Welcome to Wikispecies!

Hello, and welcome to Wikispecies! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages you might like to see:

If you have named a taxon, then it is likely that there is (or will be) a Wikispecies page about you, and other pages about your published papers. Please see our advice and guidance for taxon authors.

If you have useful images to contribute to Wikispecies, please upload them at Wikimedia Commons. This is also true for video or audio files containing bird songs, whale vocalization, etc.

Please sign your comments on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your username (if you're logged in) and the date. Please also read the Wikispecies policy What Wikispecies is not. If you need help, ask me on my talk page, or in the Village Pump. Again, welcome! Open2universe | Talk 13:06, 26 September 2011 (UTC)Reply

Autopatrolled rights

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Dear FredD, You have been granted autopatrolled user rights, which may be granted to experienced Wikispecies users who have demonstrated an understanding of Wikispecies policies and guidelines. In addition to what registered users can do, autopatrollers can have one's own edits automatically marked as patrolled (autopatrol). The autopatrol user right is intended to reduce the workload of new page patrollers and causes pages created by autopatrolled users to be automatically marked as patrolled. For more information, read Wikispecies:Autopatrollers.

  This user has autopatrolled rights on Wikispecies. (verify)

You may as autpatroller use the autopatroller user box on your user page. Copy and paste the following code on your user page:

{{User Autopatroller}}

If you have a Meta-Wiki user page, you can put the Wikispecies autopatrolled user box for Meta on your Meta-Wiki user page.

Dan Koehl (talk) 22:11, 2 March 2015 (UTC)Reply

Application for Checkuser

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Referring to earlier discussions regarding a local Checkuser policy, I herebye apply to get Checkuser user rights, although we havnt reached a consensus reg Checkuser policy, but I want to give it a try if I can get the required votes. For a request to succeed a minimum of 25 support votes and an 80% positive vote are required (subject to the normal bureaucrat discretion). Requests for checkuser run for two weeks, and I ask kindly that somone starts the poll, like we do for adminship applications.

Please also note that CheckUser actions are logged, but for privacy reasons the logs are only visible to other Checkusers. Because of this, Wikispecies must always have no fewer than two checkusers, for mutual accountability. I dont want to suggest anyone, but hope that someone feel inspired and will step forward and also apply for checkuser.

My request to the Wikispecies community is here

Dan Koehl (talk) 01:40, 28 January 2017 (UTC)Reply

Another application for Check User

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As pointed out above by User:Dan Koehl, we need at least two Check Users for this wiki. I am nominating myself and would be happy to receive any feedback that you have to give (positive, negative, or neutral). Wikispecies:Checkusers/Requests/Koavf. Thanks. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:08, 28 January 2017 (UTC)Reply

Additional Checkuser Application

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I also have added my name to those willing to be a checkuser. Please see my application here Wikispecies:Checkusers/Requests/Faendalimas. I listed this yeasterday but have been encouraged to do a mass mail. I would also take the opportunity to make sure everyone knows that any editor can vote but that it is imperative that as many do as possible, for all 4 of the current applicants, please have your say. Checkuser voting has strict policy rules regarding number of votes. You will have other messages from the other Users concerned you can also read about it in the discussion on the Village Pump - Wikispecies:Village_Pump#Application_for_Checkuser. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:53, 29 January 2017 (UTC)Reply

Standing for role of checkUser

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Like some of our colleagues (who I support), I am offering to serve as a checkuser, not least to ensure adequate coverage in case one of the others is unavailable.

Please comment at Wikispecies:Checkusers/Requests/Pigsonthewing.

[Apologies if you receive a duplicate notification; I wasn't aware of Wikispecies:Mail list/active users, and sent my original notification to the list of administrators instead.] MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:59, 1 February 2017 (UTC)Reply

RFC on Checkusers

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With one week to go I wanted to remind everyone of the importance of voting on the current CheckUser applications. They can all be found together on a single RFC: Wikispecies:Requests_for_Comment#Checkusers.

It is extremely important with votes such as this for everyone to be involved. There are strict rules in the Wikimedia Foundation Policy guidelines on these votes. I would urge people to have a good understanding of what a CheckUser does. This can be read up on here on the page discussing CheckUser's Wikispecies:Checkusers. Links on this page will take you to other policy information on Meta, HowTo for our site etc.

I would also urge people to look at our own policy development and some past discussion on this can be found here: Wikispecies_talk:Local_policies#Local_CU_Policy.

Wikispecies has in the past had issues that has required the intervention that is supported by the ability to do a CheckUser. Many of us are aware of this. The capacity to do this ourselves greatly speeds up this process. Although SockPuppetry can sometimes be identified without using a CheckUser in order to do the necessary steps to stop it or even prevent it requires evidence. We all know that sockpupets can do significant damage.

This is an important step for Wikispecies. It is a clear demonstration we can run ourselves as a Wiki Project part of Wiki Media Foundation. When I and several others first discussed this we knew it would be difficult at the time to meet all the criteria. We have only now decided to try and get this feature included in Wikispecies. By doing this it can lead to other areas where Wikispecies can further develop its own policies. In some areas we have unique needs, different to the other Wiki's. It is timely we were able to develop all these policies.

Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:15, 4 February 2017 (UTC)Reply

Request for vote reg use of BASEPAGENAME

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The previous discussions regarding if we should subst:ing BASEPAGENAME and change all [[BASEPAGENAME]] into [[susbt:BASEPAGENAME]] did not really reach a consensus.

Please vote here on the Village pump!

If you are not sure on your opinion, you can read and join the discussion about the claimed advantages and disadvantages of using BASEPAGENAME

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:29, 11 February 2017 (UTC)Reply

Wikispecies Oversighter

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Wikispecies has no local Oversighter. Since I had the communitys confidence regarding the previous application for Checkusers rights, as per local Oversight policy on META, I hereby apply to get Oversighters user rights, as a request to the Wikispecies community.

Application is located at Requests for Comment.

Please also note that Oversighter actions are logged, but for privacy reasons the logs are only visible to other Oversighters. Because of this, Wikispecies must always have no fewer than two oversighters, for mutual accountability. I don't want to suggest anyone, but hope that someone feel inspired and will step forward and also apply for oversighters rights.

Dan Koehl through MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:01, 3 March 2017 (UTC)Reply

Oversight nomination

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Please refer to Wikispecies:Oversighters/Requests/Koavf for a second Oversight nomination. Note that we must have at least two Oversigthers in order for anyone to have these user rights. All feedback is welcome. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:50, 3 March 2017 (UTC)Reply

Format

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Hello FredD, and thank you for your contributions. Some of your recent edits have been reverted. When editing, please remember that Wikispecies is not a general encyclopedia (i.e. not Wikipedia), nor is it an image repository. Please see Help:Taxonavigation section and Help:Image Guidelines for further information about what type of information is suitable for Wikispecies taxon pages, and how it should be formatted. –Best regards, Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 16:31, 3 May 2017 (UTC).Reply

Ok, I felt it looked better, but didn't know it was advised against. Cheers, FredD (talk) 17:13, 3 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
I can understand that, and in some cases it actually do look better. However the scope of Wikispecies is very different from the other sister sites at Wikimedia, especially in comparison to Wikipedia. While Wikipedia is a generally kept "all you can eat" encyclopaedia, Wikispecies is only a database of taxa, taxonomy, biological systematics, type repositories, and information about the authors and references needed to verify that data. Nothing else. We have no need for an abundance of unverifiable data or data that is unrelated to biological taxonomy. In other words: Wikispecies always take on a much more scientific approach, while Wikipedia is more mainstream. That's also why we try to limit the information on any taxon page to only include data about that very taxon. Hence on an order page (for instance Stomopneustoida) we list the included familia, but not the authors of (or the genera in) those families. Instead that information belongs to the actual family pages. That's really the only way to do it, since if we included all information about all daughter taxa to that order page, it would be a mile long... :-) The same goes for pictures, which from a strictly taxonomic viewpoint rarely have any value at all. The difference is also very apparent on pages about the different authors. While Wikipedia might often include a lot of biographical data about the different authors all of that is irrelevant to Wikispecies, since the biographies have nothing to do with taxonomy. Instead we only list their name, scientific disciplines, author abbreviations, list of named taxa, and publications. We often also include nationalities and year of birth+death, but that's mainly to make it easier to differentiate between authors with similar names (like the 31 different Anderson's currently listed…)
I guess that pretty much sums it up. The format here is stricter than on Wikipedia, but you are of course very welcome to continue editing, and your contributions are welcome! All the best, Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 19:55, 3 May 2017 (UTC).Reply