Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life/Newsletter/005

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;{{big|August 2019—Issue 005}}

;{{huge|Tree of Life}}

;Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!

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|+Newly recognized content

{{icon|FA}} Letter-winged kite by {{noping|Casliber}}

{{icon|FA}} Megabat by {{noping|Enwebb}}

{{icon|FA}} Rock parrot by {{noping|Casliber}}

{{icon|GT}} Adelophthalmidae by {{noping|Super Dromaeosaurus}}

{{icon|GA}} Giant golden-crowned flying fox by {{noping|Enwebb}}, reviewed by {{noping|Starsandwhales}}

{{icon|GA}} Myxomatosis by {{noping|Rabbit Vet}}, reviewed by {{noping|Chiswick Chap}}

{{icon|GA}} Tylopterella by {{noping|Super Dromaeosaurus}}, reviewed by {{noping|Starsandwhales}} and {{noping|Enwebb}}

{{icon|GA}} Kosmoceratops by {{noping|FunkMonk}}, reviewed by {{noping|Jens Lallensack}}

{{icon|GA}} Slender glass lizard by {{noping|SL93}}, reviewed by {{noping|Casliber}}

{{icon|GA}} Guano by {{noping|Enwebb}}, reviewed by {{noping|Chiswick Chap}}

{{icon|GA}} Dvulikiaspis by {{noping|Super Dromaeosaurus}}, reviewed by {{noping|Casliber}}

{{icon|GA}} Rock parrot by {{noping|Casliber}}, reviewed by {{noping|The Rambling Man}}

{{icon|GA}} Leptospirosis by {{noping|Cerevisae}}, reviewed by {{noping|Ajpolino}}

{{icon|GA}} Hepatitis E by {{noping|Ozzie10aaaa}}, reviewed by {{noping|Casliber}}

{{icon|GA}} Cardabiodon by {{noping|Macrophyseter}}, reviewed by {{noping|FunkMonk}}

{{icon|GA}} Clostridium tetani by {{noping|Ajpolino}}, reviewed by {{noping|Chiswick Chap}}

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|+Newly nominated content

{{icon|FAC}} Kosmoceratops by {{noping|FunkMonk}}

{{icon|GAN}} Western yellow robin by {{noping|Casliber}}

{{icon|GAN}} Pekarangan by {{noping|Dhio270599}}

{{icon|GAN}} Hibbertopterus by {{noping|Ichthyovenator}}












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| style="text-align:center;" | What's the relevance of WikiJournals to WP:TOL?

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File:WikiJournal of Science publishing pipeline (wiki first).svg

Guest column by Thomas Shafee ({{noping|Evolution and evolvability}}), Editor in Chief of WikiJournal of Science

The Tree of Life WikiProject and its sprawling phylogeny of daughter projects is one of the largest and most active communities in Wikipedia. It encompasses approximately 570 Featured Articles and well over a thousand Good Articles (second only to military history). The WikiJournal of Science (one of three current journals in the user group) has a few aims that may closely align with the interests of the ToL community.

;Review of existing articles

Firstly, WikiJSci can be a complementary system for FA review (getting external review, input, and validity). When an Wikipedia article is nominated (via WP:JAN), journal editors go out to non-Wikipedian academics and researchers who have published on the subject on the last five years and invite them to give feedback comments (e.g. Peripatric speciation and Baryonyx). The resulting changes can then be integrated back into the Wikipedia article.

;Attracting new articles and contributors

Getting more editors involved in Wikipedia is always a high priority. WikiJSci can also be a way to encourage new people to contribute articles (especially on missing/stub/start topics). An example of an article that was written from scratch by a group of non-Wikipedians is Teladorsagia circumcincta. This not only resulted in a new Wikipedia page on an underdeveloped topic, but introduced the idea of Wikimedia contribution to a group of people who had previously never considered it.

;Images, videos, sound and galleries

The journal can be a way to get multimedia content reviewed or encourage contribution. The same approach could be easily adapted to sounds (e.g. frog mating calls) or videos (e.g. starfish feet motion). It also allows for tracking of those images in new articles via Altmetric ([https://dimensions.altmetric.com/details/3455098/news this example] has >200, which is bananas). There aren't any biology examples in WikiJSci yet, but the sister medical journal has published a few summary diagrams, photography, and image galleries. Examples include this gallery by Blausen Medical or the diagram of cell disassembly during apoptosis.

;Other projects

For those interested in other Wikimedia sister projects, there's also broad scope for interactions with the WikiJournals. Perhaps peer reviewed teaching resources could be useful to sit alongside sets of Wikipedia articles and be integrated into Wikiversity courses (like this or this)? Can sections of Wikidata & Wikispecies be peer reviewed? What are the potential avenues for integration with WikiCite, WikiFactMine, Scholia, etc.? Currently, WikiJSci is aiming to be very flexible and try out different formats so long as they can be externally peer reviewed.

For more info, see the 2019-06-30 Signpost article and the current sister project proposal.

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| style="text-align:center;" | Editor spotlight: Cwmhiraeth

1) Enwebb: You're very prolific with DYKs, with over 2,000 nominations credited (in fact, I'll highlight which DYK nominations this month were yours below). What made you become so involved in this part of Wikipedia? Why should Tree of Life editors nominate articles for DYK?

:Cwmhiraeth: I became aware of the WikiCup in 2012 and entered the contest. The scoring structure seemed to me to favour DYKs, and I went to considerable trouble to identify short stubs that could be expanded into qualifying start class articles with multiple bonus points. Casliber introduced me to preparing articles for FAC and Sasata helped me with my first solo FA. I won the WikiCup that year, and repeated that success the following year, after which the Cup got a bit more competitive. By that time, nominating articles for DYK was an ingrained habit, and I have continued doing so ever since, but at a rather slower rate. I do more work behind the scenes at DYK now, reviewing other people's nominations in excess of my QPQ requirement, and building prep sets ready to go on the main page, and I retired from competing in the WikiCup and became a judge instead. I would encourage ToL editors to nominate suitable articles for DYK because it gives great satisfaction to know that hundreds or even thousands of people have appreciated your work, and it provides a foil for the biographies and historical articles that predominate there.

2) Enwebb: I noticed that your DYK nominations reflect a diverse array of flora and fauna, from trees, marine invertebrates, birds, fishes, and mammals. How do you decide what to work on?

:Cwmhiraeth: As I look around different articles I keep a note of things I might work on, red links, stub articles that need expanding or places in articles where I would like to add a wikilink but no suitable target page exists. So I have this list, but more often than not I choose a new article to work on based on a Google book that I have been using in a previous article. I like Google books; some of them are really useful for species articles, the main annoyance being when certain pages are permanently unavailable, although I am quite good at tricking the books into revealing pages that they were trying to prevent me from viewing. Eventually I get bored with African rodents, or whatever my present topic is, and move on. I am particularly interested in organisms living in extreme habitats, endangered species, invasive species, pest species, parasites or creatures with interesting behavioural traits.

3) Enwebb: Which of your Wikipedia accomplishments are you most proud of?

:Cwmhiraeth: Well, Sea really. Again that was inspired by the WikiCup, and working in collaboration with Chiswick Chap, we took it from virtually nothing, little more than a list of seas, through DYK and GA, culminating in a really tough FA. That was very satisfying (as were the 1000 odd points it gained me at the WikiCup). In complete contrast was the article Tree. I completely rewrote it in a sandbox as an entry for the "Core contest". The previous version had been quite short with a section on "Record breaking trees" which I hived off into a separate article. My new version was immediately challenged and an edit war would have erupted had I not decided to retire from the fray. My version had some serious flaws, I had never studied botany and I had used a book source which misled me. However, after corrections, my version largely remained in place and I later joined Chiswick Chap in bringing the article to GA status.

4) Enwebb: What motivates you to keep contributing? What's your 10,000 ft view (pardon the non-SI) of the community and Tree of Life?

:Cwmhiraeth: I think Wikipedia is a really great project. The idea of Wikipedia as a pool of knowledge contributed to by thousands of individuals in hundreds of countries is inspiring. It would be nice if we had no vandalism and everyone co-operated with everyone else in an amicable spirit, but as we are all human, it does not quite work out like that. I like to think of my efforts as a legacy that will continue in existence after I am gone.

6) Enwebb: How did you first become interested in natural history?

:Cwmhiraeth: When I was young I had an elderly aunt who used to come to stay and who would take me for walks in the countryside, during which we would watch birds and identify wild flowers. She would take me out at weekends from my girls-only boarding school and we would search for orchids on the Wiltshire Downs. My school was not geared up for science, we just did general science for O-levels, and when it came to A-levels, I was the only pupil in my year to do zoology and chemistry, and one of only two to do physics, for which we had to cycle off to the grammar school on the other side of town. I wanted to be a vet, but was discouraged by my father, obtained a BSc in biochemistry and ended up in an unrelated job. If I were to live my life again, things might work out differently, but then I dare say we could all say that!

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| style="text-align:center;" | August DYKs

{{main page image|image=Weebill (Smicrornis brevirostris) - cropped.jpg|caption=Weebill|width=150}}

{{main page image|image=The freshwater crabs of Macau (10.3897-zookeys.810.30726) Figure 2, Nanhaipotamon macau.jpg|caption=Nanhaipotamon macau|width=180}}

{{main page image|image=Paracoccidioides lutzii.png|caption=P. lutzii (yeast phase)|width=150}}

{{main page image|image=Xylocarpus granatum.jpg|caption=Cannonball mangrove|width=133x150}}

{{main page image|image=Ruspolia nitidula male (3788698376).jpg|caption=Ruspolia nitidula male|width=180}}

{{main page image|image=Ugandan kobs (Kobus kob thomasi) female and calf (square crop).jpg|caption=Female kob and calf|width=150}}

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