way into any conceivable taxonomic article to justify its existence, as all species are presumed notable, as opposed to say, individual people. Tiktaalik and Australopithecus are already well included in several lists and articles, which obviates inclusion on a subjective notability list. Note we already have a Category:Specific fossil specimens. --Animalparty-- (talk) 23:48, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, I think this is better off as a category rather than a~list. FunkMonk (talk) 05:31, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

I have nominated the list for deletion. Please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of dinosaur specimens to comment further. --Animalparty-- (talk) 05:11, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

The result of the discussion was keep. A salient conclusion by the closing administrator was "Those in support of keeping it are now tasked with developing this into a policy-compliant article." All the best! --Animalparty-- (talk) 04:19, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Manual of style for dinosaur articles?

Other projects[5] have a MOS for how to structure their articles, and though the dinosaurs FAs are broadly similar in structure, a guideline could perhaps be nice. For example, a Palaeoecology section should probably be essential for a dinosaur FA, but a popular site like Triceratops doesn't even have one. Any thoughts? Inspired by this discussion, which didn't really fo anywhere:[6] FunkMonk (talk) 17:50, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

I kind of like the idea, but I'm too preoccupied with other concerns to help draft one. Also, community activity is so low now for whatever reason that it will probably be difficult to get the input of most users such a manual of style would likely affect. I would be against making one official without a consensus of many contributors, but would be totally supportive if you want to begin a draft. Abyssal (talk) 18:15, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

For a start, we could just compile a list of sections commonly found in dino FAs, and the order they appear in. Though there seems to be quite some inconsistency in that. And yeah, not sure why activity is so low. Well, Dinoguy is probably busy writing books... FunkMonk (talk) 18:17, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Agree it's a good idea - it's been a long time since I took a dino article to FA but I do alot of stuff on bio articles. Funkmonk if you want to start a discussion somewhere I'll chip in but my time is pretty patchy... Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 19:56, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Alright, it'll probably just continue here. And something I've thought about for a while, which I'll just write down here to remember it, is the various types of illustrations that would be good to have in an article: A photo of a mounted skeleton/cast. A life restoration. A size comparison. A skeletal diagram. Photos of non-restored fossils. Photos/diagrams of individual skeletal elements. Photo of excavation area. Map showing location of fossil finds. Some of these can be hard to obtain, but for example Nigersaurus contains all of the above, as we were fortunate enough that it had a Plos paper devoted to it. Could be nice with reconstructions of habitat as well, but such are almost impossible to obtain. FunkMonk (talk) 15:59, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Hey guys, sounds like a good idea. Maybe we should simply copy the heading structure from a good FA into a template article and start from there? (Also I'm thinking paleoecology, paleobiology, paleodescription, paleoreferences, etc. are a bit technical and also redundant.. we know it's paleo because it's prehistoric, why not just say "Ecology" etc., which is more accessible?). It seems like we already have a pretty standard order, with description coming first (containing size/diagrams, basic distinguishing features, major anatomy, and life appearance/soft tissue anatomy) followed by more inference-based stuff like biology and ecology, followed by history of study. Dinoguy2 (talk) 14:36, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Should we also codify style for higher taxon articles? For example, we (somewhere) recently agreed to use two taxobox images of specifiers or close-to-specifiers for node-based clades and basal members for stem-based clades. We would also likely need different variety of sections, but so far higher clades don't really have much of a standardized layout. Dinoguy2 (talk) 14:47, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

I think a standard layout would be good for any articles. At least so we use the same words in the headers, so they are comparable across articles. FunkMonk (talk) 15:02, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

To start out, here are the most commonly used headers and their order (subheaders not listed):

• Description (sometimes "anatomy and "morphology" in non FAs)
• Classification (sometimes also "taxonomy" or "systematics")
• History of discovery (sometimes also "naming" and "identification", or just "discovery" or "history")
• palaeobiology
• Palaeoecology (sometimes "provenance")

So would it perhaps be good to standardise the names of the headings also? FunkMonk (talk) 22:34, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Sounds good to me to standardize - happy with the defaults above. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:21, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Any thoughts on order? What I've listed above seems to be the standard, though there is some variation. I've wondered why similar sections are called classification here, but taxonomy in bird articles? Also, these sections are placed first in extant animals, whereas they are far down in dinosaur article,s any reason for that? FunkMonk (talk) 19:50, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Should we also have standardized baselines for reconstructions that we use in articles, as well? Dromaeosaurus is best dinosaur (talk) 15:54, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

You mean pose and angle? That would be impossible to enforce, many of our restorations are provided by drive-by uploaders who have no contact with other editors or this project. Not sure what we would gain from it either... FunkMonk (talk) 16:02, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

No, not pose and angle; those are all personal taste. I mean stuff like how sauropod forefeet are lumps with a claw, or the way wings are on maniraptorans that have them; things that are common knowledge to us dedicated students of the field, but may not be to the Joe that makes what he thinks is accurate palaeoart, but is not actually accurate and is either outdated or horribly inaccurate. The entire purpose of the system would be to make sure palaeoart that is submitted to an article is kept as accurate as possible. Emphasising the Image Review page would be a nice first step in that direction, simply because it's an excellent start to the idea. I mean, we already have basic guidelines like "X should not be potrayed with Y", but making a more specific, clade-by-clade guideline should be an option we can consider. Basically, stuff that can be standardized without making illustrations feel "same-y" (like posing, colouration for the dinosaurs who don't have known colourations, that sort of thing) is what I want to see get some standardization.

As an example, let me use dromaeosaurids as a baseline. The standardized Dromaeosauridae guidelines could be:

• Pennaceous feathers were present on most of the body, but not visibly like plumaceous feathers were. They formed a visibly textureless integument en masse.
• Wings go all the way down the arm, attaching to digit II (the middle finger) of the hand and terminating at the ungual claw of digit II. Digit III is generally hidden behind the primary feathers in profile view, and would likely not have the same range of movement as digits I and II due to this.
• Only half of the pedal digits touched the ground; the dewclaw is vestigial and on the ankle and the largest toe was raised off the ground to protect the enlarged pedal claw from dulling.
• Exposed flesh that once bore feathers is generally wrinkly and scaleless.
• Openings in the skull bore muscle tissue in life, and as such they were not visible on the living animal.
• Pupil and iris of the eye were most likely rounded, like a bird's.

Things that ensure accuracy, but maintain the ability to be dynamic with images is what I'm going for with the idea. Dromaeosaurus is best dinosaur (talk) 19:03, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Ok. Wouldn't it just be an expansion of this?[7] We can expand that page as much as we want, it isn't used for its original purpose anymore (listing artists). Also, a sI mentioned below, a Wikipedia article called "dinosaur life appearance" or some such would be nice,it is certainly a notable subject these days. Plenty of sources for it as well. FunkMonk (talk) 05:50, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

• Will get back to this soon... FunkMonk (talk) 17:40, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Dinosaur mummy 2

It was once proposed and re-proposed that we should create an article on dinosaur mummies that could include sections discussing dinosaur specimens with skin, such as Trachodon mummy. I believe that this is an excellent idea, and would comment on the most recent discussion of this if it had not been archived. One modification to what was proposed at the above link, I think that the article should be title Dinosaur specimens preserving integument, as few sources actually call specimens with skin "mummies". Thoughts? IJReid ^discuss 00:41, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

The problem with the last (as was discussed before) would be that it would hugely expand the scope. But yeah, it may be interesting to have an article about integument. On the other hand, we could even have an article called "dinosaur life appearance" or some such, which would go into every aspect of this (integument, movement, posture, biomechanics, colour, eye placement, historical viws, etc.), similar to the restoration guidance list we have, just with more prose. Could be a blast to write. I can make a draft of such an article if people are interested. We already have aricle ssuch as Dinosaur physiology and Dinosaur intelligence, and I'd say their life appearance is just as notable a subject, but people just take it for granted, and probably wouldn't expect an article devoted to it. The article should first make clear that information inferred for one taxon would probably true for related taxa with less material known, go into phylogenetic bracketing, could be illustrated by stuff like this video[8], and so on. FunkMonk (talk) 05:30, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

• I'm working on a rough draft of a proposed Dinosaur life appearance article in my sandbox[9] if anyone wants to have a look and chime in (feel free to modify and expand). I'm not sure whether there should be sections about internal appearance as well... And I just remembered I made a suggestion for a similar text back in 2009:[10] FunkMonk (talk) 07:07, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
• The life appearance article could also link to larger discussions, such as the sauropod neck posture article started by IJReid. FunkMonk (talk) 17:41, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Brontosaurus distinct species news:

• Wired
• Guardian
• nature
• Washington Post
• Live Science

This story is being widely reported, and is worth discussing. Should this result in any changes on Wikipedia? Currently Brontosaurus redirects to Apatosaurus --Harizotoh9 (talk) 12:52, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

It has always been considered a distinct species, it is just the old genus name that has been revived. The issue is being dealt with on the page. FunkMonk (talk) 12:57, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Proposed move of "Feathered dinosaur" to "Dinosaur integument"

Now that feathers are known to have been extremely widespread within Dinosauria feathered dinosaurs are no longer "special" enough to justify treating them separately. Consequently, I think that the the general contents of this article would be more appropriate as part of a broader article on dinosaur integument and maybe some of the more specific discussions of early feathers as part of an article on the evolution of feathers. Abyssal (talk) 19:56, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Whether or not they're merged, an article about integument could be interesting. Also similar to a page about dinosaur life appearance I had in mind, but which grew too gargantuan in scope for me to finish:[11] FunkMonk (talk) 20:36, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Your sandbox draft is really really really fucking cool. Abyssal (talk) 21:13, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Feel free to add to/change it if you want, I probably won't work on it until I've gotten Columbian mammoth to FA... I used this as a template:[12] FunkMonk (talk) 21:23, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Can we categorize dinosaurs by epoch?

Can we finally split the dinosaurs by period categories into different epochs? Category:Cretaceous dinosaurs has almost 800 articles in it FFS. Abyssal (talk) 16:03, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Is that going far enough? The Cretaceous has only two epochs... We'd have a category for Late Cretaceous with about ~600 articles ;) Dinoguy2 (talk) 18:29, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Probably not, but it would be a start. :P Abyssal (talk) 18:50, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Sure, sounds good to me to help teach readers. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:09, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Hey chicken lovers

Maybe one of you can have a look at the contributions of Maddencarnotaurusramhead (talk · contribs) to see if they're up to no good or not. I blocked them for being incommunicado and they haven't responded, suggesting it was just trolling. Muchas gracias, Drmies (talk) 17:29, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

List of genera

Someone has recently added Regaliceratops, Titanoboa, Indomimus and Diabolus. I've removed Titanoboa. Should Indomimus and Diabolus also go. Lavateraguy (talk) 12:43, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, but Regaliceratops is real. FunkMonk (talk) 03:33, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Species or Genus titles?

Elsewhere on Wikipedia (example: Talk:Apatosaurus), the topic has recently come up regarding using genre or species as the titles of articles. In WP:DINO, we've traditionally always gone by the genus name. However, this can cause the complication that when species are lumped or split or moved between genera, at least two articles need to be teased apart and partially re-written. IN the Brontosaurus example, if we had had a separate article on Apatosaurus excelsus to begin with, it would have saved an awful lot of time and effort, simply changing one article's name instead of trying to pull one article apart bit by bit to create a new article. Additionally, articles going down to species level makes intuitive sense as species are "real" entities while genre, families, orders, etc. are simply categories and containers for species. As far as I can tell, almost all articles in other areas of zoology go down to species level. One argument for keeping WP:DINO to genus level is that genera are often used as shorthand for species when talking about dinosaurs (though this often causes its own problems), so genera almost function as "common names" for species. I'm not sure if this reason alone is strong enough to balance out the points I outlined above. In practice, there are so many monotypic dinosaur genera that this switch would require very little change to existing articles other than their title, and the few multi-species genera could be split apart on a case by case basis (see Edmontosaurus, Edmontosaurus annectens, and Edmontosaurus regalis for an example of how this could look). What does everything think? Status quo, or a change to bring our project more in line with the rest of the biology section? Dinoguy2 (talk) 15:18, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm open minded to your proposal but I have qualms. Let's say we have a well developed article on Exemplosaurus. This genus is known almost exclusively from the species Exemplosaurus typus. However, three other dubious and inconsequential species have been referred to it, E. minor, E. stultus, and E. tertius. So we create an article on E. typus that is almost exactly the same as the article on the genus itself, minus 6-9 sentences about the referred species. Then we create three tiny perma-stubs each about 2-3 sentences long. But then we need an article summarizing the genus as a whole since there are multiple species to talk about, so we keep the original article the same. What have we really gained? The benefit to effort ratio seems very low to me. The only real benefit that I see in that situation is that reader who specifically search for a minor species won't have to skim the whole article on the genus to find what they want. It's unlikely that any of the nearly forgotten dubious species will ever be at risk of reclassification for easy renaming to be a potential perk.

And many genera will be like this. Think about Triceratops for a real example. Only one, maybe two "real" species, over a dozen dubious probable synonyms no one cares about. It wouldn't make sense not to have an article on the genus overall, but if we did, how many readers would bother to visit T. horridus, and if they did would they learn anything they didn't at the article on the genus itself given that the two are functionally if not actually synonymous? Another related hypothetical example: Exemplosaurus is known only from the species E. typus. We have an article titled Exemplosaurus typus. Then paleontologists describe E. secundus. We create an article on that species, but now since we have multiple species we need an article on Exemplosaurus overall. Readers now arrive at the article on the genus since that's all the average one is familiar with and traffic to the articles on the species immediately slows to a trickle.Those that do visit them don't actually learn anything new because the article on the genus covered all the bases fairly well.

Completely irrelevant tangent: you keep referring to "genera" as "genre", is that how you pronounce it in your head? That's how I pronounced it until I got to college and heard a professor pronounce it literally like it was spelled. I would be elated to know that I wasn't the only one doing that. Abyssal (talk) 01:57, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

I think we'd need to make an exception for nomina dubia, and keep those restricted to the genus-level article, though I don't necessarily see why making them "perm stubs" is a problem per se. This is true for plenty of genera in the current system ("genre" above is due to my persistently unscientific auto-correct ;) ). Dinoguy2 (talk) 10:45, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

When it comes to title, I don't see why monotypic genera cold not use the full binomial, and we could avoid the "Gastonia (dinosaur)"-type titles. But as I mentioned elsewhere about what to do with genera with multiple species, I think this should be taken on a case by case basis, with the default being to merge species into genus, and split being for when enough can/has been written about a species to split it off (as the genus article grows too long and unwieldy, eg. Edmontosaurus). As Abyssal says, I think the species sub articles (like Triceratops prorsus or Stegosaurus ungulatus) will just be little-visited orphans that will give us all extra work to maintain and keep track of (and we seem to be rather undermanned as is). Most readers visit the genus articles anyway (regular readers will only know the binomial of T. rex, which is in a monotypic genus anyway), so there is little benefit from the extra work (though I can understand the personal satisfaction of completists when having everything represented, but Wikipedia is not for a specialist audience). Every time something new is discovered about some species, we would have to add it to both the species article and in summarised form on the genus article... Then imagine when some feature is found to apply to all species in a genus... Don't know who here would have the time to do that. In short, in a perfect world I'd be all for species articles, but I don't think it will be realistic for us to maintain them and keep the general quality up, unless the project membership grows substantially. FunkMonk (talk) 16:16, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

I agree with most of this, though i'd mention that we kind of already have tons of duplicate material. This is a bit of a more general issue - every sauropod article, for example, mentions that such and such species is a quadrupedal herbivore, a description that applies to the entirety of Sauropoda. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, but then we also have articles that go into detail about their locomotion and biomechanics seemingly just to mine potential FA material that should really be discussed in depth at either every single species it applies to (massive duplication) or restricted to the most inclusive clade article it applies to (making it difficult to find without using a "Main article: x") template header. Dinoguy2 (talk) 16:59, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Yeah me too - keep at genus. Duplicate material is an issue everywhere and is about adding enough to to give context yet not too much to be overly repetitive..... Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:58, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm somewhat more of a lumper than a splitter, and think that in most cases the existing scheme works just fine for paleo articles: a genus article to provide complete context for the one or more species within it. I think for especially speciose taxa, a concise list such as Species of Psittacosaurus is appropriate, again to allow the commonalities and differences of all species to more easily be appreciated without clicking between a dozen different articles. I also think it would preemptively stem the splitting and sub-splitting of subjects lest we end up with a glut of individual specimen articles like ZT 299 (Lufengpithecus). Truth be told there are hundreds of living species stubs I'd like to merge into decent genus articles, but that would probably cause more drama than its worth. One scenario I might argue a binomial title would be preferable to a genus title would be in the cases of monotypic genera where a homonym exists at the genus name: thus Anzu wyliei might be preferable to Anzu (dinosaur). Yes we have WP:MONOTYPICFAUNA, but we also have WP:NATDAB, and Natural disambiguation might be stylistically preferable than parenthetical in these handful of cases. --Animalparty-- (talk) 22:52, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Unless there are objections to moving monospecific "genus (dinosaur)" pages to "binomial", I will begin moving some. IJReid ^discuss 14:48, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

I think it's a bit premature, most who commented here talked about the genus issue, we should probably discuss titles separately first. FunkMonk (talk) 15:37, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

I agree, a separate discussion should be held on this before changing titles. I qualified my comments above with might, and there is no consensus yet. I decline to open this discussion for the time being. --Animalparty-- (talk) 17:54, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

One overlooked problem is that it is not just the X (dinosaur) articles that should be moved, but those of every single monotypic dinosaur genus (which are in the hundreds, not counting prehistoric non-dinosaurs), otherwise it would just be inconsistent. And if that was done, some people might want to ask why for example Triceratops does not use a full binomial in the title, then we'd have to explain that it's because it isn't monotypic, and it would still look less standardised than it does now. So I'm actually a bit unsure... FunkMonk (talk) 18:24, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't think inconsistency is that big of a deal if we decide to go through with this. Wikipedia has limitations intrinsic to its nature and one of those is a shortage of manpower and difficulty making big changes instantaneously. We should think long term and make decisions based on quality. The real question is, would this proposal make Wikipedia a better information source? My tentative answer would be "a little". So the idea of a gradual transition doesn't bother me as long as it's agreed that the changes are beneficial in the first place. Abyssal (talk) 03:17, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

I think it'd look far more pleasing to have bionomals than disambigs, if only because it both makes linking a bit easier and that it means articles don't get bogged down by the omnipresent "(dinosaur)" or "(pterosaur)" disambigs. So instead of seeing, say, "Dilong (dinosaur)", we'd see "Dilong paradoxus". That'd work much better, IMO. For genera that are polyspecific, something like "Triceratops (genus)" would work decently. Raptormimus456 (talk) 13:21, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

What is the point of a title Like "Triceratops (genus)"? FunkMonk (talk) 17:40, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

It's more a specific example than anything. :p If we do go with that system, I suppose it would depend on the genus in question. Stuff like Dilong, Balaur and the like would be the ones getting the bionomal disambig. Raptormimus456 (talk) 17:55, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

But there is no competition for just "Triceratops". There is no need to disambiguate. FunkMonk (talk) 21:57, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

WP:FLORA now recommends using the binomial for natural disambiguation when a monotypic genus is ambiguous, and several of us plant editors have been moving these articles to binomial. Yes, consistency takes a hit, but naturalness is improved. My impression from some archived talk is that the preference for using genus rather than binomial as the title for monotypic taxa (as expressed at WP:TOL and WP:NCFAUNA) was driven in a large part by folks work on palaeontological taxa (where there was already a preference for covering species in the genus article in many cases). I have no strong opinion about how to handle dinosaurs, but if you do decide to use the binomial for disambiguation, you won't be the first organismal project to do so.Plantdrew (talk) 19:58, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

BTW, here is a search for all dinosaur articles that have "(dinosaur)" as a parenthetical disambiguator. Plantdrew (talk) 20:16, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

I'll give it a shot with Dilong and see how it goes on from there. I'm expecting the move to be reverted, but I figure it's best to actually see what this would look like for these articles rather than debating without any evidence of what such a thing would look like. If the consensus is to keep the disambigs, I'm fine with the page being reverted to the disambig title. For now, let's just see how this looks. Raptormimus456 (talk) 12:40, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

And here's the result. Does this look better or worse than the disambig title? Raptormimus456 (talk) 12:44, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

I definitely prefer the binomial over a parenthetical disambiguator. Abyssal (talk) 19:49, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Also, I've moved Balaur from "Balaur (dinosaur)" to "Balaur bondoc", as well. Raptormimus456 20:55, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Copyright Violation Detection - EranBot Project

A new copy-paste detection bot is now in general use on English Wikipedia. Come check it out at the EranBot reporting page. This bot utilizes the Turnitin software (ithenticate), unlike User:CorenSearchBot that relies on a web search API from Yahoo. It checks individual edits rather than just new articles. Please take 15 seconds to visit the EranBot reporting page and check a few of the flagged concerns. Comments welcome regarding potential improvements. These likely copyright violations can be searched by WikiProject categories. Use "control-f" to jump to your area of interest.--Lucas559 (talk) 22:47, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Articles for review

I just made a new section on the dinosaur front page, inspired by one they have at the bird project, where articles currently under or considered for various kinds of review are listed to notify project members: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Dinosaurs#Articles_for_review FunkMonk (talk) 09:56, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Seems fine. Maybe we should add Apatosaurus on there, or not yet. IJReid ^discuss 15:03, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

If plans are for it to be nominated again soon, why not, you can describe the situation in parenthesis or after a dash line. FunkMonk (talk) 15:07, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

I took the liberty of signing WikiProject Dinosaurs and WikiProject Palaeontology up for the automated Article Alerts report which track articles under review. Reports will be at Wikipedia:WikiProject Dinosaurs/Article alerts and Wikipedia:WikiProject Palaeontology/Article alerts; note that these will be redlinks for the next 24 hours or so until the bot makes its next run (and they may be blue links to a blank page for some days if no articles are under review). I'll see about transcluding the results of the report on the project page once the first report is generated (and you can watchlist the report to keep abreast of its results). For an example of the Article Alert report in action, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Article alerts. Plantdrew (talk) 16:59, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Nice! Should definitely be on the front page as well. FunkMonk (talk) 17:07, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

I've added it to the front page. I wasn't quite sure where to put it; it's below your Article for review section for now, but feel free to put it somewhere else. Plantdrew (talk) 16:46, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, moved it a bit up. Such a section should probably be listed on all project pages... Is there one at the bird project? FunkMonk (talk) 16:57, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Wendiceratops

Hi all! We could use some expert Dino help with this newly created article: Wendiceratops. Any help you can offer is appreciated! Thanks, Garchy (talk) 19:17, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Seems it mainly needs a taxobox now. Can't figure out those automatic ones, though... FunkMonk (talk) 19:36, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your help! Looks much better. Garchy (talk) 19:58, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Jurassic World "outreach"

With all the drama about JW being inaccurate in many respects, I think moviegoers would go to Wikipedia to double check the various animals featured in the movie. So I was thinking we should maybe have a push to improve/expand articles about the animals featured in the movie, so they are as up to date and give as accurate a picture of the animals as possible? After all, it will probably be the most influential media presence of dinosaurs within the next couple of years, shaping the public perception of them to a large extend, so it will be our main venue for "damage control". Many of the animals feastured already have FA or GA level articles, but could be good to update the rest as well, not necessarily to the FA level, of course.

Animals with adequate articles already:

• Tyrannosaurus (FA, depicted very differently here than in the movies)
• Triceratops (FA, not too different in the films)
• Velociraptor (FA, unfeathered in the films)
• Stegosaurus (FA, not too different in the films, apart from size and tail spikes)
• Pteranodon (GA, teeth and naked skin in movies)
• Apatosaurus (on its way to GA)
• Edmontosaurus (FA, not seen yet)

Animals with articles that could need improvement:

• Ankylosaurus (not too bad in the films it seems)
• Gallimimus (lacks feathers)
• Pachycephalosaurus (too small in the films)
• Mosasaurus (gigantic in the movie)
• Dimorphodon (too large, carries people, lacks pycnofibres)
• Baryonyx (not seen yet)
• Microceratus (not seen yet)
• Metriacanthosaurus (not seen yet)

Any thoughts? FunkMonk (talk) 17:46, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

(Courtesy link to Jurassic_World#Scientific_inaccuracies) No problem in double checking and clearly citing pertinent descriptions (with high quality sources), with the reminder to not perform any original synthesis in comparison between movie representations and current thinking, whether in the taxon's article or the film's, or any list of creatures. We can present the facts but cannot say a film representation is wrong or debated unless reliable sources explicitly say so. --Animalparty-- (talk) 20:23, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, I wasn't thinking of referencing the movies specifically in the listed articles, just that the articles should be as up to date as possible. We used to have an entire article about scientific inaccuracies in Jurassic Park, but it was deleted, I think because there was too much original synthesis... FunkMonk (talk) 20:27, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

This could also serve as a reminder of the importance writing with a comprehensive, holistic, historic view of dinosaur research, rather than solely from the most recent or cutting edge perspective. 20 or 30 years ago, the scientific consensus would not have portrayed all theropods as feathered, but that doesn't mean all sources or perspectives from that time are wrong or poor to include. The reasons for previously portraying dinosaurs as sluggish, featherless, whatever, are real and historic, and downplaying or ignoring such history could falsely perpetuate the idea, especially for younger readers, that theropods have always been thought to be feathered. A good article would explain "Foosaurus was long considered to be like this, however discoveries in the early 21st century supported it was actually like this. --Animalparty-- (talk) 20:47, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, that's right. And many of our articles do this, though to a varying extent. Tyrannosaurus is quite good in this respect, as it goes into detail about both posture and feathering. On the other hand, some features shown in the movies are completely made up, and was never historically theorised, such as the frill and venom of Dilophosaurus. The teeth in Pteranodon are also hard to understand, since the name meand toothless wing... FunkMonk (talk) 21:05, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I think I'll try to get Baryonyx to GA/FA next (after I'm done with Columbian mammoth), everyone is free to edit along, of course. FunkMonk (talk) 04:39, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

"The teeth in Pteranodon are also hard to understand, since the name meand toothless wing..." Unless we remember that the aviary scene in the novel used Cearadactylus, which did have teeth, and not Pteranodon (which was probably swapped in because of it's popularity). The Pteranodon figures in both of the Kenner lines for Jurassic Park and The Lost World: Jurassic Park lacked teeth like the actual animal, as did the Pteranodon seen at the end of the second movie. It's only in the third movie (which took the other novel scenes) that the JP Pteranodon had teeth. :p Dromaeosaurus is best dinosaur (talk) 13:54, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Pteranodon seems to be in the new movie as well... With teeth, I'd imagine. FunkMonk (talk) 14:17, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

• Didn't get as far with this as planned (though Apatosaurus and Ankylosaurus are almost there, and I'll do Baryonyx next), but it made me think (with no regard to JP)that we should maybe focus on improving a representative/well-known genus from each major group , to act as future template for other genera. Until now, for example, we had no featured ankylosaurs, and I think oviratorosaurs, pachycephalosaurs, therizinosaurs, heterodontosaurs, and non-hadrosaur ornithopods could need some representatives at FAC as well. FunkMonk (talk) 07:38, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Yah, might be a good idea. But which taxon to choose? I would be in for any thing if someone else wants to. IJReid ^discuss 21:40, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Having a bit of writing fatigue myself at the moment, but how are things going for Apatosaurus? After Baryonyx, I was thinking of maybe Oviraptor itself... FunkMonk (talk) 21:51, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Well, not much else is addable until more papers come baring info with the updated phylogeny. Anyway, I have to wait for LittleJerry to finish with the ankylosaurus FA before proceeding with apatosaurus. IJReid ^discuss 22:13, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

I would be interested to help out as well. What about starting a new official Dinosaur collaboration? I mean, that would be fun! As for Oviraptorosauria, I feel that Oviraptor itself might be difficult to get to FA as it is very poorly known. Much better known is the related Citipati. But that one is not that famous … --Jens Lallensack (talk) 22:29, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm all for reviving the collab. For oviraptorosauria why not work on Caudipteryx, probably the second best known member in pop culture and pretty well known scientifically. Btw Opisthocoelicaudia is now nominated for GA. IJReid ^discuss 23:21, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Unrelated, but some members might want to get there hands of a Taylor & Francis account, available through Wikipedia:Taylor & Francis. IJReid ^discuss 01:02, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

I think collaboration is a good idea, but now it is mainly done by two editors planning on their talk pages, could also be nice with some more centralised planning on the Wikiproject collaboration page. I've made a section on the collab talk page, perhaps we should continue there:[13] I made a list of potential FACs once (where I see both of you commented):[14] As for FAC articles about animals that are little known, it can be done, see for example Dromaeosauroides. It is actually more important that much has been published on the specimen (coverage), than how much/how many of the specimens are known, if little has been published about them. Citipati has the problem of the "Zamyn Khondt specimen", which may be split off to a distinct genus, so we would have to be careful when writing that it will be an easy split once it happens. FunkMonk (talk) 06:20, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I see you are right, and today's featured article on the main page is actually very short. So I could even try getting Vulcanodon in shape for FA, as it already contains everything that exists. That's nice! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 18:28, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Yup, as long as the article is "stable", and the literature is comprehensively covered, length is not an issue. FunkMonk (talk) 09:14, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

The Scientific American Book of Dinoaurs

Hi all, does somebody have the book "The Scientific American Book of Dinoaurs" edited by Greg Paul, and can verify this passage which was inserted by a IP into the Amargasaurus article some time ago based on p. 94 in the book?

"Gregory Paul argued that parallel neck sails would have reduced neck flexion. Instead, he proposed that, with their circular rather than flat cross-sections, these spines were more likely covered with a horny sheath. He even suggests that they could have been clattered together for a sound display."

Paul, Gregory S. (2000) The Scientific American Book of Dinosaurs, p 94. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0312262264.

As Greg Paul is only the editor of the book, we need to know the author and title of the chapter to cite it correctly. Any additional information on Amargasaurus that might be inside there could be valuable as well. Thanks a lot, --Jens Lallensack (talk) 08:32, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Yep, here's what he says (chapter is "Restoring the Life Appearance of Dinosaurs", written by Paul) if you want to rewrite: "The spectacularly long double spines of the neck and anterior trunk vertebrae of Amargasaurus have been restored as supporting dorsal fins, but parallel skin sails would have interfered with flexion of the neck, and the spines are not flattened from side to side. The circular cross-sectioned, sharp-tipped spines were probably spikes lengthened by horn coverings. These could have been used for display, to protect the neck and for combat by curling the neck ventrally and pointing the front spikes forward. Amargasaurus may have generated a sound display by clattering the spikes against one another!" FunkMonk (talk) 08:44, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Great, thank you FunkMonk! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 08:59, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Opisthocoelicaudia

...is looking good. Are the main GA-improvers gonna chuck it in the snake pit now? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:59, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

I think Jens Lallensack is waiting for a book to arrive first... Perhaps we can find it for him? FunkMonk (talk) 01:12, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

I don't know. I was co-nominator for GA, but Jens has mentioned that he wanted to nominate it for FA himself, so I'm not sure what we can do but wait. IJReid ^discuss 04:44, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

You can have co-noms at FAC, and it is good as it allows a person to have more than one nomination up at a time. Also makes process alot easier as the two (or more) of you can address concerns alot more quickly. If he's waiting for a book, see what is next nearest to buff..... Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:58, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Ah see, this is where a collaboration is good - figuring out who wants to work on what.....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 11:04, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Proposal at WP:Paleo

I've made a significant proposal relevant to this Wikiproject at the WP:Paleo talk page. Abyssal (talk) 01:44, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Requesting a rating reassessment for Zhenyuanlong

The Zhenyuanlong article was given a C-class rating by User:Maias while the article was in the process of being improved. Since then, I've added pretty much every nugget of information that exists on this dinosaur in reputable sources, have added two custom illustrations, have formatted a phylogenetic tree, and so on. I maintain that this article is pretty strong for the limited information on the taxon that exists at this point, so I think a quality reassessment is in order. Many thanks. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 23:05, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

I think you can go ahead and change it, those assessments are done pretty arbitrarily by whoever drops by and feels like it (unlike "peer reviewed" FA and GA articles). And great work, by the way! FunkMonk (talk) 23:51, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! Do you have any sense of how much more work would theoretically need to be done to this article to get it up to GA? (Is GA even possible for an article with this little primary resource behind it?) -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 00:05, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

I think the main problem would be coverage, yes. But maybe you can find some more articles that cover the circumstances around this find (I see there are already some there), which are not just press releases that repeat each other? I do think this could circumvent problems at GA, but at FA, more secondary scientific coverage would be needed. As probably the most experienced (with promotion processes) member of this project, Casliber may have something to say. Oh, and by the way, the main citation should be consistent with the others in how you name the authors (last names first, no "and"). FunkMonk (talk) 00:52, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll change that. It would be nice to get the article up to GA, but in the meantime, I don't think it would be good etiquette for me to assign it a new rating, given that I'm the one who wrote most of the article and am asking for reassessment. ;) -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 01:37, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Right, have listed it as a morale-boosting B class article. I think you should nominate it at WP:GAN. Consider that once there, that acts as a "stable version" of sorts to compare against in case of future vandalism etc. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 03:37, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Many thanks for the reassessment--I'll bring it to WP:GAN soon. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 19:38, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Opisthocoelicaudia IPA

Hi all, in the Opisthocoelicaudia FAC it was pointed out that the IPA of that article is wrong. I was unable to fix it, as I do not know much about IPA. Any help would be appreciated! Here is what it should sound like: [15]. Thanks, --Jens Lallensack (talk) 05:48, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

• Kwamikagami often fixes IPA, or used to do, perhaps he has something to say. And by the way, a good copyedit would probably fix most of the problems the first reviewer has brought up, they often note redundancies and such (I rarely nominate without a copyedit)... FunkMonk (talk) 14:28, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

The 2nd pronunciation at the link is an odd mix of faux Latin (to be consistent with the "cow-dia", the coeli in the middle would be "coily" rather than "silly"), but the 1st is exactly what I'd expect for a Latinate word in English. So I transcribed that and added it as a ref. YouTube doesn't qualify as a ref, but it's really there for readers who don't know IPA. — kwami (talk) 17:54, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, kwami, for the quick help! @FunkMonk: You are right, next time I'll request a copy edit first. Now it is a bit of work, but I should be able to fix everything soon. Do you prefer listing articles in the Peer Review or in the Guild of copy editors? --Jens Lallensack (talk) 18:42, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, thanks for the quick response, Kwamikagami. I never list for peer review, GA is sufficient for that I think, but copyedit is good, because even if one writes perfect English, it can always be improved in a more "literary" way. I write pretty good for a non-native, for example, but my writing is a bit "dry". Copyditors often add a bit of flavour that makes the flow better and more pleasant to read. FunkMonk (talk) 23:21, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Standardizing our disambiguation policy for genera

This is important, of course. As a group, I feel I should ask this question so that we can have consensus on how to work with genera that have synonymous articles on this site. In those instances, I've seen the use of the paranthetical disambig which, while a decent solution, doesn't flow very well. I've been bold and tested my idea for disambigs, and the response has, so far, been positive.

It is thus why I am making this proposal of switching our disambig policy to such, with potential additions as we debate untill consensus is reached;

• In the case where the name a genus has already has an article/articles on Wikipedia, full bionomals may be used in place of paranthetical disambiguations, with parantheticals as redirects. This not only makes it easier to link to these pages, but also makes the page title look more proffessional.
  • EX: Balaur bondoc instead of "Balaur (dinosaur)", which is a redirect, and Dilong paradoxus instead of "Dilong (dinosaur)", which is a redirect.

• In the case where a genus is not monospecific, the article retains it's paranthetical unless voted upon by the majority for the paranthetical to be changed, similarly to a move dispute. This is so that consensus is maintained and thus reducing any potential edit warring over page titles.

What do you guys think of this? Are there any additions you'd like to make, any changes, or is it fine as is? Raptormimus456 (talk) 15:07, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

I think it is fine as is. IJReid ^discuss 01:58, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

• MWAk brought up a problem with the binomial titles during a similar discussion, for example, there is apparently a "Balaur sp.", therefore B. bondoc is not the only species in the genus. Which makes the scope of the current article name too narrow. The (dinosaur) titles circumvent such problems. You never know when another species is added to a genus, and we would have to rename such articles every time it happens. Furthermore, the parenthesis disambiguation titles are standard across all other types of Wikipedia animal articles that use scientific names, for example Megalodon (genus). It also just looks weird that some articles about mono-specific genera use binomials while others don't. It is a wider problem that does not just affect dinosaur articles, so we would need a consensus at a higher level, probably tree of life project. It is arbitrary to have different standards just for dinosaurs. FunkMonk (talk) 03:51, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Can we create a stub for the "lithostrotian" group of sauropods, please? (Or Lithostrotia?)

Something like half a dozen articles on sauropod genera (and few related articles) mention the lithostrotian "group" (clade?) of titanosaur sauropods.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=lithostrotian&title=Special%3ASearch&go=Go

I'm unfamiliar with this term. Can somebody either make a stub article defining it, or add some text explaining it within Titanosaur (or wherever else might be more appropriate), and we'll make lithostrotian direct there?

(Okay. In the article Titanosaur I now see Lithostrotia listed as a family (?) under Eutitanosauria. Do we want to work from that?)

(Heck. Lithostrotia currently directs to Titanosaur, but the term "lithostrotia" isn't defined within Titanosaur. A quick definition somewhere, please?)

Thanks -- 179.218.140.100 (talk) 03:15, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Bam, done. This probably could be done for other macronarian clades (Titanosauriformes, Somphospondyli) that have redirects. IJReid ^discuss 22:13, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm probably in the minority opinion among this project, but I don't think an article for every clade/node is always warranted, and regardless should be defined in context within larger articles whenever possible. e.g. Somphospondyli has only marginally more information specific to Somphospondyli than does Macronaria. A good clear paragraph or section defining a named clade within a larger article, including possible controversies (e.g. genus X is placed in clade B by some researchers), would probably serve the interests of readers and editors in the long run, as taxonomic changes or revisions in the literature wouldn't require as many Wiki articles to update. Lists and cladograms alone do not a good article make.--Animalparty! (talk) 23:30, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

I don't know, I think it's a good idea, since there generally is quite a bit to say for such a clade. History of research (including current acceptance), systematics (internal and external), definition, synapomorphies. See for example the de:Lithostrotia article in the German Wikipedia. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 19:26, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Scope of project

Perhaps we should have a discussion about what kind of articles warrant being tagged as part of the dino project... As is, it seems to extend to cultural works as well (for example Velosaurus (sculpture)), and even to animals that are not thought to be dinosaurs anymore (Teratosaurus). Perhaps it should be more restricted? In any case, our tagging doesn't seem to follow the stated scope:[16] FunkMonk (talk) 19:43, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Maybe more inclusive than exclusive, though can go either way on Teratosaurus (leaning no but not fussed really) Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:08, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

As we have it now, it seems to be that anything once thought to be dinosaurian falls under the project's view, but following that kind of causes a slippery slope, because then we could be having people saying that we should cover Smilodon and Mammut, since they get called dinosaurs a lot. That's why I have the scope as "anything currently classified somewhere in Dinosauria", because it cuts off some problematic things. It'll be good to have a thorough discussion, though. Raptormimus456 (talk) 19:36, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Psittacosaurus

I have nominated Psittacosaurus for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. DrKay (talk) 16:37, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Brontosaurus cite overkill

"Given such a long history of public affection for the name "Brontosaurus", it is perhaps no surprise that the more vociferous denunciations of the usage have elicited sharply defensive statements from those who would not wish to see the name be struck from official usage.[58] Nor is it unexpected that Tschopp's study,[3] which has seemingly "vindicated" the popular usage has generated a very high number of responses from many, often opposed, groups - of editorial,[61] news staff,[4][62] and personal blog nature (both related[63][64] and not[65]), from both[66] sides[6] of the debate, from related[67][68][69][70] and unrelated[71][72][73] contexts, and from all over the world.[74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86][87]"

Alright, there's absolutely no reason we need to have that many cites in one section. I suggest we cull the "In popular culture" section on the Brontosaurus article to remove most of the entirely redundant cites. Raptormimus456 (talk) 18:15, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

I've responded on the the Talk page. --Animalparty! (talk) 23:59, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Merge articles about anatomical features unique to some dinosaurs

I have proposed merging the otherwise popular article Thagomizer[17], as well as some other short articles. My comment there is as follows: "I know this will probably be an unpopular proposal, but this anatomical feature is only found in Stegosauria, so the short text here should simply be part of that article. Same with short articles about other anatomical features only found in specific groups of dinosaurs, such as Epoccipital and Rostral bone (should be merged into Ceratopsidae), and Predentary (should be merged into Ornithischia). ". FunkMonk (talk) 02:36, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

I have to say that I agree with you, it makes no sense for something that specific to have its own article, although we should really check to make sure (eg. silesaurids might share a predentary, ceratopsians might share epoccipital). I am certain the rostral bone is found from Yinlong to Ceratopsidae, so merge with Ceratopsia? IJReid ^discuss 20:45, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, merging seems obvious, but since thagomizer gets so many views, I fear there'll be a backlash if it isn't discussed thoroughly... FunkMonk (talk) 08:49, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

In the case of thagomizer, we could simply add the entire article in under its own subsection (e.g. Description > Thagomizer). IJReid ^discuss 14:11, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Ok, I'll give people some time to respond about thagomizer, but I think the other three can be merged without drama. I merged two with Ceratopsia, but predentary may be more iffy? FunkMonk (talk) 21:33, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, this can get slippery the more common or widespread a trait is. Sjould we merge skull with Craniata...? Dinoguy2 (talk) 16:08, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

The difference between these features and skull, is that these are not present in any living animals, unlike the skull. IJReid ^discuss 18:49, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, the features in question are found in very specific, extinct groups, and the articles (apart form thagomizer) are very short stubs. FunkMonk (talk) 23:46, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

That sounds like a good dividing line then. However, predentary is a bit tricky because it's found in both ornithischians and non-avian Euornithes. Obviously these are not homologous but the term "predentary" is commonly used for both. Dinoguy2 (talk) 23:17, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

A somewhat related discussion (or at least it made me think of this), seems we have a Sail (anatomy) article, which only covers neural spine sails of extinct reptiles, though it has been correctly pointed out at the talk page that fins and such back structures have also been called "sails". As for predentary, seems the article is then incorrect... FunkMonk (talk) 02:36, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Taxobox discussion

Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life#Redundancies in the taxoboxes for a discussion about the format of taxoboxes for species and below. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:16, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Stolen art

I come baring bad news today, someone is selling our our art on products without permission: http://www.zazzle.com/thecrucible/dinosaur?qs=dinosaur&pg=7 I don't know what, if anything, we can do about this but I thought I'd bring it to everyone's attention. Tomopteryx (talk) 22:21, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure this is a problem. As far as I know, all art on the commons has to be released on a license that permits commercial usage anyway. I guess it might suck that they aren't attributing to the artists, but its hard to do that in a visible way on a Tshirt without compromising the design. I say we ignore it. Abyssal (talk) 00:45, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Legally, they are forced to attribute the art to the artist. They do not. The art is claimed to be designed by "The Crucible", and does not give any mention to the actual artists. I have to see what I can do to try and get the art properly attributed, or I may have to report them somehow. On the item description it states "Artwork designed by The Crucible". IJReid ^discuss 04:50, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, CC licenses they have to attribute to the original artists, but not public domain images. And stuff like this has been going on for years, I saw some guys selling posters outside a Walking With Dinosaurs show some years ago[18], where all the images were Wikipedia art (including my own). FunkMonk (talk) 10:39, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

The other aspect is those images with the Share-alike part to the licence. That means that their designs based on Share-Alike images have to be realesed under the same or similar licence. So I think that means theoretically we could sell their designs and they couldn't do anything about it so long as we attribute and release them under same or similar licence.......I think. Steveoc 86 (talk) 17:20, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Yes, exactly that. But two key things are that the shirts are not attributed, and are not distributed under the same license (if shirts can be CC licensed). IJReid ^discuss 02:48, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

By the way, since the link is now dead, here's that bootleg WWD poster (it had WWD images on the other side) from 2010:[19] Several of those Wikipedia images now look much different... The nephew of my girlfriend at the time bought it after a show, and she recognised the Segnosaurus image... Which, oddly enough, has also been used in a Polish museum.[20] FunkMonk (talk) 22:50, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

What do we do about Malkani's dinosaurs

This is definitely not as severe as the situation with Ulansky, but Sadiq Malian has got quite a bit of uncovered names. I mean, since 2003 he has over 108 publications, and quite a few detail new/redescribed dinosaurs from Pakistan [21]. There's Gspsaurus, Maojandino, Nicksaurus, and many others. The situation with his papers isn't near as great as we could hope, with most papers formatted as if describing a new genus, yet referencing a previous paper for the original description of names. His most recent dinosaur-themed publication (linked above), contains the 3 names I mention above, as well as Pakisaurus, Brohisaurus, Sulaimanisaurus, Balochisaurus, Khetranisaurus, Marisaurus, Vitakridrinda, and Saraikimasoom, among other non-dinosaurs. The situation with family names are also very unsatisfactory. In all but the currently linked article by him I have seen, he refers to clades like "Pakisaurids/Titanosaurids", or "Balochisaurids/Saltasaurids", which makes it seems quite like he considers the two families synonymous. What shall we do? IJReid ^discuss 01:26, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, I only know his taxa because of this viral video[22] (the guy looks up the Wikipedia page for Pakisaurus at 1:46)... Any discussion of Malkani in the Dinosaur Mailing List archives? And what the heck, he named a species after himself?! FunkMonk (talk) 02:47, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

Naming species after yourself violates the ICZN code (I know because a young me was curious and checked). Also, I saw the video, but I first found out about all the dinosaurs after doing a bit of work on the Vitakridrinda. I saw on one DML post that the 2006 description link to a 2004 reference that was "in prep", and thus are Nomen nudum's, but the names themselves are diagnosed, described, and the only thing that doesn't happen is them being claimed as new names. IJReid ^discuss 04:16, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

Really, I think it's best to just continue treating them as a group of nomen nudum until we get better descriptions. We'll need better coverage before assuming anything about these genera, especially with how many times people make new names for things just to name them. Raptormimus456 (talk) 12:59, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Looking for feedback on a tool on Visual Editor to add open license text from other sources

Hi all

I'm designing a tool for Visual Editor to make it easy for people to add open license text from other sources, there are a huge number of open license sources compatible with Wikipedia including around 9000 journals. I can see a very large opportunity to easily create a high volume of good quality articles quickly. I have done a small project with open license text from UNESCO as a proof of concept, any thoughts, feedback or endorsements (on the Meta page) would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

--John Cummings (talk) 14:40, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

What's the Situation on Dubious Taxa in Formation Articles?

I've noticed a bit of inconsistency in the inclusion/exclusion of dubious and otherwise invalid taxa in articles for geologic formations. It started with Hell Creek, but it's happened in the Dinosaurs of the Morrison Formation article as well, where I've continuously un-done it. But it keeps happening, so I figured it'd be better to ask here on the consensus. Traditionally, as well as on pretty much every other formation article, they are included; additionally, it's clearly indicated they're invalid, so there's no downside; and it's useful information not easily found elsewhere. Lusotitan (talk) 20:50, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

I've always included them. Abyssal (talk) 16:13, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Maybe they could be included in a separate section, not alphabetically in with the valid taxa? Doing the latter can create a false impression of taxon diversity for people who aren't looking at the color code. Dinoguy2 (talk) 19:13, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Galvesaurus or Galveosaurus

This article has for a long time been accepted as Galveosaurus over Galvesaurus, for the reasons proposed in Sanchez-Hernandez in the 2006 reference on the page. However, I have gone through the literature about the taxon and it appears that that proposal was rejected by the authors of Galvesaurus. There paper was published July 1st, while Galveosaurus was published August 11th. This gives Galvesaurus priority. Anyone disagree that we should have Galvesaurus as the article, and Galveosaurus as the redirect? IJReid ^discuss 21:00, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

This situation doesn't seem so clear cut. The date in the Galvesaurus paper is listed as July-December 2005. Sanchez argues the paper was actually published December 18th. Barco and Canudo claim the paper was actually published July 1st, but only cite their original paper as evidence. Nobody seems to have attempted to refute Sanchez's date of December 18th, merely saying she is wrong, and that their claimed date is within the range of their paper's date. I personally don't understand why, if the Barco paper hit print in July, the print date is written July-December. How could a volume published in July contain any material published after July? It looks like a standard case of papers accumulated during that period being compiled and printed at the end of that period, which is why ICZN 21.6 even exists. Barco claims there is no reason to seek external evidence because the July 1 date is within the Jul-Dec range, but Sanchez presented evidence to the contrary in her paper, which should be enough to invoke the ICZN rule. So I side with Sanchez on the date issue unless Barco et al. publish some actual evidence that they put out a journal with the range July-December in July for some reason, and can explain why the print date on the journal as a whole is December 18th. The ethical issue is a different story, and Barco et al. seem to have a good case that Sanchez got the name from the plaque at the museum (that they allowed an unpublished name onto public display in the first place, was probably a bad idea...). But just because a name was coined unethically does not make it a junior synonym. Dinoguy2 (talk) 11:18, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

I know it is not very clear cut. However, even if the date was wrong, wouldn't this be a similar situation to Kulindapteryx vs Kulindadromeus. The whole reason Sanchez was able to change the date was because the date of July 1st wasn't within the range according to her, although it really is because she misread an issue number, Nº 15, as the date July 15th. If the date is within the range, then according to Article 21.2, the provided date should be accepted as correct, since there is no evidence to the contrary. IJReid ^discuss 14:40, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

"since there is no evidence to the contrary" This is the key issue. Sanchez claims there IS evidence to the contrary, which is what her 2006 paper was about. The 2012 paper seems not to have addressed that evidence, merely refuting her misinterpretation of 15 July vs. 1 July which really has no bearing on the issue either way. If Sanchez' claimed print date of December 18th can be refuted, it should be. If it can't, her name (unfortunately) stands. Kulindapteryx is somewhat similar but in that case the extra issue of online vs. print publication comes into play (it's not clear if Kulindapteryx was published in print before Kulindadromeus, though it was online before, and the online paper did not meet ICZN requirements. If Kulindapteryx was in print before Kulindadromeus, it is the correct name, stolen specimen or not). Dinoguy2 (talk) 19:18, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

I would be curious to see if other papers in this journal issue of Naturaleza Aragonesa have the same date, or if they range between July - December on the individual papers. If they all say July 1 this is evidence it was actually printed on that date. If not, that's evidence the volume came out later and was a compilation of papers completed during that entire date range. Unfortunately, I can't find any kind of archives for Naturaleza Aragon's online nor any other papers published in volume 15. If this was the only paper in that volume then the July 1 date should probably stand. Dinoguy2 (talk) 19:31, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

Dinosaurs articles by quality and importance

On the front page, I'm having trouble using the links. It takes a long time to load and when it finally does it says "Error 502: Bad Gateway". Anyone else have this problem?   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  18:24, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

I've been having the same problem for the last 40 hours or so. Plantdrew (talk) 18:54, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

• Not entirely related, but I just took a look at the ratings as they appear on the "popular pages". To me, it seems preposterous that the Disney Dinosaur movie is rated "mid importance" to the dino project, when it has little to no significance to the subject of dinosaurs, while well-known dinosaurs with a vast literature such as Plateosaurus and Tarbosaurus are supposedly of "low importance". I think all well-known dinosaurs with a vast literature should be of at least mid importance, and that most of the pop culture fluff should be of low importance. FunkMonk (talk) 03:24, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

Specimens of Archaeopteryx reassessment

I've devoted a great deal of time working to flesh out the Specimens of Archaeopteryx article, which was last assessed at C-class quite a long time ago. Requesting a quality reassessment at this stage. (Cross-posting this request to its other Wikiprojects, just fyi.) Thanks! -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 03:20, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Stegoceras at FAC

Stegoceras is now nominated for featured article candidate[23], any commons are welcome. FunkMonk (talk) 19:12, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

Plan to link taxobox-color category in taxobox infoboxes

The invalid-color taxoboxes need to show invalid-color header as:    Taxon    , so I am planning to shift the link for invalid taxobox-color category from {{taxobox_colour}} into {{Taxobox/core}} and {{Taxonomy_key}}, to link "Category:Taxoboxes with an invalid color" and thereby fix the error in taxobox column headers (which showed: colspan=2 style="text-align: center; background-color: transparent; text-align:center; border: 1px solid red"). An infobox column style format cannot contain a wikilinked page or category, as of September 2016. Discuss at:
Template talk:Taxobox#Invalid color category, for details. -Wikid77 (talk) 21:21, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

Komlosaurus

The recently created (or recreated article) Komlosaurus could use some expert eyes. From my perusing of sources, it appears to be an ichnotaxon, not a genuine dinosaur genus, and may be associated with/synonymous with the ichnogenus Grallator. Cheers, --Animalparty! (talk) 22:43, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Pinging Abyssal, who has started many ichno-articles. Mistakenly pinged Ashorocetus before, because my brain somehow associated ichnotaxa with ootaxa... FunkMonk (talk) 22:56, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Well, even though I am better with eggs, I reckon I could tackle this one. But I've been fairly busy lately. If Abyssal doesn't show interest in the next few weeks I can take a look. Ashorocetus (talk | contribs) 04:22, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

References for user-made paleoart used in featured articles

There has been some discussion about whether user-made palaeoart restorations used in featured articles should have references on their description pages, see here:[24] It appears they should, so perhaps we should encourage this practice? The FA criteria have become much stricter since most of the dino FAs were nominated. FunkMonk (talk) 10:10, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

I have been doing this for a while and think that for the most part it's a good idea. The downside is it could give the impression a piece of palaeoart is more accurate then it is.

What I like to do is simply bullet point in the description and state where the proportions come from, what's known of the animal (so like if you have a fragmentary animal you can state proportions based on some other related animal), areas of uncertainty like colour. I usually like to try and state my reasoning for certain details like skin which for a lot of dinosaurs there is the possibility of feathers, scales or both. I try to make the uncertainties clear in the description. The issue with this is it does boarder the line of original research.

The other issue is how 'conservative' do we go with restorations? I agree a lot with the 'All Yesterdays' movement but the downside is it could give the impression an animal has a certain special feature for which there is no evidence for. I, for the most part, try and stay to the more conservative side, especially on Wikipedia. Steveoc 86 (talk) 11:56, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, I think your approach is exemplary. No matter what, some features will always be "original research", but it seems the editors at the FA talk page are fine with that, as long as there is some sort of citation so the image can be verified. The problem is we have a giant backlog of images (many of which are in FAs) drawn by people who are not active anymore, but the FA folks have greenlit that we can add references to those if we for example check and see they match some published skeletal reconstructions, though we don't know what exact references that were used by the artists... FunkMonk (talk) 13:09, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

2016 Community Wishlist Survey Proposal to Revive Popular Pages

Greetings WikiProject Dinosaurs/Archive 26 Members!

This is a one-time-only message to inform you about a technical proposal to revive your Popular Pages list in the 2016 Community Wishlist Survey that I think you may be interested in reviewing and perhaps even voting for:

• Fix and improve Mr.Z-bot's popular pages report

If the above proposal gets in the Top 10 based on the votes, there is a high likelihood of this bot being restored so your project will again see monthly updates of popular pages.

Further, there are over 260 proposals in all to review and vote for, across many aspects of wikis.

Thank you for your consideration. Please note that voting for proposals continues through December 12, 2016.

Best regards, Stevietheman — Delivered: 17:58, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Automated taxonomy system errors

See #Update – the examples of excessive expansion depth below are out-of-date.

In some articles, such as Abavornis and Enantiornithes, the automated taxoboxes (whether Speciesbox or Automatic taxobox) do not display correctly. This shows up at the corresponding "Template:Taxonomy/..." templates, i.e. Template:Taxonomy/Abavornis and Template:Taxonomy/Enantiornithes. If you move up the taxonomic hierarchy, e.g. to Ornithothoraces and Template:Taxonomy/Ornithothoraces, then all is well.

The underlying reason is that there is a limit on the depth of expansion of templates allowed in Wikipedia pages. Various fixes have been implemented to get round this limit in the automated taxobox system (see the comments by the expert editor Wikid77 at User talk:Peter coxhead#Automated taxonomy system errors) but in the end if editors keep adding intermediate levels to the taxonomic hierarchy stored in the "Template:Taxonomy/..." templates, the problem re-appears.

The real solution, in my view, is to cut out levels in the taxonomic hierarchy, since the technical people that run the Wikimedia software aren't going to allow more template expansion depth. If you look at Template:Taxonomy/Ornithothoraces there simply can't be almost 40 levels before you reach Dinosauria. I would urge that 5–10 levels be cut out. The levels mostly seem to concern dinosaurs, which is why I've posted here. I'm no expert in this area, so I have no idea of the best levels to remove.

The alternative is that articles about "deep" levels will have to use manual taxoboxes. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:54, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

The number of levels is of course getting out of control. As you say, there is no prospect of the software coping with 50 or more levels any time soon. It is also not convenient for taxoboxes to be loaded with so much information. Effectively all the surplus levels are either unranked groupings, or clades which have not been adopted as traditional ranks (Phyla, Classes, etc). The obvious suggestion would be to leave all such clades out of the hierarchy. This would leave dinosaurs with the hierarchy

Animalia/Eumetazoa/Deuterostomia /Chordata/Vertebrata/Gnathostomata /Tetrapoda/Reptilia

which ought really to be enough detail. Cladograms within articles can give more detail as appropriate. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:20, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

I'm not a huge fan of that system, very hard to find the broken chains etc., and even to just add a taxobox to a new article... But well, guess we have to live with it. Maybe some levels could be commented out or something, if that even works, because it may be relevant to show different higher levels in different articles, etc. FunkMonk (talk) 14:43, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Different higher levels can be (and indeed are) shown in different articles, typically via |display_parents=. Unfortunately, even if the intermediate levels aren't shown (by default only "major ranks" are), the system still has to check each level, if only to find the next one. Hence so as long as the taxonomy templates are present in the taxonomic hierarchy, there's a problem. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:46, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

But why is there even a limit? As I said earlier, I don't think it is a good idea to simply remove some ranks, as some might be relevant to show in some articles, and some in others. FunkMonk (talk) 17:03, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

The limit seems to be a purely practical one - the amount of processing which is required, or maybe the stack depth (let's guess there's some recursion in there...); but from the point of view of an article, it's awful having an enormous long taxobox. I've taken a look at the hierarchy, and editing it would be, ah, interesting. We could (if agreed) easily short-circuit some of the levels (by pointing from one to whatever is several levels above it), but the intermediate levels would still be there, and could be used by other taxa. So it's already possible for some articles to show one thing, some another, even using the auto-taxobox mechanism. Actually slimming down the hierarchy would, it seems, involve AfD-ing a whole lot of taxo-pages - presumably, quite a "challenge". That doesn't mean that cutting it down isn't desirable or possible. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:08, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

@FunkMonk and Chiswick Chap: there's a limit because it's built into the software which runs Wikipedia and other wikis. Recursion is actually forbidden in the template language, but there's still a depth limit: one template can call a different one which then calls another and so on (necessary to move up the taxonomic hierarchy), but this can only happen 40 times and then it just stops.

@Chiswick Chap: It's not necessary to actually delete the taxonomy templates. Suppose there was a taxonomic hierarchy like the following (shown sideways for convenience):

A ← B ← C ← D ← E ← F ← G ← H ← I

and we decided that only those in bold should be able to be shown for levels below I. Then the upwards links (|parent= in the "Template:Taxonomy/..." templates) could be changed to produce hierarchies like this:

A ← D ← G ← I

A ← B ← C

D ← E ← F

G ← H

All that's happened is that the links upwards from the "bold" levels are changed to go to another "bold" level. The rest are left alone. Then an article about B, C, E, F or H, or about a taxon whose parent is one of these, can still use the automated taxobox system. It's just that all the five "non-bold" levels will be skipped once a "bold" level is reached.

This is the approach that I personally favour, but as I noted above, it's not for me to say for dinosaurs which levels should be treated as the "bold" ones in my example. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:37, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

That short-circuiting is exactly what I suggested above. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:39, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Um, yes, but you said that AfD'ing would be needed, and my point above is that it isn't. All that's needed is to change the values of |parent= in some templates. Consensus here will be enough for that, if there are more participants. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:44, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

No I didn't, I said it would be needed if we wanted actually to clean up the mess. We agree we can short out the long lists, and that it would be enough for our immediate purposes, but it isn't great leaving heaps of shorted-out trash behind, is it? Even if some do wish to use it in other places - they'll only want to put it back again if it's all still lying about, and AfDing would be needed to prevent that. Still, we can try what you suggest first, and see what happens. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:56, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

What does the "mess" refer to, errors? Some errors also seem to simply be due to vandalism on a specific taxon template, which then gets inherited all the way down the hierarchy... Perhaps they should all be protected from IP address edits... Though I think this would never be done, due to the "everyone cna edit" policy. FunkMonk (talk) 20:47, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps, but more likely simply over-enthusiasm for putting in every suggestion of a clade from anyone's cladistic analysis supported by goodness knows what evidence; even if they're correct, we don't necessarily want them all here. And once someone has put in Peter's B, C, E, F, and H clades, it's remarkably difficult to get them all out again. Chiswick Chap (talk) 21:00, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Personally I think we have too many dinosaur clade articles as well (every three or four genera seem to have their own clade name), but it is kind of impossible to know where to draw "the line" for inclusion. Same for these taxobox hierarchies. FunkMonk (talk) 21:21, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

I think we all agree that this needs fixing, and I think the best thing to do would be what Peter coxhead described above, with different levels that collapse when a major clade is found. I also agree with FunkMonk that we probably have too many clades at this momment, but I do think finding a fix takes priority over making sure every article has the hierarchy it specifically needs. If all the people involved in this discussion agree, then I think we should start a project-wide discussion on which clades become "bold", and which we are okay with being not shown in taxoboxes. IJReid ^discuss 23:37, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

• Need new parameter majorparent=xxx: Although the recent {taxobox_colour} template-depth errors have been fixed, for now, by listing intermediate taxon levels in {{Taxonomy/Dinosauromorpha}}, a long-term solution is needed to hide the minor clades. Because the numerous clades are cluttering the overall table of taxon levels, there should be a new optional parameter "majorparent=xxx" to skip higher above the current "parent=yyy" and avoid the template nesting limit in some pages. Previously, the {taxobox} templates have been re-structured to allow 54 taxon levels, but now need to handle 70 or more taxon levels with class Reptilia, which might be possible by further re-structuring this month. -Wikid77 (talk) 10:51, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

I'm against allowing more taxon levels (as it seems are the other editors that have commented here). The |majorparent= solution seems better to me. How would the system determine when to skip, given that it works upwards and so doesn't know how many levels are above? Or would it always skip to the major parent? Peter coxhead (talk) 11:08, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

If possible, I would recommend that the taxon box shows the immediate parent of a taxon, and then the lowest majorparent. As such, if we had a genus, eg. Tyrannosaurus, it would display the parent Tyrannosaurinae, and then the next majorparent, which will probably be agreed to be Tyrannosauridae. Then we can work our way up the tree skipping the unimportant clades but displaying every subsequent majorparent. IJReid ^discuss 17:13, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

The |display_parents= parameter should continue to be obeyed; normally it defaults to 1, achieving the effect IJReid points out. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:27, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Updating templates to list non-nested taxon-ranks

After waiting years for the wp:developers to (not) increase the 40-level limit to process more taxon levels, instead I will modify the {Taxonomy/xxx} templates to list some 20 taxon sub-levels as 20 taxon parameters rather than 20 nested taxon templates. By that method, a level such as {{Taxonomy/Ornithothoraces}} could be modified to show the same taxon list but run 20 levels fewer of the 40-level depth limit, and then all {Taxonomy/xxx} templates which list "Ornithothoraces" would also run 20 levels less deep. Overall, a similar modification of a few key {Taxonomy/xxx} templates would fix numerous pages which currently exceed the "wp:expansion depth limit". -Wikid77 (talk) 04:09, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Um... If I understand your proposal, the danger is that "Taxonomy/..." templates which cover the same part of the taxonomic hierarchy could then show inconsistent taxonomies. If this is the case, I don't think this is the way forward. I would prefer the system to respond better to excessive depth, e.g. simply stopping the display with a message like "taxon display truncated due to excessive depth". As noted by others above, ridiculous numbers of minor clades are the real problem. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:44, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

We could start by listing just 5 non-nested levels ...to show the same display, perhaps in {{Taxonomy/Archosauromorpha}} to have "parent=Reptilia" but also list the 5 intermediate clades (Eureptilia, Romeriida, Diapsida, Neodiapsida and Sauria) to show the same taxo hierarchy but run 5 fewer levels less deep. However if that is not enough, then long term, list more non-nested levels, up to 20 taxon levels if needed some day. The strategy would be to list the clades/ranks which are unlikely to change, but also allow for different clades in the nested taxons. If not above Archosauromorpha, then perhaps listed above another taxon. The goal would be to list up to 75 levels of taxons, where the readers would not see any nest errors in a taxonomy display. Later, debate which clades to omit totally. -Wikid77 (talk) 16:58, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

I'm still not enthusiastic about this "solution". It messes up the proper structure of the classification tree, and has the potential to create duplications. Suppose there's the hierarchy A ← B ← C ← D ← E ← F, with A, B and F agreed to be "major" and the others "minor". So we set up "Taxonomy/F" with |parent=B and then "Taxonomy/B" with |parent=A and new "intermediate" parameters with values C, D and E. We delete "Taxonomy/C", "Taxonomy/D" and "Taxonomy/E" along with the articles on C, D and E – assuming there's a consensus for the deletions.

What happens now if an editor creates an article on D, regardless of the prior deletion – perhaps because there are now several more papers using this clade. They find there's no "Taxonomy/D" template and create one. Nothing prevents this, but now we have duplication and potential differences – e.g. "Taxonomy/D" might be given |parent=B.

It's a clever workaround for the problem, but like all workarounds, doesn't actually solve it. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:36, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Indeed, this current fix is just a workaround, until the taxobox templates can be changed to have a new parameter "majorparent=xxx" to skip the minor taxons, when needed, and avoid template-nesting limits. -Wikid77 (talk) 10:51, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Taxoboxes with an invalid color

Enantiornitheans
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Clade:	Dinosauria
Clade:	Saurischia
Clade:	Theropoda
Clade:	Avialae
Clade:	Ornithothoraces
Clade:	†Enantiornithes

Enantiornitheans
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Clade:	Dinosauria
Clade:	Saurischia
Clade:	Theropoda
Clade:	Avialae
Clade:	Ornithothoraces
Clade:	†Enantiornithes

The reported examples Abavornis and Enantiornithes are currently not in Category:Pages where expansion depth is exceeded. They show exposed table formatting code in the infoboxes, so the error must be something other than expansion depth. I investigated Enantiornithes after Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Error in Enantiornithes template(s). There appears to be two issues. 1) It produces Category:Taxoboxes with an invalid color. 2) The category code is produced in a place which breaks the table formatting.

{{Automatic taxobox|name = Enantiornitheans|taxon = Enantiornithes}} produces the first infobox to the right. It currently displays this twice: colspan=2 style="text-align: center; background-color: transparent; text-align:center; border: 1px solid red; |. It's possible to remove the category from the output by using {{Replace}} to replace it with emtpy. I did that in the second infobox. It currently displays no code but has a red border and no background color for "Enantiornitheans" and "Scientific classification".

Special:ExpandTemplates shows that {{taxobox colour|taxon=Enantiornithes}} produces: transparent; text-align:center; border: 1px solid red;[[Category:Taxoboxes with an invalid color]]. For comparison with working code in Tyrannosaurus, {{taxobox colour|taxon=Tyrannosaurus}} produces: rgb(235,235,210). PrimeHunter (talk) 11:43, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Whether or not it gets into Category:Pages where expansion depth is exceeded, the problem is caused by the excessive depth of the taxonomic hierarchy. You can easily see that if you look at these pages:

• Template:Taxonomy/Abavornis
• Template:Taxonomy/Euenantiornithes
• Template:Taxonomy/Enantiornithes

The first two fail to show the full taxonomic hierarchy in the table to the right; the last does, because the hierarchy is one shorter. If you temporarily cut out a level, e.g. set |parent=Ornithothoraces in Template:Taxonomy/Euenantiornithes and then preview, you'll see the problem disappear. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:51, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Update

The examples above of excessive expansion depth are now out of date.

1. I have altered the code that displays the taxonomic hierarchy when viewing a "Template:Taxonomy/..." page so that it shows clearly where minor taxa have been hard-coded in the template below, or where a "skip" template has been used to skip minor taxa. See, e.g., Template:Taxonomy/Tyrannosaurus, where the downward arrows show hard-coding and the ... lines show skips.
2. Mainly by introducing "skip" templates (I prefer these to Wikid77's solution of hard-coding) and also through some small changes to the templates driving the automated taxobox system, I have managed to empty Category:Pages where expansion depth is exceeded of articles – at least as of today!

Hard-coding and skip templates are necessary for the present, but not the best solution, which is, in my view, Wikid77's suggestion of introducing |majorparent=. My idea would be to follow |parent= for, say, the first five ancestors of a taxon, so that |display_parents= could force them to be displayed, but after that always follow |majorparent=, which would lead to a major rank or an important clade. However, changing the automated taxobox system is very tricky, since it's right on the edge of exceeding the allowed expansion depth, even when it does work, and even apparently innocuous changes can cause it to fail.

Currently, there are some fixes needed to the taxobox colour determining system, which I have working in sandbox versions, but need some more testing before being made live. Peter coxhead (talk) 23:19, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Further update See Template talk:Automatic taxobox/Archive 13#Lua coding. I believe that all of the problems discussed above will disappear in the next few days. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:29, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Many skip templates can now be removed

Now that I have finished re-coding the "traversal" part of the automated taxobox system in Lua (a few very small parts need a bit more work), skip taxonomy templates introduced solely to reduce the depth of the taxonomic hierarchy can be removed, and I've started cautiously removing them. Thus Template:Taxonomy/Tyrannosaurus now has no skips and the article Tyrannosaurus has an expansion depth of only 24 compared to the maximum allowed of 40.

Important: this only applies to skip taxonomy templates previously used to reduce depth. Skip templates are still needed in the taxonomic hierarchies for taxa like Mammalia or Aves because editors in wikiprojects concerned with those taxa want to treat them as Linnaean classes, which is not compatible with treating the clade Reptilia as a class. All skip taxa used to avoid incorrect ordering of Linnaean ranks must be retained. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:02, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

I have now removed more skip templates in the "dinosaur" part of the taxonomic hierarchy; see e.g. Template:Taxonomy/Ornithurae which now has 61 levels, impossible to process correctly before. I can't see any problems which this caused, but please let me know if you spot any. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:33, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Inconsistent taxonomies for extinct birds

Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Birds#Inconsistent taxonomies; many bird and bird-related taxoboxes still show inconsistent ranks, and this needs fixing. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:00, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Following naming conventions

I've noticed that our project doesn't follow Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna). More specifically, here, we use the IMO ugly format of "genus name (dinosaur)" where the genus name is in use elsewhere, instead of the "binomial name" for our taxa. However, this is the exact opposite of what we should be doing if we follow Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna)#Monotypic taxa, where it says to have the binomial as the article name and the other format redirecting to that name. I do think that format should be used here because is looks better, and with monotypic taxa, does not have nearly any impact on the article otherwise. IJReid ^discuss 19:06, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Hmmm, I wonder whether it has changed at some point. I think it's a bit weird that we should be so inconsistent. Maybe this discussion should be kept at the paleo project, where it is already begun, to centralise comments. And because we shouldn't do anything different here than in other taxon articles. Or perhaps this should even be discussed at the Tree of Life project. FunkMonk (talk) 22:56, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Looks as though this rule was added in February. Firsfron of Ronchester 07:40, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, I was confused too, because above that, it says "should go under the scientific name of lowest rank, but no lower than the monotypic genus", which would appear to be contradictory. Seems there was no discussion of this change. Maybe Peter coxhead has some insight? FunkMonk (talk) 12:08, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

It's important to read the part that is quoted above in context: it's in a section about monotypic taxa and it says, correctly, that policy is, and has been for a long time, that articles on monotypic taxa should be at the lowest level but not lower than genus. In context I don't think it's at all contradictory, although it has the one exception. See WP:MONOTYPICFLORA, which may be clearer.

The bit I added about monotypic genera that need disambiguation was already clearly stated at Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life#Article titles: in the event that the name of a monotypic genus is shared with another topic, it is usually more appropriate to use a binomial as a natural disambiguation rather than creating an article with a parenthetical disambiguating term for the genus (and indeed was already clearly stated at WP:NCFLORA). It is based on long-standing practice derived from WP:NCDAB, namely that natural disambiguation should be considered before parenthetical. For a monotypic genus the natural disambiguation is the species name. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:24, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the response, PC. You state above that these are long-standing policies, but they are actually guidelines, and it's not clear to me that they are long-standing at all. WP:NCDAB gives the example of using mechanical fan over fan (mechanical) because these would be the natural search terms. It doesn't say anything about disambiguating taxa names. You cite Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life#Article titles, but this was added in March 2016. And as I already observed, you added the content in WP:NCFAUNA in February 2016. WP:NCFLORA doesn't pertain to this project. It seems as though the guideline was added in contravention to actual editing practice. Firsfron of Ronchester 18:51, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

@Firsfron: you wouldn't expect WP:NCDAB to cover every kind of article; I cited it to show that parenthesized disambiguation is recommended only when natural disambiguation fails. Are you saying that the species name for a monotypic genus is less natural than "genus_name (disambiguator)"? See also WP:NATURALDIS: parenthetical disambiguation... Wikipedia's standard disambiguation technique when none of the other solutions lead to an optimal article title; here the solution of using the species name clearly leads to a better, if not optimal, title.

Let me be clear that I have no particular axe to grind. Like Plantdrew, I'm sure, I was just trying to clarify what is apparently the main practice in regard to monotypic genera in most groups, fauna or flora. Look through Category:Monotypic animal genera and see how many entries of the form "genus_name (disambiguator)" are articles and how many are redirects, either to English names or species. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:13, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

(As an aside, Category:Monotypic fish genera shows up a different issue – the genus redirect should be categorized as being monotypic, not the species article. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:13, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi Peter, I didn't think you had an axe to grind; didn't even enter my mind. No worries there. Yes, I am saying the species name for a monotypic dinosaur genus is less natural than "genus_name (disambiguator)". This is because dinosaurs and some other prehistoric reptiles are not known by their specific names; can you even identify the specific names for the (currently monotypic) Styracosaurus, Hadrosaurus, or Brachiosaurus without looking them up? Outside of T. rex, I can't think of a single dinosaur known to the general public by its binomial. A one size fits all approach won't work across all Tree of Life projects. I ask you to consider the reader. It's been long known on this project that the majority of readers of dinosaur articles are children. I pity the child asked by his or her teacher to do a report on Saturnalia and getting the wrong article because s/he doesn't know whether to go to Saturnalia tupiniquim, Saturnalia (Macrobius), or Saturnalia Fossa. You know, because you have edited articles; but we're writing for readers. Saturnalia (dinosaur) is certainly more natural to the end user than forcing that end user to try to guess what the specific name is.

@Firsfrons: of course readers should never have to guess what the specific name is, nor whether to look for "Saturnalia" or "Saturnalia (dinosaur)", and they won't have to. There will always be redirects and hatnotes to make sure that the correct article is easily found. It's a mistake to think that the article title is the key for searching. It's there to provide a consistent and unambiguous identifier for an article. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:49, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi Peter, redirects and hatnotes don't show up in the search bar. The reader would be confronted with the following options: Saturnalia tupiniquim, Saturnalia (Macrobius), or Saturnalia Fossa. That's not helpful for the end user, and that's only one example. You are asking the reader to guess what the specific name is, and many prehistoric animals simply are not known to the general public by their binomial names. That's one reason this project (and some others) have used disambiguators like Saturnalia (dinosaur). It's a naming convention that was worked well, and which has been followed since at least 2004 (maybe earlier): see the editing histories at Gastonia (plant) Gastonia (dinosaur), Saturnalia (dinosaur), etc. The edit you made in 2016, without discussion, and then reverted to when it was removed by @FunkMonk:, goes against long-standing editing practice. Will you revert your addition until this can be properly discussed, either here or at another venue? Firsfron of Ronchester 19:51, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't understand your argument. If I type "Saturnalia" in the search bar, I get to Saturnalia, whose hatnote leads me to Saturnalia (disambiguation) and hence Saturnalia (dinosaur). If it's clear that the dinosaur sense of "Saturnalia" is a very common search, it can be included directly in the hatnote. You are of course free to revert any of my edits. This one simply reflects actual majority practice across fauna articles. I've suggested a revision below which could apply to extinct taxa. It would be useful to discuss that, but my edit and Plantdrew's are correct for extant taxa. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:21, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Finally, I don't know what to make of the assertions, made repeatedly and now by multiple users, and still uncorrected, that WP:NCDAB is a "long-standing policy". Firsfron of Ronchester 23:39, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

@Firsfron: my use of the word "policy" was not intended to make any point about "policy" vs. "guidelines". Template:Wikipedia policies and guidelines puts WP:Disambiguation under "guidelines". I'm never sure about (and not very interested in) some of the distinctions between "policy" and "guidelines", so I asked SMcCandlish to comment, since he's been much more involved in these issues. Regardless of its status, WP:Disambiguation is clear that parenthetical disambiguation is not the first choice. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:42, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I added some text to Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life#Article titles relatively recently. But some monotypic genera with ambiguous names have been placed at the naturally disambiguated binomial title at least as far back as 2010. And this issue has come up multiple times at WP:TOL; e.g. here, here and here. There's a lot more discussion than that, and I'm too lazy to dig for the threads where the decision for having monotypic taxa at the lowest rank (but no lower than genus!!!) was hashed out in the first place (I'll look for them if anybody insists though). My impression of those threads is that stopping at genus was heavily influenced by paleontology focused editors, and I agree that it makes a great deal of sense not to create articles for paleontological species in most cases. My impression of the most recent discussion about using binomials to disambiguate ambiguous dinosaur genera (here) is that people who were opposed to doing so were concerned about conflict with NCFAUNA and TOL article title advice. If you look through Category:Monotypic animal genera as Peter suggested, using the binomial to disambiguate ambiguous monotypic genera is not a fringe solution, although it's far from universal. Plants are mostly standardized to the binomial in this situation. Arthropods have a strong lean to the binomial. Birds and mammals are at common names, so the issue comes up less. Fishes usually have monotypic genera at the binomial, contrary to practice with other organisms.

If dinosaur folks agree that it's best to consistently have everything at genus (with parenthetical disambiguators when needed), I have no objection. But I don't think that's necessarily the best solution for non-paleontological genera, nor do I think that the words of TOL and NCFAUNA were handed down from on high in 2007 and can't be modified to reflect practices that have developed more recently. Plantdrew (talk) 04:08, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Agreed that consistency is needed between the NCFAUNA and NCFLORA guidelines, and WP:DINO's "Dinosaur taxa naming conventions" wikiproject advice. The last time there was a PoV-fork between some of these guidelines (and some project pages) it lead to a whole lot of drama. Also agree that the NCDAB policy (yes, a policy, not a guideline) favors natural disambiguation over parenthetic. Also agreed that forking the discussion onto multiple pages isn't helpful. I would suggest an RfC at WT:NCFAUNA proposing a clarification, and notices at all the above-mentioned places, including ToL, and perhaps also WP:VPPOL, just to be on the safe side (even projects you may not be thinking of like WP:FELIDS may care, since they also cover extinct taxa). Whatever the result is, it should be worked into MOS:ORGANISMS, too. Finally, who added what, when, is really of no consequence; everything on WP was added by someone, at some point. "You added this yourself, so it can't be right" isn't valid reasoning. If it's been around a while it probably resolves to some level of consensus or it would have been reverted. The issue before us is to reconcile conflicts between local consensuses and each other, and more importantly between them and the site-wide guidelines and policies. NCFAUNA appears to not have evolved (pun kinda intended) with extinct taxa very clearly in mind, and can probably be adjusted easily, if there's agreement between wikiprojects who most often deal with extinct taxa.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  22:46, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

I agree entirely with the need for consistency. If the choice for monotypic genera needing disambiguation is between

1. using the binomial in all cases
2. using the disambiguated genus name in all cases
3. using the binomial in all cases except extinct dinosaurs (and perhaps some other extinct animals)

then the worst option is surely (3). I actually have a slight personal preference for (2) over (1), but this would go against established practice and require hundreds (if not more) moves to produce consistency.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Peter coxhead (talk • contribs) 09:56, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

PS: I don't even mean that there should be total titling consistency (after all, we are mostly using binomials for plants, but not for animals), but rather that the guidelines and other documentation should not be in conflict, whatever the desired naming convention turns out to be. I agree that there probably isn't a good rationale to treat dinosaurs differently. I could see there being an argument to treat extinct life forms a particular way, and monotypic genera a particular way, and for these to be in conflict, so I would hope that we'd come up with a solution that avoided such conflict.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  05:07, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes, to clarify I mean consistency in the guidelines (as far as is sensible) so that editors working in more than one area of of the tree of life don't have to remember to switch conventions, and readers can learn what to expect.

Proposal The disagreement only seems to be over a very small subset of cases, namely extinct monotypic genera needing disambiguation. It would be possible to write a guideline allowing a choice in such cases, e.g. that the binomial should be used when it would be appropriate to have an article on the species, otherwise the disambiguated genus should be used. This is consistent with the treatment of extinct organisms, where separate species articles rarely make sense because of the lack of information. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:29, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Since there is already major inconsistency in whether common names are used in titles of living taxa or not (reptiles, fungi, plants seem to use binomials), it appears there is some room for flexibility. FunkMonk (talk) 14:39, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm all for flexibility, so long as its purpose is to serve readers, and not just to meet the preferences of different groups of editors. I don't think the mixture of English and scientific names is a good comparison. There will always be a mixture, except perhaps in small, very well known groups, since most taxa don't have English names, and where they do exist, they are frequently ambiguous, being used for different taxa, particularly in different countries. By contrast, we don't have to have a mixture of disambiguated genus names and binomials for monotypic genera needing disambiguation. We have a real choice to make. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:39, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

WikiJournal of Science promotion

The WikiJournal of Science is a start-up academic journal which aims to provide a new mechanism for ensuring the accuracy of Wikipedia's scientific content. It is part of a WikiJournal User Group that includes the flagship WikiJournal of Medicine.. Like Wiki.J.Med, it intends to bridge the academia-Wikipedia gap by encouraging contributions by non-Wikipedians, and by putting content through peer review before integrating it into Wikipedia. Since it is just starting out, it is looking for contributors in two main areas: Editors See submissions through external academic peer review Format accepted articles Promote the journal Authors Original articles on topics that don't yet have a Wikipedia page, or only a stub/start Wikipedia articles that you are willing to see through external peer review (either solo or as in a group, process analagous to GA / FA review) Image articles, based around an important medical image or summary diagram If you're interested, please come and discuss the project on the journal's talk page, or the general discussion page for the WikiJournal User group.

T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 10:39, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Taxonomy templates updated

Project members who create taxonomy templates, please see Wikipedia talk:Automated taxobox system#Taxonomy templates updated. Peter coxhead (talk) 23:05, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Default number of parent taxa displayed in an automated species taxobox

Please see Template talk:Speciesbox#Default number of parent taxa displayed for a question about the default number of parent taxa to be displayed in an automated taxobox for a species. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:19, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

We need to talk about Ornithoscelida

So Ornithoscelida was just resurrected, and this will have pretty big implications for our taxobox hierarchies, and some articles as well. But I think we should wait until/if this gets wider acceptance before we change the hierarchies and start redirecting articles, etc... The automatic taxobox of Theropoda was already changed[25], but this seems premature. Any thoughts on how we deal with this? FunkMonk (talk) 20:32, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

I definitely think we should wait and see how other papers/publications handle this and take their lead. The numerous re-definitions used in the new paper alone are... extremely problematic. Omitting historically important taxa, re-defining some taxa because of issues caused by the redefinitions of others, etc. none of the new definitions seem to be anywhere near PhyloCode compliant. The reaction from many others who work on dinosaur phylogeny on social media at the moment seems to be that the conclusions of the paper look pretty solid but of course warrant further testing, and that the rejiggering of all the names is going way too far. Andrea Cau, who I'd consider one of the top workers on theropod phylogeny at the moment, is using some language to describe this situation that I can't repeat here ;) Dinoguy2 (talk) 21:18, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

We should clearly wait. This is fairly controversial at the moment, and as yet only Darren Naish has discussed it, and he didn't really reveal his opinion on the topic. IJReid ^discuss 22:43, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Tom Holtz is writing a Letter to Nature. As a prominent taxonomist in the field, we should be able to get a lot more solid ground based on what he agrees with, and get much shakier regarding what he disagrees with. (Based on his comments so far, I think the big picture taxonomy seems fairly secure but he like others has issues with some of the new clade definitions, specifically for Saurischia). Dinoguy2 (talk) 16:03, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

I definitely agree we should wait before a total restructuring, but this does need to have mention on all the relevant pages. On a broader note, though, if the taxonomy of a taxon is the subject of debate, what is the NPOV way to make a taxobox? Ashorocetus (talk | contribs) 13:13, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

There is no totally NPOV way to make a taxobox. Their very nature requires the choice of one particular view. I guess in cases of real conflict, it would be possible to present two or more taxoboxes, but we never do, as far as I know. Remember that the purpose of a taxobox is to locate the taxon and guide readers around our articles, rather than present a definitive taxonomic view. All reliably sourced alternatives should, of course, be discussed in the article. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:02, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

• Outsider comment: I just want say in an authentic and non-ass-kissing way that I genuinely and frankly impressed with how on the ball your editors here are. I wish all WPs were the same  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 01:02, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
• Holy shit this is the first I'm hearing about this! Abyssal (talk) 16:38, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
• To truly have no point of view, shouldn't we just state that the major clades are Ornithischia, Sauropodomorpha, and Theropoda and list taxa that haven't been clearly put into those three? Wikkler (talk) 20:01, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

That could be a good idea (if I understand you correctly) if two distinct camps emerge. But as for now, we only have a single paper with no responses for or against in the literature. So for example the parent of Theropoda in the taxobox would just be Dinosauria, without either Saurischia or Ornithoscelida. FunkMonk (talk) 20:03, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, that was what I was suggesting. Wikkler (talk) 20:12, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

The old Huxley paper is an interesting read. Interesting, it strikes a bit of as stretch that it can be shoehorned to cover this latter (in Nature) grouping though does so sort of nicely if one focusses on the families and not genera....just chuck out a couple of stray sauropods :) Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:37, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

• Seemingly inspired by the resurrection of Ornithoscelida, a user has created an article out of the redirect Phytodinosauria, a group which no one uses, and was never widely supported anyway. I agree it should be dealt with in the dinosaur article, but I don't see why it, as pretty much a junior synonym, should have an article. FunkMonk (talk) 15:28, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
• I agree that this hypothesis should not be treated as the standard as of now, though I propose the idea of presenting it as an alternative classification in the main Dinosauria article. Raptormimus456 (talk) 21:51, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Scope of the project

A definition of the project's scope was added without any discussion[26], and states the project covers avian dinosaurs too. This is problematic, since so far avian dinosaurs are not tagged as part of this project. So how should we phylogeneticically define the project? Are dinosauromorphs included? Are birds included? Or is it specifically about non-avian dinosaurs? Avians are covered by Wikiproject birds anyway, so covering them here would be redundant.

Another issue is popular media: do things like Dinosaur (movie) belong here? And if that case, why not Jurassic Park or Dinotopia? Should all dinosaur related media be tagged by this project, or should we only cover taxa and palaeontological subjects that relate to dinosaurs? I think it would be best to restrict it to scientific subjects, the editors here rarely edit dinosaur pop media articles anyway. FunkMonk (talk) 11:49, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Hmm, seems this got a bit overshadowed by the discussion below, but the scope still needs some kind of definition. FunkMonk (talk) 21:53, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Since this is pretty important to sort out, I've made the following draft for a scope, based on the one at the Bird Project:

"This WikiProject aims to help organise Wikipedia's articles and lists about dinosaurs. This includes entries about dinosaur taxa, biology, and any other relevant scientific aspects, including publications, researchers, locations, and documentaries. The scope does not include fictional works, which are better covered by other projects. WikiProject Dinosaurs covers taxa within Dinosauriformes (non-avian dinosaurs and their closest relatives), with the cut-off point being Euavialae (modern birds and their closest fossil relatives). Though modern birds are dinosaurs, these are better covered by the devoted WP:WikiProject Birds."

Any thoughts? Pinging more or less active members: Casliber, Dinoguy2, Firsfron, J. Spencer, IJReid, Lythronaxargestes, MWAK, Jens Lallensack, Abyssal, Raptormimus456, Rextron, Rnnsh, Albertonykus. FunkMonk (talk) 20:35, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Tagging all modern birds would be a bit impractical :o). But would it not be very practical if the criterion was not phylogenetic but temporal? Let us cover the Cretaceous forms. Is Jeholornis not on our turf? While popular culture clearly is a very different subject.--MWAK (talk) 21:02, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

I think it would be reasonably easy enough for the foundation to make it so that daughter wikiprojects nested naturally under their parents. If they ever actually arranged this tagging each individual bird article under WP:Dino would be a waste of effort. Abyssal (talk) 21:21, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

The temporal cut-off might work too, I was just thinking in terms of the more common "non-avian dinosaur" concept, which is already used widely in the literature. Also, if the Cretaceous is the cut-off, we'd have to include a lot of modern bird groups which have their first occurrence there (Paleognathae, Galloanserae, etc.). As for tagging all birds with the dino project (which I'm not sure would be accepted by bird editors), what would the purpose be other than to just make a point? There is very little overlap between the membership of the two projects (apart from maybe Casliber and myself). Likewise, we could have all dinosaur and bird articles tagged by WikiProject Reptiles, but there would be little practical purpose... WikiProject tags are primarily meant to reflect what projects actually (not theoretically) work on and maintain which articles, and to make it easier for these projects to organise them; focus is key. FunkMonk (talk) 21:38, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Well, in the Spanish Wikipedia the equivalent of this project only deals with non-avian dinosaurs, the extinct birds are treated by the equivalent of the Paleontology project and of course the modern birds have their own project. I'm agree with put out of this the cultural depictions of dinosaurs and Cenozoic dinosaurs.--Rextron (talk) 23:21, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

I'd say keep it temporal - use end of Mesozoic as guideline. Mesozoic birds should belong to both wikiprojects and tagged as such. The more taxa found the harder it is to draw a line cladistically. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 01:47, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Alright, hope more people will leave an opinion, then I'll try to rewrite it with the Cretaceous as the cut-off. Seems there is agreement for leaving out fiction articles? FunkMonk (talk) 11:18, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Right now, the scope says included articles must be "currently classified somewhere in Dinosauria". In practice, there are dinosaur project banners on just about everything that has ever been classified somewhere in Dinosauria, including a mammal (Libycosaurus) and a plant (Aachenosaurus). This is consistent with List of dinosaur genera, which includes genera not currently considered to be dinosaurs (and where I found the examples given above). I've been reverted in the past for removing the dinosaur banner from something that isn't currently considered to be a dinosaur. Should the project scope include fossils previously but not currently considered to be dinosaurs? Plantdrew (talk) 16:22, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

I've been thinking about that too, and I think it might be just a bit too inclusive, but maybe it could be taken on a case by case basis. For example, something like Teratosaurus has a long history as a "dinosaur", and is referred to as such in much older literature. But for example Smok (archosaur) was only briefly thought to be a dinosaur, and it isn't tagged as one either. As for birds, another simple option (which seems to have precedence in the literature) could be excluding crown group birds. FunkMonk (talk) 15:58, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

I'll admit to adding that portion, as I feel like having a definition to what falls under the view of this project is important to have, to avoid articles being tagged improperly by editors. The intended scope is that anything that has been published as a dinosaur in scientific literature falls into WP:DINO's scope, anything that has not been is out of it. Thus, animals like Teratosaurus still fall under our scope. That section is only applicable to scientific genera; obviously, all dinosaur media should fall under the scope of WP:DINO. I freely admit that FunkMonk's version is superior to mine, as it's a bit clearer. Raptormimus456 (talk) 21:59, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Magnamanus

Hi, I just want to sa that I noticed that Magnamanus was a red link, so I translated the Netherlands version of it - still needs some work, but I hope that some of you could improve it. --Rextron (talk) 09:12, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Finally! FunkMonk (talk) 13:26, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Sizes and weights in teropods dinosaurs

Hello, everyone, we know that the sizes and weights estimated in the articles of this encyclopedia are based on the estimates of Gregory s Paul. But some may disagree ... So recently two scientists published a book on theropod and dinosauriforms dinosaur records, which has similar but more accurate estimates. This would be a useful handbook or reference to add or improve the estimates of some articles. The complete list is available on the web [27], as well as a part of the book[28]. The bad point is that it is only in Spanish...Levi bernardo (talk) 22:13, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Seems interesting enough, but are the writers actual palaentologists? FunkMonk (talk) 08:20, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Paleontologists exactly not. But one of the two authors has already made some scientific publications on the size and weight of Proboscideans.[29] While the first, has not yet published any scientific paper until now. But he has made theses of rhamphotheca in Hesperornis and in the book he mentions a study on theropod footprints in preparation.Levi bernardo (talk) 19:52, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Popular pages report

We – Community Tech – are happy to announce that the Popular pages bot is back up-and-running (after a one year hiatus)! You're receiving this message because your WikiProject or task force is signed up to receive the popular pages report. Every month, Community Tech bot will post at Wikipedia:WikiProject Dinosaurs/Archive 26/Popular pages with a list of the most-viewed pages over the previous month that are within the scope of WikiProject Dinosaurs.

We've made some enhancements to the original report. Here's what's new:

• The pageview data includes both desktop and mobile data.
• The report will include a link to the pageviews tool for each article, to dig deeper into any surprises or anomalies.
• The report will include the total pageviews for the entire project (including redirects).

We're grateful to Mr.Z-man for his original Mr.Z-bot, and we wish his bot a happy robot retirement. Just as before, we hope the popular pages reports will aid you in understanding the reach of WikiProject Dinosaurs, and what articles may be deserving of more attention. If you have any questions or concerns please contact us at m:User talk:Community Tech bot.

Warm regards, the Community Tech Team 17:16, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Proposed to move title from "Physiology of dinosaurs" to "Physiology of non-avian dinosaurs"

Please see here, in the discussion thread titled "Accurate title proposed". Regards, Kintaro (talk) 16:09, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Is there a precedent for this?

I'm working of a draft of an article for Elongatoolithus in my sandbox (you can see it here). Anyway, while reviewing my sources, I noticed that Zhao 1975 (the original description of Elongatoolithus) lists the type oospecies as E. andrewsi. Mikhailov 1994 and 1997 erroneously list E. elongatus as the type oospecies. Since there are no sources to point out this mistake, is it a violation of WP:SYNTH for me to point it out in the article? Is there a precedent for what to do in this sort of situation? Ashorocetus (talk | contribs) 04:33, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

You can certainly write something like "In 1975, the original describer designated E. andrewsii as the type oospecies. Later sources have listed E. elongatus as the type oospecies." To add that these later sources did so erroneously is synthesis as defined at WP:SYNTH. Of course if WP:RS is applied strictly, none of these should be used as a source, since they are clearly primary, without a reliable secondary source. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:05, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Agree with Peter, you can point out the differencs without "editorialising". I think I have done something similar in the past. FunkMonk (talk) 10:27, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Yep. We just write what sources say. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:06, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

OK, thanks everybody! Ashorocetus (talk | contribs) 13:37, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

• Speaking of eggs... Who is going to create Beibeilong? It has almost gone as long without an article as Magnamanus above had... FunkMonk (talk) 18:16, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Welllllll, I would have, but I was kindof waiting for someone to post somewhere how Beibeilong is literally a Gigantoraptor that was named something else with no distinguishment from Gigantoraptor or discussion of why it is not Gigantoraptor. IJReid ^discuss 23:37, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Another issue, the restoration in the paper[30] looks like something from the early 2000s, isn't that hand pronated? FunkMonk (talk) 08:32, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Well it looks like we have a very huge paper to go through

I've just today come across the PhD Thesis of Angolin, and its specifically on dinosauromorphs of Argentina (including Ischigualasto dinosaurs). Its a huge thing of 547 pages, and, as it turns out, it is all CC-BY 4.0. There are maybe 100 figures in it, of taxa from Lagosuchus to Pisanosaurus or a new taxon named Chanaresaurus (a nomen nudum for now), and I think it could be of great use. The website is here http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/59790 and the licensing information is at the bottom "Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)". The link to download the PDF is directly above the license. IJReid ^discuss 03:32, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

It seems a few of the images are from earlier publications, and may therefore be iffy. So at least we have to look at each image on an individual basis. FunkMonk (talk) 10:18, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Most images seem to be unique to this paper or at least are different enough, with only about 1 view of the bone being similar to in a previously published photo. IJReid ^discuss 15:05, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Maybe we should contact the author directly and ask about this? Abyssal (talk) 16:04, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Hmmm, seems an IP is already objecting[31], could perhaps be the author. --FunkMonk (talk) 15:22, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

I had an email to Angolin in the works. I thought I sent it but maybe I just hadn't? IJReid ^discuss 23:09, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

I recieved a reply from Agnolin just now, and he states that he is fine with the usage of images and info from his thesis if it is cited properly. (Going to edit the Alwalkeria image description right now) IJReid ^discuss 00:18, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

I wonder who the IP is then... FunkMonk (talk) 11:57, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

List of stratigraphic units with...

There's a bunch of small lists entitled "List of stratigraphic units with..." I feel like they could all be merged into one article   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  00:19, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

• List of stratigraphic units with dinosaur body fossils
• List of stratigraphic units with dinosaur trace fossils
• List of stratigraphic units with dinosaur tracks
• List of stratigraphic units with indeterminate dinosaur fossils
• List of stratigraphic units with ornithischian tracks
• List of stratigraphic units with sauropodomorph tracks
• List of stratigraphic units with theropod tracks

I also think some of these are way too specific, which makes it hard to navigate through them. FunkMonk (talk) 00:37, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

• I'll be honest, I think there's a lot of value in these lists. Obviously body fossils are important. Being able to find where dinosaur coprolites and eggs are is also pretty cool. Then there are way too many dinosaur track-bearing strata to fit into the general article on trace fossils or even a single list of tracks, so its broken down by major taxonomic group. The only one that really stands out in a negative way is the list of units with indeterminate body fossils and that was just the leftovers from compiling the "real" list of dinosaur body fossils. Dunkle's suggestion has potential. We may be able to merge the strata with dinosaur tracks into a single article and just have columns that could be checked off if theropod, stegossaur, ceratopsian, tracks etc were present, but I'm concerned there may be too many groups for that to be practical. Abyssal (talk) 07:17, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

I think it could easily fit into one article. Title List of stratigraphic units with dinosaur remains, Section Fossils → subsection body fossils → subsection trace fossils → subsection indeterminate fossils, Section tracks → subsection ornithischian → subsection theropod → subsection sauropodomorph   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  15:26, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

Article Titles for Clades

I noticed the articles Diplodocid and Hadrosaurid use the informal names of their groups rather than the proper terms terms Diplodocidae and Hadrosauridae respectively. The latter seems to be the standard among dinosaur articles, but I seem to be unable to move them myself. Thoughts? Not sure if any articles have this problem. Lusotitan (talk) 03:56, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

The titanosaur article has the same problem. Lusotitan (talk) 04:00, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

This is all due to an interpretation of WP:COMMONNAME that prefers English names to scientific ones. It appears to be endorsed by Wikipedia:WikiProject Dinosaurs#Article titles: "The titles of all articles about higher level taxa should consist of the common name of the group". Peter coxhead (talk) 08:01, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Okay, but the vast majority of dinosaur articles consisting of clade names use the scientific term (ex. Tyrannosauridae, Brachiosauridae, Theropoda), etc). Lusotitan (talk) 16:44, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Well, I'm all in favour of scientific names, but although I could make the moves you request, there needs to be wider agreement first, given that the WikiProject's policy says use English names. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:41, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

The wikipage has undergone a revision and now supports my suggestion: "Article titles of higher-order groups should be composed simply of the entire scientific name for the group". So could we go through with it now? Lusotitan 01:47, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

I wrote up the revised section so perhaps I should have my say. Its really hard to clearly determine which groups deserve informal names over scientific. Perhaps the largest groups, Dinosauria, Theropoda, Sauropoda etc should have informal names, because they are more used in informal mentions, but other cases I think the scientific name should have precedent. IJReid ^discuss 01:58, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

WikiProject page revisions

Looks like people are beginning to think that the main page for the wikiproject (this talk pages article) could use some revisions. I think that with the major changes in the project (lots of over turnover has happened) its about time to go over the entire page now, to try to update tasks, important links, information etc. Do others agree? IJReid ^discuss 04:07, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Importantly, the "shortest dinosaur article" page is no longer functioning, ClueBot hasn't updated the page since 2014. This means we prettymuch remove that as a task. IJReid ^discuss 04:18, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Since we're on the topic of wikiprojects; if WikiProject:Dinosaurs is a subset of WikiProject:Paleontology, should the "WikiProject:Paleontology" template thing actually be on dinosaur-related talk pages? Does the presence of the more specific "WikiProject:Dinosaurs" template not make this redundant? Like how we wouldn't put Tyrannosaurus in both a "tyrannosaur" and "theropod" category, since the former makes the latter unnecessary. I'm not sure of the answer, which is why I'm asking, but having both wikiprojects listed is standard right now.

Perhaps something like Dinosaur or Tyrannosaurus would have both listed, since they're of importance to paleontology as a whole, but something like, I don't know, Nanuqsaurus would only have WikiProject:Dinosaurs listed since it's far less important, so only the most specific relevant WikiProject is necessary? Lusotitan (talk) 04:52, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

I think that wikiprojects should not overlap, unless they are good reasons to. For example: Revueltosaurus would best fall under WP Paleontology and WP Dinosaurs because it was for a long time considered a dinosaur (validation of WP Dinosaurs) and its now considered to not be a dinosaur (therefore it would be under the parent WP Paleontology). I am going to be beginning a write-up of what I think the main project page should be on my user sandbox User:IJReid/sandbox. IJReid ^discuss 18:22, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

I organized the previous mess of html code that was on the project page before into an organized template, similar to the one on the WP:Paleo main page. Does anyone strongly dislike the change? IJReid ^discuss 19:55, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

• Changes look good, I also did some revisions to the tasks list yesterday, and I think some of them should be removed or merged, since they're outdated or redundant. As for tagging articles, I also think it should be done on a case by case basis. FunkMonk (talk) 20:05, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Ok, I'm writing up more on my sandbox, to revise/reorder what we already have, and add more new stuff. Feel free to edit (but try not to edit-conflict :P). IJReid ^discuss 20:45, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

I'll make suggestions here. Maybe this would also be a good time to revisit the scope issue that wasn't entirely clarified here:[32] We have a task for improving articles in the "CD selection", but I'm wondering whether that project is even in action anymore, I've asked at the talk page:[33] If not, that task should be removed. Also, we have a general "improving articles" task, but that is so vague as to mean nothing; all the other tasks are about "improving articles" as well. FunkMonk (talk) 22:05, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

I think I've figured out how to best have the scope written, "This project is for any and all animals that belong specifically to the clade Dinosauria and do not fall under a different WikiProject. [...] Animals not classified in Dinosauria only qualify to be in the project's scope if they were historically believed to be members of the clade Dinosauria, in one or more published scientific papers. [...] However, modern birds instead fall under the alternate Birds WikiProject, and are only included in WikiProject Dinosaurs if they have an important role in dinosaur classification." IJReid ^discuss 22:29, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Side note: would people hate me if I added my cladogram request page into the infobox templates both here and on WP:Paleo? IJReid ^discuss 23:29, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Maybe it could be an opportunity to create an "official" Tree of life cladogram request page, with a link to your original one to show how it originated? FunkMonk (talk) 23:40, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Yeah probably, I'll go inquire in the TOL project. IJReid ^discuss 23:40, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Would there be any interest in trying to agree upon a suggested format to put in the new WikiProject page? Right now the same general sections are usually present, given sufficient information - description, discovery/history/naming, classification/phylogeny, pal[a]eobiology, pal[a]eoecology, and on the rare occasion a section on the various species or on the pop culture relevance of the genus - but they're in no consistent order. Some people seem to prefer having history first (this came up with the Achelousaurus expansion), others like myself put description first, because giving an image and idea of what the animal is like is seen as most important. Also in the case of the Achelousaurus situation, paleoecology was intentionally put within the paleobiology section. Of course consistent section organization and names isn't strictly necessary, but I feel a guideline would be nice. Lusotitan (talk) 00:39, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Discovery and naming, Description, Classification, Pal(a)eobiology and Pal(a)eoecology are the standard section names in the most common order I've seen. Palaeo/Paleo depends where the taxon is from (british/canadian should be Palaeo, american Paleo etc). IJReid ^discuss 01:03, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Those sections should at the very least be there (though in some cases, there may not be enough known about an animal for a palaeobiology section, see for example Dromaeosauroides and Paranthodon), but the question is whether we necessarily have to be strictly consistent with the order and exact naming... Personally, I've followed, and will continue to follow, the order/naming established by the FAs that existed before I started writing. A few of those didn't even have a palaeoecology section by the time of nomination, and sometimes those have been added years later, though. I do think the discovery/history section should always come before the classification section, since it is better to explain the various taxonomic terms and their histories before flat-out stating where a taxon is currently placed (if the dinosaur was first thought to be a crocodile, for example, this is probably better of explained in the history section, before classification). In the case of Achelousaurus, MWAK did the bulk of the expansion after my sources had run pretty much dry, and he suggested the section order currently there. Though I wouldn't do it like that (palaeobiology can go into locomotion/metabolism, which aren't necessarily a subset of ecology), we can try to run it through GAN/FAC and see what happens, as a kind of "proof of concept". But this is also why I hope MWAK will take part in the nomination discussion, because he will be better at defending this alternative order/naming than I... FunkMonk (talk) 02:12, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

I also frequently turn to the existing FAs, but the problem is that they establish no standard for the order, with it being highly variable (Psittacosaurus even puts Palaeobiology and Palaeoecology before History and Classification) - that's why I asked for a suggested standard. One thing that is consistent in existing FAs is that palaeoecology is never put within palaeobiology, contra the suggested layout for Achelousaurus. Anyway, I agree with the idea that history should go before classification, and I stand by the idea that description should be before that; palaeobiology followed by palaeoecology after these seems to be the most common arrangement with regards to those sections. So description/history/classification/palaeobiology/palaeoecology/pop culture would be my suggested order, but others may disagree (species as a section is problematic: FAs seem fairly evenly split on whether they go in the history/discovery section or get their own - perhaps it depends on how extensive the history section is without it (eg. in Lambeosaurus there's an extensive history section on defunct names, so associating the recognized species with those would be confusing and make the section longer than it needs to be)). Lusotitan (talk) 02:31, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

I myself loathe the very existence of Pop culture sections, because they're only references by shady sources and are full of obscure references to things I haven't seen. I guess in the more notable taxa, Tyrannosaurus, Allosaurus, Triceratops etc can have sections for their multiple prominent occurences, but the average taxon, Achelousaurus for example, should probably not have it.

I think I've figured out myself a basic ordering. In taxa which have had a long history of different looks (Deinocheirus, Spinosaurus), I think it is best to have History before description, so that the details on "mega-arm therizinosaur deinocheirus" can be explained before the current description, in a section where it fits. History should always be before Classification, like said before. Paleoecology should be one of the last sections (depending if pop culture exists). Classification should follow both Description and History as close as it can, because those two sections will probably have details that are important to the classification. This I guess leaves Paleobiology to follow Classification before Paleoecology.

My suggested ordering would be History/Description (depending on specific taxon history); Classification; Paleobiology; Paleoecology; Pop Culture (if it exists) IJReid ^discuss 03:33, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

I personally follow Description/Discovery and naming/Classification/Paleobiology/Paleoecology... I can see why not having the context of discovery can be a problem for some articles, but it hasn't been too big an issue in the ones I've expanded majorly thus far. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 04:35, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

I like the way you've set it up in the sandbox version, that seems sufficient. Lusotitan (talk) 05:15, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

OK :) all the approval I need for now. I'll probably begin migrating some stuff into the main page now. IJReid ^discuss 05:17, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

I think you can add your scope idea too (perhaps replacing/merging with the "goals" section, which seems redundant), it is better than what we have, which is nothing. It may be a good idea to keep it open-ended, as you have it. FunkMonk (talk) 06:05, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

While we're at it, I'd like to explain my preferred ordering:

1. Why things like History/Discovery/Naming first? Well, this makes the entire narrative much more logical. First you relate what fossils have been found, when, where and by whom — and what name has been given to them. This way you present the subject matter of the article. It is little use to immediately start describing when it's not clear what is described in the first place. But isn't that simply the animal at hand? That might be so for extant animals (very often it's not) but certainly not in the case of extinct animals. A single fossil is not a population, nor a species, and rarely complete. If we start by describing Haestasaurus, the reader is justified to wonder why we limit ourselves to a limb. We are forced to introduce the situation with "you have to understand only a forelimb has been found", but then such an essential understanding would be best served by an introducing discovery chapter. The situation is much worse when a multitude of fossils is available, for there will rarely have been a historical consensus about the material. What is the subject matter of Diplodocus, of Stegosaurus, of Brontosaurus, of Troodon? Not simply "the" animal. And this isn't limited to nineteenth century names. This very month Serikornis was named, based on a type that others will see as an Anchiornis specimen. Latenivenatrix was named with many of its autapomorphies present in a pelvis that might not even be troodontid. We can spare ourselves a lot of future trouble if such articles are logically ordered so that conflicting views on the material can be introduced in the Discovery chapter, to which the conflicting descriptions can then naturally refer. Such a logical order is also the one used in all papers and books: us adopting it would allow us to remain as close to the sources as possible, as is mandatory.
2. But shouldn't the reader immediately be provided with some mental image of the animal? Yes, that's desirable. But that function should be served by the lead and an actual image in the taxobox. Of course, at the moment many "Description" chapters contain only the vaguest outline of an animal, basically not describing the species but a much larger group to which it belongs. Once a real description is given, the vague one can go to the lead, while the much longer, and downright boring, serious text will be understood not to be an ideal first chapter.
3. Why Pal(a)eoecology part of Pal(a)eobiology? Well, that's easy: because it is :o). Paleobiology is obviously the encompassing concept. I understand the underlying reason for a split: the ecology is more about other animals in the habitat. But that's very relative and does not justify a confusing imprecision.--MWAK (talk) 08:49, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

I agree that in most cases Discovery should be first, I can see why sometimes people would prefer description first, such as in clade articles or very popular taxa where nearly the entire skeleton is known and comfortable assigned to the taxon.

The main issue is probably the actual Palaeobiology part. Modern biology technically encompassess all the subjects in any of these articles, structure (description), evolution (classification), ecology, physiology etc. Perhaps it would be best to actually use Physiology as the section instead of Palaeobiology, since Physiology is a more restricted topic that generally includes the details we already leave for being in Paleobiology? IJReid ^discuss 14:11, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Indeed, we should remain flexible. In clade articles, it might be a good suggestion to first give a short definition — that's what the clade is in a way — and then continue with an Evolution chapter treating the general morphological development of the group. If so desired a detailed technical Description chapter can be added further-on.

Physiology can act as a container for quite a few subjects, such as metabolism, paleopathology and ontology but there are some that do not so easily fit in, like sexual dimorphism, social behaviour or intelligence. But why should Paleoecology be a separate chapter? Simply call it "habitat". Let subjects like the number of fossils found, the geology and the taphonomy be part of a Discovery chapter.--MWAK (talk) 18:06, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Ok, I will try to reorder the clades section to fit with what makes the most sense.

I was thinking that sexual dimorphism would fit into the Description section, since it is just details on the anatomy and how it differs between individuals? But it would make sense for Paleobiology to work if we are needing to include behaviour and intelligence, unless something more specific can be found that includes all the topics. Paleoecology is about as much Paleobiology as the anatomy is, which is why I currently believe that they should be separated. Another option we have is to explode "Paleobiology" into separate sections on Physiology, Behaviour, Intelligence and Ecology, instead of (mostly) artificially stitching them together into one section? IJReid ^discuss 18:33, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Separate topic, but what should our plan be on removing/replacing the tasks? Should we leave all the names there on tasks that remain, or remove them all and begin anew with having people pick tasks, and notify all past people who are removed, to try to see who is still active or not. IJReid ^discuss 21:36, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

I prefer the idea of re-starting, to get rid of inactive users. Lusotitan (talk) 21:46, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

"Paleobiology" seems pretty all-encompassing and easy to understand, it includes physiology as well, so I don't see why we would need to use less inclusive titles. And seems I read MWAk's order in Achelousaurus wrong, for some reason I remembered it as if paleobiology was a subsection of paleoecology, but it is the other way around, which makes sense, in cases wher we lump the two. As for the tasks, yes, anyone who hasn't been active for the last five years should be removed. FunkMonk (talk) 22:05, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Does the "creating cladistic templates" thing just mean adding cladograms to articles? I can do that, but I can't create new templates. Lusotitan (talk) 23:46, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Oops, I'll reword it as "adding cladistic templates" because no-one except me has created any templates, and those really have no relevance. IJReid ^discuss 23:54, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

I must say I'm not fond of having the "dinosaur articles by quality and importance" table so far down the article, I liked having it near the top. Lusotitan 00:57, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Where higher up can we have it? IJReid ^discuss 01:13, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Hmm, could we even just give it a section to itself at the very start? Lusotitan 01:16, 1 September 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lusotitan (talk • contribs)

Right below the Alerts? IJReid ^discuss 01:17, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Sure, that sounds fine to me if nobody has a problem with it. Lusotitan 03:54, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

One thing I definitely needs to be at least somewhat agreed upon is how technical an article should be. Obviously a certain amount of any good dinosaur article is going to be fairly technical for a general reader, that's just the nature of paleontology, but I feel a certain balance is essential to ensure comprehension. Articles like Scipionyx and Jianianhualong, I feel, go into to much detail about fine anatomical points - people would be further ahead to read the paper for such details (although of course the inclusion of such descriptions could depend on whether an open access description exists). That said, to little detail and you're not adequately covering the topic. I feel inconsistency between how technical different people make articles has been becoming a rather pronounced problem, where you end up with incredibly inconsistency (just look at the in progress updates of Eolambia and Nipponosaurus - they're pretty black and white, although of course I still need to work on the description section of the latter). Thoughts on what guidelines for a good balance could be? Lusotitan 03:54, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

I really think it depends on the sources. If we have open access sources, its very easy for us to made the detailing like you can find in Eolambia, but without it we resort to more generalized articles like Deinocheirus. This may in fact be out little way of rewarding the open access journals, they get more coverage in the popular media (wikis etc) then the paywalled journals. IJReid ^discuss 05:00, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

I think you misunderstand me; I feel articles like Eolambia are going to more detail than they should. The presence of open access description papers means that anyone should go there for technical details of the skeleton, whereas the wikipedia article should merely feature a summary that a general reader could largely follow (see the dinosaur FAs for example, their description sections aren't written like that of the Eolambia article), even if some of the details are beyond them. Likewise, articles on taxa without much open access coverage should probably be a little more technical like that, because people might not have another way of accessing that information. I don't have time to look through it now, but WP:TECHNICAL and WP:ANATSIMPLIFY might be of use. Lusotitan 05:45, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

To me, at least, the Description section should focus on synapomorphies and comparisons to related taxa. Granted, I don't do a very good job of it, but that's what I'm trying to do. It's difficult to say much about them without providing the requisite anatomical context. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 06:37, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

I think you're doing a very good job :o)! Obviously, simple time constraints make it impracticable to provide a full anatomy of each taxon. But, if needed, it's always possible to explain most osteological traits within a straightforward narrative. Dinosaurs are really fish. So are we. Within his normal grasp of his own anatomy, any human being should be able to gain an adequate understanding of a dinosaur's skeleton.--MWAK (talk) 08:18, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

We have to be very careful here:

1. The text should always be comprehensible. In the case of paleontology, which really is a very simple subject matter as sciences go, 99% of the information can always be given in a form that is understandable to any intelligent lay person with a standard secondary education. But this has little to do with the level of detail provided.
2. In principle, we should not withhold relevant information from the reader. And what information is relevant can be best decided by the reader himself. So apply minimal criteria for relevance. Otherwise we end up as High Priests, intermediates between the Truth and the Lay Person. In other words: avoid a "You don't have to know this" or "You cannot possibly be interested in this" attitude. Most of the time, what you think people don't need to know about is what you yourself don't care about.
3. We can hardly inversely limit information to the degree it is accessible. After all, all Wikipedia content should be verifiable and therefore be accessible in some way. Accessibility is presumed. It is not a reason to disregard content. Otherwise we should be forced to remove its information once a paper has been made free access. Also, people consult Wikipedia to be informed. They do not consult Wikipedia to be told "Yeah, good question. Here's a link to a paper where you can find the answer. Bye, bye." Of course, it often is in fact unavoidable to do just that. But it's not an ideal. Furthermore, these papers are generally marred by pseudo-academic "babble" and unnecessary jargon. One of the main advantages of Wikipedia is that that their content can be made understandable to all by a little rephrasing and explanation.
4. Inconsistency between articles is only a problem when the content is contradictory. It has to be accepted that articles are at various levels of completeness and detail. In any case, we have to avoid a "race to the bottom" in which more complete articles are pruned to make them "consistent" with less complete articles. Remember that Wikipedia is not a printed encyclopedia.--MWAK (talk) 07:09, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

• There is also the issue of how much is known about a taxon. For example, if the skeleton is almost completely known, and multiple descriptions exist of it, it is easier to write a more generalised, and easier to understand description here. But if the taxon is only known from for example part of the pelvis or some such, we have to go into some pretty nitpicky detail to convey what makes this animal distinct... FunkMonk (talk) 14:58, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

No article should have less description that Dromaeosauroides (Paranthodon may need a slight expansion). Its a single tooth, and some of the anatomy might be over the heads of laymen, but thats about as much description as we can for it. In a taxon like Nipponosaurus, with cranial, vertebral and appendicular material, it might be good to get about 3 paragraphs per region, if thats possible. When there is a lot of material there shouldn't be any one region that is more focused on (Eolambia needs more writing on the limbs etc). IJReid ^discuss 15:54, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Multiple paragraphs per region going into fine anatomical details is nearly unheard of in any of our dinosaur FAs. Many of them have description sections three or four paragraphs long (excepting additional sections on stuff like integument or differences between species like in Psittacosaurus and Archaeopteryx) that give a general summary of the animal, with detailed facts sprinkled through. In general, I feel this is the better approach - super technical details just aren't necessary (although Parasaurolophus, Deinonychus, Iguanodon, and Styracosaurus have admittedly paltry attempts - and shouldn't the species level articles for Edmontosaurus be more specific than the genus level one, not less?). An encyclopedia is still in the end a detailed summary, not a comprehensive description, which people frankly likely won't look here for. Often there's a few detailed paragraphs dedicated to a point of interest like the skull (see Albertosaurus, Nigersaurus and Stegoceras), contra your claim we should be avoiding focusing on stuff. Some like are a bit more long winded (Heterodontosaurus being maybe the longest), but still don't really go in detail like in, again, Eolambia (sorry to keep going to this specific example, but keeping one consistent and recent one is useful for discussion). Maybe something like Allosaurus, Stegosaurus, or Ankylosaurus would be the ceiling for my recommendation. Or do you think all of our approved featured articles doing it wrong? Lusotitan 16:50, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

It probably isn't possible to have any one standard for how detailed an article should be and how even the focus can be. For example, ceratopsians are assumed to have post-crania so similar that these elements are sometimes not even described in their descriptions, as is the case for Achelousaurus. On the other hand, sauropods are often missing their skulls, so these can't always be described. Theropod desriptions are often skull-centric too. Eolambia probably stands out here because it has had a detailed osteological description published, unlike many other genera, some of which, like Giganotosaurus, have only ever gotten superficially described. In the end, we are fully dependent on what has and what has not been written about a taxon, and that is what dictates how detailed we can get (and it also depends on the judgement of individual editors). If you look at featured bird articles, there are also quite dramatic differences in how detailed their descriptions are (due to similar issues). As for the Edmontosaurus species articles, keep in mind that those aren't featured, and that they were split partially because it was assumed Anatosaurus was about to be resurrected (which may not happen anyway?). FunkMonk (talk) 17:03, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, of course I understand the Edmontosaurus articles aren't even GAs, but isn't half the point of divided sub-articles like that to go into more detail? Lusotitan 17:12, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

As is, I'm not sure if I agree they should necessarily be separate, but we'll see what happens with the genus split. Another very important issue I forgot to mention is that a great bulk of our dino FAs were nominated before the entire FAC process had a major overhaul (see "achievements" for timeline and old reviews). I think this happened around 2008. The criteria are much stricter now (also for GA), and the reviews much more nitpicky, so I'm not even sure all of them would pass today (Psittacosaurus was almost demoted recently for example). Articles written after 2009 are generally more comprehensive and have more solid sourcing (some have even been written by professional palaeontologists), so they should be taken as the standard for new nominations, not the ones nominated before 2008. FunkMonk (talk) 17:17, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

In theory, I feel the separation makes sense, what with the complicated history of Edmontosaurus annectens, but the genus article honestly covers pretty much everything the sub-articles cover without losing much information, so I agree they might not be needed (although again, perhaps they just need expansion). As far as FAs being unrepresentative, I wonder if it'd be beneficial to put, say, Jianianhualong, a very technical article, up for peer review, to get an outside opinion from a more general reader. Lusotitan 17:37, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Non-"experts" usually review during FAC and sometimes GAN anyhow, so it isn't as if we are working in a secluded bubble. I still think some of those fossil mammal articles that went through FAC (like Pennatomys, Seorsumuscardinus, Noronhomys) exceed even the most detailed dinosaur articles in their technicality, but those have been reviewed by non-mammal experts as well. Peer-reivew nominations are usually requested by the writers of an article, and usually in preparation for GAN/FAC. But if there is no immediate intention of nomination the Jianianhualong article for promotion, I think we have more urgent problems with articles that are too short (it is rather objective whether an article is a stub or not) than an article that may be too long (which is a pretty subjective issue). FunkMonk (talk) 18:32, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

I wasn't necessarily suggesting it to improve that article in particular, but mostly to see if that level of detail and technicality is considered to much. Lusotitan 19:59, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

An issue that is more likely to be pointed out at peer-review is the fact that the Jianianhualong article is based on a single source, which may be problematic. So even if we wanted to nominate it, I think the genus and paper need to be discussed by other authorities as well first so we have broader coverage. The description seems very long, but maybe it also seems longer because there are more sub-sections than usual. FunkMonk (talk) 21:32, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

While I was planning upon adding a few more tangential references to Jianianhualong, I agree that the lack of coverage of this taxon by other sources causes issues. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 21:37, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

You still need to add the sources to the Paleoecology section btw. IJReid ^discuss 21:40, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Yes.... unfortunately I lost my stockpiled references thanks to the blue screen of death, so I'll have to track them down again....... Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 22:14, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

The source is open access, though? And by the way, maybe what Lusotitan was thinking of was rather "request for comment" than peer review? FunkMonk (talk) 22:49, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

True I think an RfC would be better in this case simply as a less formal request where we don't have to completely follow the suggestions, and with no negative consequence? IJReid ^discuss 23:00, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Yes, the source is open access, but about 90% of the Paleoecology section was synthesized from other papers. The Jianianhualong paper does not discuss much about paleoecology save for Jehol troodontid diversity. I do think that a request for comment would be useful... given that I've been involved in its creation at a fundamental level, it's difficult to disinterestedly evaluate what is important and what is not. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 00:20, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

The Jianianhualong paper had all these gorgeous free images. So it's a good thing the text is long enough to accommodate them all :o). The Eolambia article certainly is not excessive in length in its Description chapter. We should not be osteophobic. The overwhelming majority of the available data on extinct dinosaurs consist of their bones. We should not hide the bone or hide from the bone. Embrace the bone!--MWAK (talk) 06:45, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

• Lusotitan I hope you dont mind but I moved the article stats down directly below tasks, because I hate having lots of white space and it doesn't cause issues there. IJReid ^discuss 02:03, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

I moved it up to article alerts, which is usually empty and full of white space anyway... FunkMonk (talk) 02:11, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

I think it looks good there. Lusotitan 04:13, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

• So with these revisions, should we establish some criteria for what dinosaur articles that should be tagged with the paleo-project? As of now, it seems every single dino-article gets tagged with the paleo-project, but I think we should restrict it to those that are actually important to palaeontology overall. So something like Tyrannosaurus should be tagged, but not, say, Beibeilong. FunkMonk (talk) 00:15, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

I agree, I think this was brought up upthread somewhere. Lusotitan 00:48, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I only think we need to make a formal guideline and add it somewhere... FunkMonk (talk) 00:51, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Pinging Plantdrew about the issue, who seems to be doing much of the tagging. FunkMonk (talk) 06:21, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

I won't object to removing palaeontology banners from dinosaurs if somebody wants to make the effort to remove them. My main objective had been to provide quality assessments for dinosaur articles. Including palaeontology banners as well seemed to be the usual (although not universal) practice, so I added them when I was already editing the talk page for dinosaur assessment. I never made any particular effort to add palaeontology banners to dinosaur articles that had already been assessed.

However, I've also worked on project tagging/assessment for most other organismal WikiProjects. WP Dinosaurs is unusual in that all of the articles are palaeontological. For almost every other project, the majority of the articles are on neontological species. I've felt that it was appropriate to ensure, for example, that all palaeontological mammal species I came across had both a mammals banner and a palaentology banner. If WP Dinosaurs decides to remove banners from dinosaur taxa that aren't important to palaeontology overall, I'm not sure how that logic would apply to other groups of organisms. Palaeontology is one of the more active projects (along with dinosaurs, birds and plants), so bannering extinct primates with palaeontology potentially brings more eyes to requested moves (WP Primates is almost totally inactive). I do realize that there is massive overlap in editors watching the reports for dinosaurs and palaeontology though, so the palaeo banner probably doesn't really bring more eyes in for dinosaurs. Anyway, you can do whatever you want with regards to banners, just trying to explain where I was coming from. Plantdrew (talk) 16:46, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

On overlap, the big difference here is that unlike for example mammal articles, all dinosaur articles are inherently palaeontology articles. Dinosaur science is just a branch of palaeontoloogy after all. So tagging a prehistoric mammal with both palaeo and mammal tags is different, since neither is a subject within the other. Likewise, we don't add the dino tag to every bird article (though birds are technically dinosaurs), unless these birds are somehow important to dinosaur science, such as for example Archaeopteryx. FunkMonk (talk) 19:43, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

I noticed that on the Borealopelta page, an edit earlier today changed the automatic taxobox to a speciesbox; why is this the case? I was under the impression automatic taxoboxes were the preferred and most up to date template that we should be using as the taxobox? Lusotitan 19:27, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps ping the editor who did the change? FunkMonk (talk) 19:43, 26 September 2017

It was IJReid, so he should come across this anyway. Lusotitan 19:51, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Speciesboxes are part of the automatic taxobox system and use the same underlying code; speciesbox and automatic taxobox are equally up to date. It comes down to how you (dino folks) want to handle the type species in a monotypic genus. You can use automatic taxobox and designate the sole species as the the type via |type_species=. Or you can use speciesbox with |genus= and |species= where it implicit that where only a single species is listed in the genus, it is the type. There are 675 dino tagged articles using {{automatic taxobox}} and 510 using {{speciesbox}}. Leaving out polytypic genera and higher taxa (where speciesbox can not be used appropriately), you might have a slight edge for use of speciesbox in cases of monotypic genera. Plantdrew (talk) 20:30, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

I feel it'll be more logical to have it consistent one way, not randomly one of two, and {{automatic taxobox}} is the one that can cover all taxa. Of course that's not policy, but I think that'd make a lot more sense. Lusotitan 21:48, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

My personal rational is more aesthetical. I like the look of the "binomial" section more than a "type species", and the speciesbox requires less syntax to work. That is literally it. If someone has a stronger reason, I'm very accepting. IJReid ^discuss 22:59, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Like I said, I just want consistency, and the automatic taxobox is the one that can be used for all taxa. Lusotitan 23:13, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

To me, a taxobox targeting a genus with a type species shown suggests there are other species: why pick out the type species if there are no other species? Speciesboxes for species, including the sole species in monotypic genera, and automatic taxoboxes for higher ranks, is sufficiently consistent, surely? The nomenclature of species is different from higher ranks because it's binomi[n]al, not uninomi[n]al, so there's logic in two different automated taxoboxes.

By the way, over the English Wikipedia as a whole, {{Speciesbox}} is much more widely used, with about 60,000 transclusions, compared to about 18,000 for {{Automatic taxobox}}. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:04, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Project Icon Image

I'm creating this as a subsection of the revisions because that seems to be where this fits ok, but I would like to propose that we completely re-do the Project Icon image. It is a little outdated nowadays, and displays inaccuracies. It could also be argued that the taxa are not iconic, and the image should be a larger file. I would propose the following changes:

• replace the Tyrannosaurus with the illustration by Matt Martyniuk;
• replace the Apatosaurus? with the Brontosaurus by Tom Parker
• replace the Styracosaurus with the Bravoceratops by FunkMonk;
• replace the Utahraptor with the Deinonychus by Emily Willoughby;
• replace the Heterodontosaurus? with the Iguanodon by Nobu Tamura;
• add the Herrerasaurus by Fred Wierum;
• semi-scale the dinosaurs to proportional sizes;

I've proposed the above because they 1) replace inaccurate images with up-to-date ones, 2) display illustrations from some of the best artists here, 3) show more popular taxa in most cases, and 4) display a wider variety of dinosaur taxa. IJReid ^discuss 02:01, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

I completely agree with the idea of replacing it, but I disagree with using the Bravoceratops and Herrerasaurus images - they're in some pretty off key poses; something more neutral like the other ones would likely be a better choice for such an image. Additionally, I feel some sort of smaller dinosaur in place of the Heterodontosaurus would be nice, since the ones you suggest are all reasonable large. Psittacosaurus mongoliensis by Tamura, perhaps? Creates the problem of doubling up on an artist, though. Lusotitan 02:25, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

We can use Stegoceras by FunkMonk instead of his Bravoceratops. I do think a basal taxon would be good though. IJReid ^discuss 03:03, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

We can also alternately use a Dollodon or Mantellisaurus by Steve OC over an Iguanodon and then use a Pantydraco or Saturnalia from Nobu Tamura. IJReid ^discuss 03:09, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

I also think more neutral poses is a good idea, it will make the animals more recognisable at small size as well. Because the main issue we have to think about here is that the image will mostly be viewed in tiny size, so the animals have to be recognisable even then. So it is also good that they are shown from the same perspective. We can't have an image from bird-eye view next to one in profile, for example. FunkMonk (talk) 04:53, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

I like all these suggestions. Lusotitan 05:30, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

FunkMonkLusotitan What do you think of the new version I've made? I used Matt's Tyranno, Tom's Bronto, Steve's Mantelli, Emily's Deinonychus, Funk's Stegoceras and Jaime's Thecodonto. IJReid ^discuss 22:37, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

As a colour-blind person, I think the colours are a bit too muddled up compared to the original. Could they be more distinct from each other? Compared to the old image, there also seems to be a bit too much white space in the upper left... FunkMonk (talk) 23:26, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

OK I can modify the colours, I just don't want them to be too jarring. I can probably add a bird to fill up whitespace ;) IJReid ^discuss 00:13, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Sounds like a plan, maybe a big one! Also, there could maybe be an even smaller dinosaur at the lower right... But would probably be best with a non-maniraptoran, so they aren't overrepresented. A heterodontosaur would be good. A shame we don't have a ceratopsian or stegosaur. FunkMonk (talk) 00:23, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Does the newest one look alright for colours? I added Confuciusornis to the top left simply because I couldn't find any other good illustrations of flying dinosaurs. I could probably fit in maybe 2 more taxa, it we have any consensus on what they should be (and they have a good silhouette). IJReid ^discuss 00:36, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Looks good, maybe we could have some red in there? Since the bird is already oversized, I think it would be good if the tyrannosaur and sauropod were gradually bigger (or moved further more apart), so that they aren't as overlapped by each other and the dromaeosaur? If you compare with the lower dinosaur, they have much more space between the, and forma nicer arch... FunkMonk (talk) 00:52, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

I like it, so long as colours aren't causing any issues for anyone. Lusotitan 01:46, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

FunkMonk I've changed a few colours, are they ok? I added Scelidosaurus as a basal ornithischian/thyreophoran, because any stegosaur would take too much space, and heterodontosaurs don't have good lateral views. IJReid ^discuss 02:08, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Maybe use this old version of the Heterodontosaurus scale image[34] which I added quills to? We could maybe have a ceratopsian at the lower left, where we now only have a skimpy dromaeosaur tail... FunkMonk (talk) 02:14, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Heterodontosaurus and Vagaceratops have now been added. I think this is the maximum amount of taxa I could fit while retaining a similar width-height ratio. Are colours acceptable? IJReid ^discuss 03:15, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

I think so. The sauropod seems a bit squashed, maybe give it room by moving the lower dinos a bit closer? Anyhow, maybe post this at the image review, so more artists can see it? FunkMonk (talk) 04:09, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

I like that it looks colourful and diverse without using over saturated colours or looking cluttered. My one criticism would be with my eyes, on this cheep monitor is the Graciliraptor disappears into the background a bit; maybe if it were a darker shade to contrast with the background? Maybe the same could be said for the T.rex but to a much lesser degree..? I wonder whether there could be a logic to the colours? like certain colours for certain groups? or maybe the colours desaturate with distance from the viewer (which they kind of do anyway)? Maybe that's just over thinking it? Steveoc 86 (talk) 15:15, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

I can easily make the Graciliraptor darker. The way I was planning to organise was with taxa towards the bottom of the image being darker, and becoming progressively lighter higher up into the image. Perhaps I make it so that Ornithischians are red-shades, Sauropods are blue-shades and Theropods are green-shades? IJReid ^discuss 15:18, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Maybe give colour coding a go? We can always revert if it looks naff. I like the idea of darker at the bottom getting lighter as you go back but too light starts to 'disapear'. Maybe mix changing brightness with changing saturation to give the illusion of depth? I'm probably just way over thinking it. Steveoc 86 (talk) 15:45, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Steveoc 86FunkMonk Are the new colours acceptable? I semi-colour coded clades, but to there are a majority of theropods and a minority of sauropods so some colours are switched. IJReid ^discuss 16:58, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

I commented on the review page. FunkMonk (talk) 17:35, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Graciliraptor looks better, I had a quick play around in photoshop, maybe somthing like this; [35] It's a very crudely done and maybe the colours are a bit too muted? but I think the it has the 'Depth' look. Steveoc 86 (talk) 17:38, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

I changed the colours to be what Steve suggested, and I think it looks good. Now we just need input from FunkMonk to ensure that the specific colours don't cause too many issues.IJReid ^discuss 19:39, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Article complexity Request for Comment

I'm posting this here to direct interested members to a Request for Comment on the recommended technical level for the anatomy of extinct taxa. The RfC can be found at Talk:Jianianhualong#.28Long-belated.29_Rfc_for_level_of_anatomical_detail_in_dinosaur_articles. All discussions should be held there to keep the comments centralized. IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 23:51, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Project Portal and Collaboration

Since we're in the mood of change and fixes (a wonderful mood to be in) I was wondering what will become of Portal:Dinosaurs and Wikipedia:WikiProject Dinosaurs/Dinosaur collaboration. Might as well centralize this discussion somewhere the most people will see it, but we have to discuss what will become of these things. The Portal has really gone the road of outdatedness, and the collaboration was discontinued because of a lack of participation. The Dinosaurs Portal should really be revamped completely, and kept current, because of how significant it is to the project. There is a possibility of revamping the collaboration as well.

1. I think that I can take on a partial load of renewing the portal, such as writing the blurbs or finding newer, better pictures. I can probably take over as the lead maintainer, as long as I have a backup to discuss stuff with or have maintain it when I'm bored of it/absent.
2. I'd like to suggest that for the collaboration we vote on 2 (hopefully different) articles, where people can just add small chunks onto it to form them up. Our final goal for those articles would hopefully be FA, but GA could be acceptable too. With a wider selection, hopefully people won't tire of the work, or have as many edit conflicts, and as long as one person keep the work going we should be able to have this work. A reasonable time goal might be good as well (so we can compete to see who does better faster :))

What do the people think? IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 02:43, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

I definitely agree the portal needs some love; coincidentally, I just did a pass on portal links and the Titanosauria template on various basal titanosaur articles. On the collaboration, I don't have a strong preference either way; on one hand, I feel we're already productive enough, but on the other hand, a focus point for multiple to work on could be nice, so you get the input and attention of several people on one expansion instead of one lone guy. Lusotitan 03:14, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Sounds good with the portal, seems it could be a long time project you can chip away at. As for project-wide collaborations, I'm not sure why it doesn't seem to have ever really worked. I think it's because work on an article is usually done by one or two dedicated editors who are very much in sync, and it can be hard to coordinate what to do with even more people. But then there are also cases like Europasaurus, where it seems like various people suddenly showed up at the same time and improved things. I think maybe it could be done a bit more informally then, instead of saying "this is the article we all have to work on", maybe people can just mention what they're currently working on, what they think could be worked on later, and then whoever feels like it can drop by and do some improvements. Maybe someone doesn't like writing history sections, and someone else can take that, or some such. FunkMonk (talk) 11:03, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Scope and tags

I changed "extinct birds" to "Mesozoic birds" in the scope, following the previous diwscussion. "Extinct" is too broad, would include everything from moas to passenger pigeons... But I think the scope should be broadened to include dinosauromorphs, as they are per definition important to dinosaurs, and the word is even in their name. Any thoughts on this? I also think we should have some criteria for what popular media qualifies as being tagged with the dino project. Jurassic Park probably qualifies, due to its huge importance to the general perception of dinosaurs, and other science-based/conveying media as well, but do we really need something like dinosaur erotica? Furthermore, is there general agreement to only include dinosaur articles that are historically important to the field of palaeontology as part of the palaeo-project? FunkMonk (talk) 21:32, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

I disagree with the "historical importance" part. The project's description states that it "aims to organise and coordinate efforts to create, expand and improve the content of Wikipedia's coverage of dinosaurs", and surely historical importance is not an authoritative measure in itself of which articles are worthy of expansion or improvement. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 22:04, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

You mean in relation to the paleo project? Of course all dinosaur articles should be tagged by the dino project, but paleo? Seems redundant to me, since dinosaur science is palaeontology by definition. FunkMonk (talk) 22:06, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Oh, crikey, I misread. Disregard. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 22:09, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Hehe, sorry, it was a pretty rambling text I wrote there, so it may have been hard to follow. Any other thoughts? FunkMonk (talk) 22:12, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

I concur with removing extinct Cenozoic birds. Also concur about media, just like we don't make In popular culture sections that amount to trivia lists. Not sure about dinosauromorphs - would other stem-birds not be important to our understanding of dinosaurs? Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 22:39, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

On other stem-birds, probably, but as is, only dinosaurs are mentioned in the scope, so we should figure out how much broader we should be. FunkMonk (talk) 22:45, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

About the "historical" part, I added that because historical dinosaurs (eg, Revueltosaurus, Crosbysaurus etc) have an impact on the history of major dinosaur groups like Ornithischia. IJReid ^discuss 23:38, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Okay, that I can get behind. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 00:16, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

To be honest, I'm somewhat wary of excluding any bird from the scope of the project. It seems hypocritical to bemoan the slow acceptance of the fact that birds are dinosaurs if we're going to artificially draw lines of separation between them ourselves. Abyssal (talk) 18:17, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Well, we don't put dinosaur articles under the "amphibians and reptiles" label/scope. Seeing as there is a WikiProject Birds, why exactly should they also be included here? It's the same argument as the palaeontology thing - things should only go in the most specific wikiproject unless it's particularly relevant to both, right? Lusotitan 19:06, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, the point of Wiki project tags is not to act as a category or reflect every single subject an article is theoretically part of, but to make it easier for editors to work on them. With very little overlap between those that work on bird articles and modern dinosaur articles (just me and Casliber, but he only reviews these days), there is no practical point in tagging bird articles, it is just more talk-page clutter. Taking Lusotitan's example to the extreme, every bird would also have to be tagged by the reptile project, in addition to the dinosaur project... But that doesn't help anyone; the project tags are merely for the editors to organise themselves, not to inform the readers. Paleo articles don't have the extinction project tag either, though they are about extinct animals (though the situation was more messy a few years ago). Also note that modern bird articles were never tagged by this project before, so formally excluding them makes no difference, they were already de-facto excluded.FunkMonk (talk) 20:44, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

• I am making some revisions to the scope description[36], it was a bit long-winded and flowery, therefore it was hard to get to the point when reading it. But in the process, I noticed it was written as if this project only covers taxa, yet we also have articles specifically only about physiology, history, behaviour, and so on. So something may have to be done in that regard. Just occurred to me we don't even mention geological formations either... FunkMonk (talk) 17:34, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

I noticed you change "popular culture" to "cultural significance" - a change to propagate? Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 18:57, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

I think it will help drive-by editors understand that we don't need a list of random media appearances in the section... But I made it one of two "options" afterwards. FunkMonk (talk) 18:59, 30 October 2017 (UTC)