User talk:Jwinius

Welcome to the Commons, Jwinius!

First steps tutorial Our first steps help file and our FAQ will help you a lot after registration. They explain how to customize the interface (for example the language), how to upload files and our basic licensing policy. You don't need technical skills in order to contribute here. Be bold contributing here and assume good faith for the intentions of others. This is a wiki - it is really easy. Getting help More information is available at the Community Portal. You may ask questions at the Help desk, Village Pump or on IRC channel #wikimedia-commons. You can also contact an administrator on their talk page. If you have a specific copyright question, ask at Commons talk:Licensing.		Goodies, tips and tricks Put Babel boxes on your user page so others know what languages you can speak. All your uploads are stored in your personal Gallery Please sign your name on Talk pages by typing ~~~~ Use the CommonSense tool to find good categories for your files (then other people can find them too!) To link to an image page, write this: [[:Image:Foo.jpg]], it makes this: Image:Foo.jpg If you're copying files from another project, be sure to use the CommonsHelper Made a mistake? Did you want to rename or move a file? Simply upload the file again and mark the old one like this: {{bad name|Correct name}} For more information read the full Deletion guidelines
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Please link images

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The important point is that the images should be placed in the general structure somewhere. There is a large number of completely unsorted images on the commons right now. If you would like to help to place some of those images where they can be found, please do! Thank you. -Samulili 09:18, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Image Tagging Image:Agkistrodon-bilineatus_range-map.png

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Thanks for uploading Image:Agkistrodon-bilineatus_range-map.png. I notice the image page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you have not created this media yourself then you need to argue that we have the right to use the media on Wikimedia Commons (see copyright tagging below). If you have not created the media yourself then you should also specify where you found it, i.e., in most cases link to the website where you got it, and the terms of use for content from that page. If the content is a derivative of a copyrighted work, you need to supply the names and a licence of the original authors as well.

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Image:Agkistrodon_contortrix_contortrix_CDC-a.png

Hello, and thank your for sharing your files with Commons. There seems to be a problem regarding the description and/or licensing of this particular file. Could you please resolve these problems, which are described on the page linked in above? Thank you. --Siebrand

Image Tagging Image:Echis-carinatus-sochureki-head.jpg

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Thanks for uploading Image:Echis-carinatus-sochureki-head.jpg. This image is missing permission information. A source is given, but there is no proof that the author or copyright holder agreed to license the file under the given license. Please provide a link to an appropriate webpage with license information, or send an email with copy of a written permission to OTRS (permissions-commons@wikimedia.org).

Unless the permission information is given, the image may be speedy deleted after seven days. Thank you. Oxam Hartog 20:34, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi

When you upload pic of other people, you have to put a link to original website if it's possible or to ask to the pic's creator to send a mail to commons to confirm his agreement about publication on GFDL license. Confirmation of photographer is always required and just him can confirm validy of licence exept if the pic was on other website with same license. friendly Oxam Hartog 22:32, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

If that's the case, then why isn't it stated more clearly on the upload page? Besides, not everyone has a website or even an email address. But anyway, I've added a link to Al's website to the image. Is that okay? I'd rather not add his email address, since it's already included on the first page of his website, and I don't want to be responsible for him getting spammed any more than he probably already is as a result us publishing that address. --Jwinius 10:26, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I am sorry but nothing on Al Coritz's page about GFDL License. He claim his agreement for private copy but no more

Most of the pictures are available to make prints for your own private use, if you find an image you like, go ahead and print one or more. If you have other requests for photo's use please email me to obtain the image you desire.

For all other usages you have to obtain formal agreement about upload here with free license (including commercial use and derivation) which to give to Commons in OTRS System (read above).

Usage of pics draged on the net are never free of use exept if it's clearly mentionned on the page.

When you upload a file, our attention is catched on this page Commons:Upload which give some indications before upload. friendly Oxam Hartog 21:12, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Unidentified Colubridae

This image (and other) taken in Germany/NRW/Wuppertal shows a Natrix natrix (Ringelnatter)? --Atamari (talk) 11:43, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Excellent! I was confused because the head is not visible and this particular color pattern is similar to Vipera aspis francisciredi, although this species does not occur as far north as Wuppertal. Thanks! --Jwinius (talk) 11:46, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Acrantophis

Hi Jwinius! Please, can you revert the changes you made at Category:Acrantophis and pages related to this genus. You are right that ITIS provides the information you gave, however, ITIS isn't up-to-date at all. For example, see Phylogeny of South American and Malagasy boine snakes: Molecular evidence for the validity of Sanzinia and Acrantophis and biogeographic implications (2001) Copeia, (4), pp. 1151-1154 and publications citing this paper in the following years. The genus Acrantophis is widely accepted. Sorry, AxelStrauss (talk) 07:27, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi Axel, Although I am sure that many would agree with the opinion of Vences et al. (2001), I have no idea why it has not been accepted at the most authoritative level, which I am told is reflected in the taxonomy provided by ITIS. By now, we must assume that it has come to the attention of Dr. McDiarmid and his colleagues, but that they have simply not found it convincing enough compared to Kluge's 1991 paper on this subject. Honestly, I don't know enough about mitochondrial DNA analysys to say whether Vences' 3-page analysis has any merit, or Kluge's for that matter, but even if we were all professional herpetologists here, it would not make a difference: the world would not be interested in our anonymous views.

For the past two years, the approach to organizing the snake articles at the English Wikipedia has been to follow ITIS first and then to report any opposing views within the articles. I'm very happy with this, because once the decision was made to defer to a single authoritative third-party source in such matters, there have been no more taxonomic arguments to speak of. I believe that it would be to our mutual advantage to apply the same approach here, where we all have to work together on an interwiki level.

Nevertheless, we have yet to arrive at that point and, considering the evidence, I suspected that Acrantophis and Sanzinia might become an issue, so I left those articles and categories much as they were, still available to other editors who wish to recognize those names. If you want to make decisions about when to second-guess ITIS, then be my guest -- just as long as you refrain from forcing your opinions on the rest of us. --Jwinius (talk) 12:58, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi Jwinius! Sorry for responding so late. As far as I know Kluge's paper was the one causing all the trouble about Acrantophis and Sanzinia. Maybe Vences et al. 2001 is not the one paper that most interest should be turned on, Noonan & Chippindale (2006 a, b) are. (Of course, how it is dealt with findings always (unfortunatelly) also depends on the authority of the publisher/author.) You are right that it is not up to us to take decisions, as Wikipedia isn't a scientific journal. You are also right that Wikipedians need some kind of guideline to work on and it might be worth to stick on something that is not up-to-date but provides some consitency between the different articles/pages, at least for some time. For example, ITIS also refers to Amphibian species of the world when searching for Mantellidae (I know, it's not snakes but something I know a little bit about). This database again lists less than 200 species within this family - meanwhile far more than twice as much are described. So, what to do? I don't know. When I search for something in Wikipedia I don't want to have old stuff. I also do not want to get wrong information, just because it was recently published in some journal somewhere in China. Therefore, we need to provide all the useful information to readers, as you did on the pages we are talking about. From my point of view, I would link to ITIS pages but I would refuse the comments "valid" or "unvalid", as, at least in this case, they are just wrong. It is maybe not our job to decide what is right and what is wrong, however, we have some resposibility to verify what we do and, at least in cases that are questionable, this means checking for scientific publications (as well as their references and the papers citing them) and provide the points of view with the same emphasis, enabling the reader to verify.

If we leave your edits, it's fine with me, at least the links to ITIS, the category tags on the pictures and also the conflicting categories itself, as long as for readers everything is with the same emphasis (no valid comments etc). I am not going to delete those comments but I would like to have this topic discussed somewhere in commons (or, please, show me where this topic was discussed, already). --AxelStrauss (talk) 12:11, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I'm not saying ITIS is perfect. Basically, it isn't even complete for snakes: it's still a work in progress. However, what it does have for snakes is Dr. Roy McDiarmid, who works at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. and is the world's top authority on snake taxonomy. Here's what I've learned about ITIS during the past two years.

I believe it was back in 1989 that the Herpetologists' League put Dr. McDarmid to the task of compiling the first comprehensive checklist for snakes since George Albert Boulenger's landmark "Catalogue of the snakes of the British Museum" (1893, 1894, 1896). His working manuscript was compiled for both the Herpetologists' League and for CITES, after which is was adopted in June 1997 as the standard reference for snake nomenclature for both those organizations at the 10th CITES meeting in Harare, Zimbabwe. It was eventually published by the Herpetologists' League in 1999 as "Snake Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference, vol. 1" (SSotW1), by McDiarmid, Campbell & Touré. It was a major accomplishment, although most hobbyists only noticed that, after that time, herpetologists had started to use different scientific names to refer to certain well-known species, e.g. Daboia russelii instead of Vipera russelii.

Ever since 1999, Dr. McDiarmid has been working on the second volume. The first and current volume includes all snake families other then the Atractaspididae, the Elapidae and the Colubridae, the latter being the largest family of all, comprising two thirds of all snake species (I imagine that there will also be a third volume). Right now, the taxonomic information for snakes at ITIS is based primarily on SSotW1, to which a significant number of changes have already been made, as well as on the working manuscript for SSotW2.

Consequently, over the past two years I have contributed to almost all snake articles at the English Wikipedia, with the exception of the three aforementioned families. That's because, without a copy of SSotW2 in my hands I have no synonymy for these families and so can never hope to organize the articles properly. Also, I have no authoritative source of geographic range data either, since that's another type of information provided by McDiarmid's checklist (hence the title).

So, what do you do in the mean time if you want to work on articles for the Atractaspididae, Elapidae and Colubridae? That's a tough call. Dr. Peter Uetz's EMBL Reptiles Database (now the TIGR Reptile Database) is also a popular source for reptile taxonomy and seems to carry a more Colubridae taxonomy, but a herpetologists once remarked to me that it isn't complete either and sometimes does not cite all its sources (I have other problems with it as well). In other words, unless you're an expert, if you embark now of a systematic effort to describe these three families at Wikipedia, you're bound to end up with a significant amount of duplication and error. As a result, if you think others have made taxonomic mistakes, you often won't be able to tell for sure whether they have or not, and even worse, you probably won't have an authoritative reference to back up your own articles.

Regarding individual issues, such as Acrantophis and Sanzinia, I don't see that as a problem. I know that there will always be debates among herpetologists, with competing views being published in articles left and right about how the different taxa should be grouped together or split up, but I don't let that bother me anymore. Knowing what I know now, I'm happy to let Dr. McDiarmid and his colleagues sort all that out for me. Kluge (1991) was apparently a very influential publication that was taken very seriously at the highest levels. Such works often take years to complete, after which they become very difficult to supersede. Publications with different ideas, like those of Vences, must show up all the time, but unless they do a really stellar job, they will simply not make enough of an impression on Dr. McDiarmid and his associates.

As for the rest of ITIS, I have no doubt that much of that is also a work in progress. At the English Wikipedia, I've been told told me that the taxonomy for amphibians available via the website of the American Museum of Natural History it superior to that of ITIS and I take their word for it. Perhaps this is an illustration of not only how difficult, but how important taxonomy is. With the advant of popular wiki systems, such as Wikipedia, proper taxonomy is now becoming important to us normal folks as well; not just to a small group of experts like in the past.

Where should we discuss this kind of thing? At the highest levels, as far as I'm concerned: all of our natural history articles should be based first of all on the best third party taxonomies available and proceed from there. Unfortunately, we don't even use scientific names for the names of our articles (well, I do; see my user page), so I fear that the majority here will not feel that this issue is very important. On the other hand, maybe it'll have a better chance here than in the place I usually hang out. Cheers, --Jwinius (talk) 14:40, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Hei taas! I'd like to say a few things before I continue to debate. Just to clarify - I am not a specialist for snakes. I am working in herpetology but by a more ecological approach. Of course, I also have to deal with systematics but not with snakes at all. Also, I am not partisian, neither for one nor another scientist.

Back to the topic: it might not be up to us to decide which scientific opinion is right or wrong, however, it definitively is up to us to provide the best information available. If the majority of commons uploaders for some (good?) reasons prefers to stick on ITIS, the ITIS information might be provided at pictures/pages/categories. But we also now that ITIS isn't the be-all and end-all and therefore we have to keep watching what others say. As you mentioned, we have to work on a inter wiki level, keeping it somehow consistent. However, working on inter wiki level does not mean working on anglophone wikipedia level. So far, I did not spent enough time to get an own strong opinion about ITIS, I am not even sure how accepted ITIS is worldwide. But if I see that there are different opinions in the scientific community (and, as in this case, if I see that ITIS information is based on an almost 10 years old book whereas the other peer reviewed and often cited papers are younger and the techniques applied developed a lot in this time) we need to provide the other opinion, as well. As you do, I prefer to use scientific names (as you may notice on my picture's names) but when uploading a picture to commons I definitively will keep uploading them with the name that fits the (imho) present scientific opinion, e.g. Sanzinia & Acrantophis first. And I also will create the pages and categories according to this, as people may look for these names if they have been used for 7 years (and before Kluge as well), already. Unfortunatelly, my time is very scarce at the moment and I am hardly able to go deeper in this topic. --AxelStrauss (talk) 07:45, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

ITIS not the be-all and end-all (of snake taxonomy)? No taxonomy of this size ever is, but so far it's the best effort I've seen. For example, the TIGR (EMBL) system may disagree with ITIS in many cases, including Sanzinia and Acrantophis, but TIGR is mainly a reflection of the ideas of one herpetologist: Prof. Wolfgang Wüster of the University of Bangor in Wales (UK). On the other hand, the SSotW is an International effort, with Wolfgang Wüster being only one of the reviewers. Others include William R. Branch from South Africa, Donald G. Broadly from Zimbabwe, Indraneil Das from India, Hans-Werner Herrman and Ulrich Joger from Germany, Göran Nilson from Sweden, and Anatoly Tokar from Russia (or possibly Ukraine). Furthermore, the taxonomy for snakes provided by ITIS may have started with a book that is now 10 years old (hey, you have to start somewhere!), but there have since been many updates. Even I have had some influence on it. Only last year, for example, after trying to get the ITIS database changed to include Crotalus durissus unicolor and C. d. vegrandis (two subspecies that are mentioned in SSotW1), Dr. McDiarmid got involved and not only added the aforementioned subspecies, but also moved C. d. collilineatus and C. d. cascavella to the synonymy of C. d. terrificus. How did that happen? Roy had made that decision based on Wolfgang Wüster's 2005 paper, "No rattlesnakes in the rainforests: reply to Gosling and Bush." Now, you would think that this information would sooner show up in the Reptile Database than in ITIS, but the fact is that TIGR still recognizes collilineatus and cascavella. How much more of TIGR still needs to be updated?

Another example: Pantherophis (Utiger et al., 2002) was rejected by a group of eminent herpetologists in 2003: Crother, Boundy, Campbell, De Quieroz, Frost, Green, Highton, Iverson, McDiarmid, Meylan, Reeder, Seidel, Sites Jr, Tilley and Wake. Consequently, ITIS does not recognize Pantherophis, but for some reason the Reptile Database still does. I have also tried to get some minor mistakes fixed in the TIGR database, but although they were acknowledged, nothing was ever changed. That doesn't inspire my confidence either.

Finally, it's probably fair to say that ITIS is mostly an American effort, but if you know of any better ones elsewhere that are also as comprehensive, authoritative and available online, then I would definitely be interested. --Jwinius (talk) 11:19, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

differing taxonomy

Commons is an interesting playground first of all due to the way it serves images to all of the wikipedias. My first question is regarding your user page here: Which do you consider to be "the wikipedia"?

The taxonomy challenge here is second to the international challenge (which character set, which wikipedia to follow and the easiest answer to the second one is not to since articles and images are so different); ITIS, for example has to worry about genera which share the same name between Kingdoms -- here, the genera might also share a name with a musician or a city or a province or a type of cell, etc.

When I first started writing plant articles for English wikipedia, it did not take long for me to realize that there were several very good sites that had gotten the information from a few basic sites; my goal was to make the encyclopedia to be as good or better so I quit looking at them because I did not want to carry their mistakes or biases along. I was stopped at a point where I was making stubs with very detailed taxonomy boxes (type species was one thing I was interested in including) and the original paper or book in the references or external links if it was available online.

On the assumption that there will soon be a new taxonomy tree (the assumption was not mine but the Plants Project at English wikipedia, one of the wikis that the Commons serves images for) I chose one species name serving site and am usually using that information here.

The upload software only suggests existing Categories so I am encouraged by this simple fact to build the tree. The discussion of whether or not to do that could last while the commons gathers two or three million more images, so to me the idea seems overdue and beyond the need of discussion even.

For the plants, the tree from the 1980s is interesting in how it is different from the tree from 1998 (changes in the technology for my interest mostly) but until the trees are more showing here, it is the promise of being interesting, mostly.

I have about eight months of experience with the plant web sites and almost no experience with mammals or insects or fishes or anything else. I also do not care about the reasons they make their trees, a fact I will apologize for if necessary. Now, about your interesting taxonomy tree dispute:

Can you show me this problem? If you like, you can make a sample gallery (or galleries) at User:CarolSpears/taxonomy problem 1 and User:CarolSpears/taxonomy problem A <-- carefully named to not ruffle any feathers in the world of fishes.... -- carol (talk) 22:33, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, my user page here is still a bit minimal; I only recently started spending more time here. My normal user page is here. Your taxonomy-driven approach to creating collections or articles sounds a lot like mine. I also assume that everyone here will eventually be using the same taxonomy -- for snakes, ITIS -- and am using that to build a taxonomic structure here. It's tempting to create all the empty categories to fill out the rest of the taxonomy, but that would be very time consuming (at least, to do manually). At the moment I've only created a few more than is necessary to accommodate the images that we have at the moment. But, you're right: taxonomy is becoming more important all the time. I must confess, though, that I'm quite jealous of the botonists over at the English Wikipedia: you've succeeded in standardizing on scientific names for most of your article titles, while the zoologists there still have to struggle with a naming policy that gives precedence to common names. I feel that this also causes the issue of selecting the right taxonomy to remain largely ignored.

Dispute? Which one are you referring to? Cheers, --Jwinius (talk) 23:31, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Very interesting. You've obviously been at this for a while! I picked a random link, [[:Category:Actinoseris stenophylla]], out of 
the category you indicated and I see that it contains 3 taxnavs! You know, maybe it would be easier to tell them apart if 
they had different background colors. Anyway, your approach makes my snake taxonomy look trivial. However, what do you do 
with a gallery page for a taxon in which the different taxonomies disagree about the contents? --Jwinius (talk) 
22:06, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Ah! I was thinking about the case of a genus in, for instance, two competing taxonomies. According to the first, genus A would contain species 1, 2 and 3, while genus B would contain species 4, 5 and 6. According to the second taxonomy, however, genus A would contain species 1, 2, 3 and 4, while genus B would contain only species 5 and 6. In my opinion, it's not possible (or, at the very least, not practical) to reflect both of these taxonomic views equally within the same wiki environment. You simply have to make a choice to work according to the one or the other. If you don't, your synonymy will not work either, which means that you'll never be able to prevent error and duplication from occurring. Therefore, the only solution that I can imagine is for us to identify that which the top experts in each field of zoology (snakes, birds, fish, etc.) recognize as the most authoritative taxonomy available and stick with it. If the taxonomy is also available online and updated every once in a while, what more could we ask for? --Jwinius (talk) 11:22, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Malvaceae is a plant family and many of the genera are different between the two trees. One taxonomy circumscription is from 20 to 25 years ago so I have used an @ to separate those genera from the others. Subfamilies -- there have been some who objected to those -- are separated by a space in front of them. I tend to treat them as part of the modern taxonomies but that is not true always and it does seem to be where some of the arguments are. Strasburger which is being used by the German wikipedia gets an "&" if it is different from the modern circumscription and also gets an "&" if it is different from the 1980s circumscription. Sorting characters are added with the category [[Category:Malvaceae|@Hibiscus]], so the genera that was part of the older circumscription is displayed separately in the parent category and the subfamilies are [[Category:Malvaceae| Bombacoideae]].

When I first started to work with these "definitions" and "redefinitions" I was unaware of the many different ways they could be different from each other. The family I showed as an example needs me to return to it and refine some of the templates I made -- so I am glad that I showed this to you today.

It is quite impressive how User instances here can forget things they wrote less than 24 hours before. This seems to be a problem that came here from "The wikipedia" and I wonder if it is time for a little introspection of the forces that have been at work there. My opinion only. Thank you for remembering what you wrote after I pasted it here. -- carol (talk) 12:05, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Wow! I guess what I was saying applies mainly to Wikipedia situations where the articles are the main focus of attention; it looks to me like you have a solution for categories to simultaneously support different taxonomies for plants. I wonder whether this could work for zoological taxonomy as well (the rules are different). The templates you use, such as Template:Malvoideae, look very powerful!

However, what about the gallery pages? Yesterday, I was making pages like this, Crotalinae, but that one is only valid according to the ITIS taxonomy. To support a second taxonomy, e.g. TIGR (which has split up the genus Trimeresurus), perhaps it would be better to maintain two pages where necessary: Crotalinae-ITIS and Crotalinae-TIGR.

About the only thing I don't like about the Malvaceae page is the fact that the taxnavs are not at the top. When navigating about, this causes them to jump up and down as objects of different sizes appear and disappear above them. I find this very irritating indeed. --Jwinius (talk) 13:31, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

With the plants, ITIS has opted to use the older of the taxonomy circumscriptions that are still in use and it is named with the author Cronquist. That name appears in the taxonomy navigation. I would be somewhat certain that ITIS has opted to use an authored taxonomy for the animal kingdom also and the navigation can have that name added to its options. The differing opinion of the genus which is included -- plants has this going on. The templates are named with the next to the genus (sometimes tribe, sometimes subfamily, often family) and my plan involves software that creates all of the genus categories and pastes template instructions on the talk pages so that species can be added. Empty categories should not be considered a problem here (at least not for plants and animals) as these are photographs that can be gotten and the list of empty categories can be a challenge for photographers or I think I saw a non-photographer treating them like a golf game, which is fine as long as they put the right "ball" into the right "hole" and it would be kind of nice if there could be a taxonomy ranking of difficulty to acquire the photograph to make it more like a game....

The translation tables -- I have no problem with; the common names are essential and since Commons serves images to several hundred wikis, the ability to display the common name in several different languages and character sets is equally important. The style is not of great interest to me and style can be discussed and adapted -- I don't really have feelings about this.

Commons is like a bookstore, library or a grocery store to me. Where the wikipedias are more like the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (the actual book that the real book is about). The galleries being "special displays" like that can be found on the ends of the shelves at the store, library or bookstore and the categories are similar to the shelves that make up the length of the structure.

The software is such that the collection of images here (and even the expectation of them) can be managed like a database which has been one of the motivations for me in adding the different taxonomy trees. The templates are quite simple to make -- easier to make than to read, especially for this stuff. I don't want to give the appearance that I think template authoring is easy, but making them work to manage the taxonomy problems is somewhat easy stuff. Adding the style stuff to them, I have no experience with that to know of the ease. The different colors are nice though and if they show up in the navigation one day, I will probably not complain at all about this.

I have also been trying to manage the plant native location with via a document that was written to do this things by the Taxonomy Working Group (I think is their name). I merged their recommendations with those of the Ecozones which existed here already and it is kind of cool also. Earth is broken into eight chunks of similar environments and then broken into smaller areas called Biocountries which could be areas that contain 2 to 12 states (in the United States) or 3 to 4 countries in South America or 6 to 12 countries in Europe -- all sections about the same size, kind of. It really does seem to work better with locating the plants natively as some of them can be found on only a small part of the world and others are considered to be native to all of one or another of the large eight parts. Some day when the bullies have gone away, I should show you that stuff. There is a tendency since I had a problem at English wikipedia here to not ever ask for something outright -- only to threaten and act like a complete idiot. I blame your "the wikipedia" for that and suggest that it failed there already and does not need to fail here also.

That is a lot of words and one strong opinion expressed about the recent changes in how people interact here lately. Let me know if I should apologize for any of that. -- carol (talk) 14:57, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Category:Malpighiales has different families in different orders. When I made the family sort itself with the space or the characters, I also had to find the Order that the family occured in in the older taxonomy scheme. It was such a mess that now it is almost done, it should be easy to make a template for all of them. -- carol (talk) 15:02, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

For snakes, ITIS does indeed use an authored taxonomy: Dr. Roy W. McDiarmid. The info for snakes at ITIS is meant to be used together with his 1999 checklist, "Snake Species of the World, a Taxonomic and Geographic Reference, Volume 1" (SSotW1). It's the first comprehensive and authoritative effort involving snake taxonomy for over 100 years (since G.A. Boulenger, 1893-1896). I expect Vol.2 to be published in the next year or so.

The only other comprehensive snake taxonomy that I know of is the TIGR Reptile Database. However, it's maintained by a geneticist, Dr. Peter Uetz, while the consulting herpetologist is Dr. Wolfgang Wüster, who was only one of many reviewers contributing to SSotW1. TIGR may be a popular database anyway, but I know that herpetologists do not respect it in the same was as they do McDiarmid's work and ITIS. Regardless, copies of both of these databases are often used as sources for other online taxonomies, an example being the Animal Diversity Web, which uses TIGR. More later. --Jwinius (talk) 17:10, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I've started working with templates. See Category:Serpentes Navigational Templates. No dual taxonomies yet, but it's interesting. By the way, why does Template:Malvoideae contain all those extra genus names, and how does "{{#switch: ..." work? --Jwinius (talk) 01:28, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Taxonomy Systems

I think that the template just needs a small article for the System added to the Commons collection and the system should have similar elements like genus, family, Order, etc and I am not even certain that those things are so important. In short, if you write just a brief description like this Cronquist System, APG II and others in Category:Taxonomy it should not be too much of a problem to get this added to the taxonomy options. -- carol (talk) 22:23, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I would, but you know, if there is a name that is used to refer to Dr. McDiarmid's taxonomic work, I honestly wouldn't know what it is. I'll have to see if I can find that out first. Cheers, --Jwinius (talk) 23:15, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

My friend David Nicolson, an ITIS admin, writes:

"There may well be such competing systems in various zoological realms, but they represent published (static) views, whereas ITIS is by definition not static (although given parts may remain static for a time), so references to what's in ITIS ought to be timestamped somehow, as noted on the "how to cite ITIS" page."

So, I guess the taxonomy is just called "ITIS," with the same thing applying to TIGR. Actually, the latter is a little more difficult, because they've changed their name several times over the last 18 months. First it was the EMBL Reptile Database, then the New Reptile Database, and now the TIGR Reptile Database. By the way, I'm quite as certain about TIGR's future as I am about ITIS, but I guess that's just my opinion. --Jwinius (talk) 01:21, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I started with a certain amount of respect for the authors of and contributors to the articles at English wikipedia. That is not entirely the truth but would be from about 2 months later (I started with what I considered to be an abandoned group and then abandoned them also). I was blocked at the point where I started to try to find the original paper/book/proceedingsof if it was online for stubs. I don't know if that will help you to determine the names for the reptile trees -- things seem to be more clear for plants who probably just due to the ease of propagating, imaging and picking find themselves to be more of a target for opinions. Personally, there are two things that seriously frightened me in the last 20 years -- several dozen garter snakes sunning themselves on a wood pile while the dew evaporated and bats releaseing themselves via a hole in the old house I occupied. I think that this kind of thing makes opinions and photographs kind of rare of snakes (and bats). And it was the kind of fright that did not seem to make it to my brain before the reaction -- too bad because both were well behaved and predictable and the snakes seemed willing and able to share the location.

Yes, there has been drinking of alcohol involved in this particular response, I apologize. It doesn't change the fact that you will need to find a static and reputable link to use for the taxonomy(ies) that you would like to follow or see here. The garter snakes -- they were beautiful sunning themselves after a coolish night that morning (almost like jewels or something unreal). I have no idea about the reason that it frightened me so but it is as much as I want to think about snakes and legitimate taxonomy for them. (I hid in the makeshift shed until my brain started to work....)

I think that if you determine a name for your taxonomy and provide a link and never talk about it being not static, that it should be mostly okay. That is what I did and am doing -- be strong, make a few decisions where people are simply being argumentive and tell me what link to ask be included without telling me that it is about snakes.... -- carol (talk) 02:02, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Rhabdophis subminiatus

Ok, Jwinius. No problem. Wie146 (talk) 22:41, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Category:Acrochordus arafurae

Your removal of Category:Reptiles of Australia contradicts the Wikipedia article that says that this species is found in Northern Australia. Can you please correct whichever one is wrong? Richard001 (talk) 00:30, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

So, you really want to populate Category:Reptiles of Australia with lots of other categories? I thought you had made a mistake. I thought the idea of adding tags with combinations of taxa and geographic ranges was discredited years ago, simply because the possibilities are endless. It is a hopeless task.

You probably haven't thought about the results either. For example, suppose you reach a point at which you have 1,000 species categories like the one for A. arafurae in your "Reptiles of Australia" category: How are you going to organize that? With subcategories for families and genera? Nope. Those categories are already in use for general taxonomic organization. Adding your tags to categories for higher taxa is no good either, since many of those also contain non-Australian taxa. In other words, if you work very hard you are bound to end up with one huge (and therefore rather useless) flat category.

Finally, if you are basing your decisions to add species to your category on the info found here, then I doubt you have the knowledge to finish this task even if it was worthwhile. My advice to you is therefore: give it up. Don't waste your time on this and find something more useful to occupy your time with. Seriously. --Jwinius (talk) 01:26, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Gloydius ussuriensis

DearJwinius,

Thank you for your editting Gloydius ussuriensis. You have removed my picture from the articel, saying that the picture is not of Gloydius ussuriensis but of Glodius blomhoffii.

Perhaps you are right. I don't know well about snakes. I asked a friend of mine who studies snakes for his ph.D degree in South Korea. And he said the picture is of G. ussuriensis. But, when I talked about your editing, he said also that he might be wrong, and that it is difficult to to tell both the species especiall in Jeju Island, which is located between mainland Korea and Japan.

But, I don't understand your comment that G. ussuriensis does not occur in South Korea or in Jeju Island. The article text itself says that this species occur in Jeju and South Korea. How should I understand your comment?

And, just for your understanding, this picture was realy taken on December 20, 2008 in Jeju Island, South Korea. I was walking through this forest with my wife.

Best wishes,

Yongchangjang (talk) 08:42, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Vipera reverts

This seems very reasonable to me, many thanks for the detailed message! --Fluteflute (talk) 09:30, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Media Move Bot

Hello,

I just finished your application. You are now a approved user for the media move bot.

Best regards, Abigor talk 07:23, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! --Jwinius (talk) 10:35, 7 February 2009 (UTC)