User talk:WolfmanSF/Archive3

Templates

Hello Wolfman. I removed Mexico and the states from the Central America topic template because of the problems I already explained there. Don't worry I'm not an irrational person and for what I've seen you are not either.

That template is general and used for transclussion, which will lead to give the false idea that those states are always thought as a separate part of North America, which would be officially and unofficially false.

I think the best solution is to create separated templates for specific topics such as in mammals of Central America, in which the characteristics of the region make it very important to define the region in a physiographic way, which I totally understand and of course I'm not in denial of that.

My problem is to avoid to advance the false idea that Mexico is considered part of CA which is wrong and kinda insulting both to Mexicans and Central Americans, not to mention inaccurate. As we know this is not true, and the several sources I've pasted over this years clearly indicate CA as a 7 nations region, which doesn't include MX.

I volunteer to make this templates in the specific articles that might need it. I'll start right away in the Mammals of Central America tempalte. I hope you can see my point. Thanks. Muchas gracias. AlexCovarrubias ^{( Talk? )} 07:16, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Look, I've successfully created Template:List of mammals in Central America. AlexCovarrubias ^{( Talk? )} 07:43, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Why not just have 2 templates for Central America, Template:Central America topic and Template:Central America topic2, one that doesn't include the physiographic definition and one that does? That way, the use of the second one doesn't have to be restricted to just mammals. Is that OK? WolfmanSF (talk) 07:49, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi Alex, I tried my plan, and it works in the List of Central American mammals article. You see, when you open the template and click on a country, say Panama, you should link to the list of mammals in Panama. But using your template, the link went to just the country Panama. So, is there any problem with 2 Central America templates? It should be quite easy to use the appropriate one in each circumstance. WolfmanSF (talk) 08:13, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Ficus aurea

Thanks for shepherding that article through its day on the front page. Guettarda (talk) 02:54, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

GFAJ-1 at ITN

--Kslotte (talk) 12:33, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you

		The Original Barnstar
		Thank you for your excellent updates and additions to the Elk article! MONGO 02:58, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

You're welcome. WolfmanSF (talk) 10:33, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Voyager 1

You are welcome to join the discussion here. Materialscientist (talk) 11:16, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

edit req

Please see User talk:WolfmanSF/List of prehistoric megafauna, thx,  Chzz  ►  22:26, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Barnstar

	The Working Man's Barnstar
	For continually cleaning up and tweaking the lemur articles, I award you this barnstar. I greatly appreciate your help! – VisionHolder « talk » 16:07, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm happy to contribute at any level to this impressive set of articles. WolfmanSF (talk) 19:17, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. :-) I just wish I had time to clean them all up. I hate having to tell people at the Duke Lemur Center that I can only vouch for the ones with stars on them. – VisionHolder « talk » 19:33, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Question about MSW3 templates

I have a question about the citation templates you created, such as {{MSW3 Primates}}. Most citation formats I've see abbreviate the author's first name and only give the year of publication, not the full date. Is there a reason why you used the full first name and the full publication date? Part of the reason I ask is because it may come up during a FAC. – VisionHolder « talk » 01:09, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi Visionholder, I believe you are correct as far as traditional printed references are concerned, where there is a stronger incentive to keep things short. In Wikipedia's citation templates page, however, there are a number of examples (starting with the first) in which an author's full first name is used, and also some where a month and year or full date of publication is used instead of or in addition to just the year. I agree the latter is superfluous for books, but since the space consideration is less important online, the main reason for keeping it short then becomes to reduce the amount of effort needed to create the citation. In view of the fairly elaborate templates involved, that did not concern me in this case.

At any rate, feel free to edit the template if you feel strongly enough about it. Regards, WolfmanSF (talk) 02:03, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Only if it comes to it. Please note that I did add the parameter "ref=harv" to {{MSW3 Primates}} so that the template would generate a citation that works with {{sfn}} and {{harvnb}}. If you want, I'll add it to all of them. – VisionHolder « talk » 02:08, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

That's not a bad idea, so I've done it. WolfmanSF (talk) 03:14, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

List of eruptions

I saw that u r interested on volcanoes n u edited some lists. Timetable of major worldwide volcanic eruptions; List of potentially dangerous volcanic eruptions (now List of Quaternary volcanic eruptions); Large volume volcanic eruptions in the Basin and Range Province are three lists to keep it manageable and List of large volcanic eruptions is their sortable table summary and overview. List of largest volcanic eruptions is the featured list of it. It is assumed that more or less every Quaternary volcano is a dormant volcano...

My interest was awaken 'coz we r in a Pacific ring of fire earthquake cycle. San Andreas fault gets a big one every 101 years by simulation (1906 + 101 = 2007). And there are profecies of a Yellowstone eruption, even ten times Mount Saint Helens (1980) eruption would be a small Yellowstone eruption. --Chris.urs-o (talk) 07:51, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

In the San Francisco Bay area, the Hayward fault is viewed as being more dangerous in the near future than the San Andreas fault. WolfmanSF (talk) 18:36, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the copyedit

As always, thanks for the thorough copyedit, this time on the article Evolutionary history of lemurs. Out of curiosity, do you come in a pocket-sized version so that I can pull you out and set you to work once I'm finished writing a full-length article? – VisionHolder « talk » 05:23, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Only when the article is interesting and well-written. WolfmanSF (talk) 05:26, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Credo_accounts

Are you aware of this? Ruslik_Zero 13:51, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

No, thanks for bringing it to my attention. WolfmanSF (talk) 17:17, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Eastern Sierra geology edits

WikiThanks

Thank you for the helpful edits on Mono-Inyo Craters and Long Valley Caldera! —hike395 (talk)

You're welcome. It's an interesting subject area (I have hiked the rim of Panum Crater a number of times). WolfmanSF (talk) 18:09, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

If you've never hiked to the center of Panum Crater (or Obsidian Dome), I highly recommend it. It's like Mordor! —hike395 (talk) 19:49, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I've been all over Panum Crater, but never to Obsidian Dome. WolfmanSF (talk) 20:43, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Diprotodon

Thanks for your edits with the Diprotodon article. I am personally in favor of the "early extinction" theory myself, it seems to be more coherent with what we know about global extinction patters of the era.

However, I think the "late extinction" theory deserves to be mentioned as well, as current radiocarbon dating technology is hardly a precise matter, which Roberts, Flannery & CO admitt. Interpreting "late extinction" artefacts as redeposition sounds credible to me, but it is after all simple speculation without any hard evidence to support it. Wether I believe it or not is irrevelant here - the fact is that this is based on speculation and we shouldn not omitt mentioning that and creating a false impression amongst non-professional readers (as Diprotodon may arguably be seen as one of the extinct marsupial topics that will draw more interest from laymen than for example the Lesser Bilby article).

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to ruin the article or force anything here. However until more evidence is collected, both the "late" and "early" extinction theories should be fairly mentioned with tangible arguments for and against each of them. Perhaps the wise thing to do would be to create a subsection called "Date of Extinction"?

I wanted to consult you here first before making any edits and making it seem like another "edit-war" of sorts (which could attract cryptozoologists into the fray) or causing other types of unnecessary editor tensions. Wikipedia should be about content, not inter-editor drama after all.

Last but not least: Phrases like "It is generally accepted" look like weasel words (Its also my fault, as I originally wrote "Commonly accepted" myself). Maybe we should just mention individual authors and scientists who favor the theory to avoid weasel wording?

Anyways, tell me what you think, or we could just simply take this to the "discussion" part of the article.

Wilhelm Klave (talk) 13:22, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with expanding the section on extinction timing and discussing dating a bit more. However, if you want to do so I would suggest relying primarily on recent papers that are available online. What I objected to most in the previous version was giving equal weight to theories based on analysis of the entire data set, and theories based on one or a few anomalous data points.

I also don't think it is wrong to claim something is "generally accepted" if references can be used to back up the claim. Perhaps we need a few more here.

I disagree that the redeposition theory is simple speculation. The theory is based on the fact that the more recent dates are associated with disarticulated skeletal material (p. 1891, Roberts et al.); optical evidence for sediment mixing at sites like Cuddie Springs (p. 1891, Roberts et al.); the old radiocarbon dates (>= 40,000 years) that were actually obtained at Tambar Springs (Flannery p. 201) and considerations of the stratigraphy of some of the younger sites (Flannery p. 202-3). WolfmanSF (talk) 16:51, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, disarticulation could have been caused by a wide variety of reasons - "Ethnographic observations of recent Aboriginal exploitation of macropods and analyses of faunal assemblages in middens show that disarticulation is almost exclusively complete at the end of food preparation" (M.Cupper&J.Duncan 2006). Optical evidence however remains an argument here, though its insufficient to disprove all the archeological sites. Still, this could explain only the Cuddie springs site, but not the Diprotodon remains at Trinkey, (also Lime Springs, but my info on the site is limited). Either way, I do agree with the necessity to stress the fact that the "early extinction" theories are more popular and accepted in modern science (trick is how to avoid weasel words here). I still think removing the "late extinction" theory out of the picture completely is not justified given the lack of decisive evidence and te fact that the theory was not sufficiently falsified (I do hope that the ongoing dating of the 2004 Lancefield Swamp bones will clear some of this up). Either way, I created a "date of extinction" section and I tried hard to give both theories justice with minimum changes to what we already wrote in our previous edits. (mostly avoiding controversy or weasel words). Wilhelm Klave (talk) 20:49, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

"The X family" vs. "the family X"

Hi, I don't like undoing people's edits without more comment. As I've often written things like "the Proteaceae family" I can't agree that it needs to be changed to "the family Proteaceae" as you did recently. While it's quite correct that Latin family names aren't adjectives, modern English allows phrases of the form "the <proper noun> <common noun>", as in "the Smith family", "the Johnson boys" or "the Hoover building", where the proper noun has no adjectival form. "The Xaceae family" falls into this category so far as I can see. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:53, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

An alternative viewpoint is that "Xaceae family" is a compound noun, but in that case I would argue that is an improperly formed example. There is a convention in English to use opposite word orders when referring to a taxon by its informal versus formal Latin name. We say the "animal kingdom" but the "kingdom Animalia", and never the opposite in either case. Similarly, we say the "squirrel family" but the "family Sciuridae", the "human genus" but the "genus Homo", etc. and so on for all other taxonomic levels. In these examples, "animal" and "human" are being used as adjectives, and one could argue that "squirrel" is being used as if it were an adjective. The point is, formal Latin names are generally not used in ways that make them look like adjectives (except perhaps in rare cases where there is no good alternative), and from my perspective violating this norm is a fairly egregious syntactical error. I think the situation is most confusing in the case of families because of conflation of the taxonomic and non-taxonomic uses of the term, and indeed your examples fall into this category. Wikipedia is full of examples of this mistake because a bot called "Polbot" set up stub articles for many of the species, and got the "family x-ceae" and "family x-dae" convention backwards in every case. As articles are expanded beyond stubs, this mistake is usually, but not consistently, being rectified. Unfortunately, Polbot may have contributed to a mistaken impression among many Wikipedians that "x-ceae family" and "x-dae family " are acceptable. WolfmanSF (talk) 16:23, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

You say that "There is a convention in English to use opposite word orders when referring to a taxon by its informal versus formal Latin name." What is your evidence for this? I've run a number of Google searches on different families and every time I find that "X-aceae family" is more common than "family X-aceae". You have to be careful with the latter search, because "common-name family (X-aceae)" shows up if you search for "family X-aceae" since Google ignores the parentheses. So to be fair I added -"common-name family X-aceae" to all the searches I tried. Just as an example a search for "Rosaceae family" -"rose family Rosaceae" yields about 114,000 results; a search for "family Rosaceae" -"rose family Rosaceae" yields less than half that at 47,800 results. I tried a number of Latin family names, all with the same pattern of results. The pattern "X-aceae family" is almost always about twice as common as the reverse order. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:03, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Whoops, being a plant person, I had only tried plant families. I get different results with animal families. As an example, "Felidae family" -"cat family Felidae" gives 95,7000 results; "family Felidae" -"cat family Felidae" gives 103,000 results. For the animal families I tried, the numbers are about equal, with a slight bias towards the "family X-idae" pattern. Interesting difference! Peter coxhead (talk) 18:15, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Well, I did some searches a little differently, and got different results. "Rosaceae family" (with the quotes included) gives me 130,000 hits; "family Rosaceae" gives me 641,000. Similarly, "Telopea genus" gives me 715 hits; "genus Telopea" gives me 3750; "Proteales order" gives me 2,300 hits; "order Proteales" gives me 177,000. Among animals, "Canidae family" gives me 152,000 hits; "family Canidae" gives me 401,000; "Homo genus" gives me 78,100 hits; "genus Homo" gives me 341,000; "Carnivora order" gives me 41,300 hits; "order Carnivora" gives me 737,000. All of which tends to support my position. However, at this point I haven't really checked to evaluate the quality of the search results. Also, Google keeps trying to add things to my searches, forcing me to click on an additional link to perform the search as I originally typed it in. At any rate, I think adding the common name to the searches as you did may obscure what is actually going on. WolfmanSF (talk) 21:30, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

One irritating thing about Google is that different users get different results; it seems to depend on the country you are in and also whatever history Google has on you... Anyway, it is essential to add -"rose family Rosaceae" to the search for "family Rosaceae". This is because Google treats "rose family (Rosaceae)" as if it contains the string "family Rosaceae". Similarly all pages with "dog family (Canidae)" come up if you just search for "family Canidae". These results, i.e. ones with the pattern "common name family (Latin name)" don't tell you anything about whether people prefer "Latin name family" or "family Latin name", so without this exclusion, your counts for "family Latin name" are much too large. Just now, seaching for "rose family Rosaceae" gave me 684,000 results, which when I look at the first few, are all "rose family (Rosaceae)".

I don't dispute that the order of the nouns varies by rank. I wouldn't normally write "Homo genus". I do claim that, at least for plant families, the order "Latin name family" is more common than "family Latin name", and that for animal families, it is almost as common (provided you exclude all occurrences in which Latin name is in parentheses immediately after "common name family"). Peter coxhead (talk) 22:12, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

In fact, I can reproduce all your results. But considering that ["rose family Rosaceae"] alone gives more hits than ["family Rosaceae"] alone, at this point I'm not sure how seriously the results of these searches can be taken. WolfmanSF (talk) 01:48, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

The results from Google Scholar make a bit more sense, and also show a stronger trend towards use of "family Latin name". I get 2810 hits for ["family Rosaceae" -"rose family Rosaceae"], 2220 for ["Rosaceae family " -"rose family Rosaceae"], 3250 for ["family Rosaceae"], 439 for ["rose family Rosaceae"] and 2240 for ["Rosaceae family"]. Similarly, I get 1770 hits for ["family Canidae" -"dog family Canidae"], 511 for ["Canidae family " -"dog family Canidae"], 1950 for ["family Canidae"], 189 for ["dog family Canidae"] and 518 for ["Canidae family"]. So, you may be correct that use of "Latin name family" is more common in botanical use than zoological use, but at least at the scholarly level there seems to be a preference for "family Latin name" in both fields.

I still think there is a general convention to use "taxon rank Latin name" in preference to "Latin name taxon rank" for all taxon ranks and that this is followed less consistently at the family level because of conflation of the taxonomic and non-taxonomic meanings of "family". I would expect that the usage of "Latin name taxon rank" to decline in higher quality and more professional prose, as appears to be the case. I regard usage of "Latin name family" as sloppiness. I guess it is a philosophical question as to at what point one should stop resisting "sloppiness" or defining it as such as it becomes increasingly common. WolfmanSF (talk) 02:49, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Well, we can both agree on being against sloppiness and in favour of standards (which is why I started the discussion with you). The interesting question is what counts as "sloppiness". I'm strongly against sloppy language use which makes meaning less clear, and I spend quite a bit of time copy-editing to correct such sloppiness. I also agree that if there is a clear standard which has been adopted by a WikiProject, then it should be followed; thus I regularly correct italicization errors in writing scientific names. In this case, though, the meaning is quite clear whichever order of nouns is used and there doesn't seem to be a standard which has been adopted by a WikiProject (at least I can't find one). The issue of a standard order could be raised at WT:TOL to see if there is a consensus. If there is, I'll be happy to follow it (I wasn't aware that there is a much stronger preference for your preferred order in zoology). However, unless and until a standard is adopted by WP editors, I think that you shouldn't make such edit changes. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:14, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I'll take that under advisement, at least concerning botanical articles, at least until I've explored the subject further. Lots of other experienced editors are correcting this situation in zoological articles, and I will likely continue to do that. I hope you don't object to me correcting the "Latin name genus" construction, which I also see occasionally. WolfmanSF (talk) 16:00, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

cat:planemo

Hi,

I reverted you on Titan, since it's already in the cat, and then saw you do the same thing for the Galileians. Is there a reason we want to double count those bodies? — kwami (talk) 09:54, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

We have the categories for these moons in the Planemo category, but not the moons themselves. I'm not sure I see the point in the former. It doesn't add anything to the article on the satellite. Why not ditch the categories and just add the moons per se to Category Planemo? WolfmanSF (talk) 09:59, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Consider the Category:Callisto. It's just a collection of articles on Callisto. It isn't actually a subcategory of planemos, but it's listed as such. I don't think that makes sense. WolfmanSF (talk) 10:05, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Category:Dwarf planets and Category:Planets, on the other hand are genuine subcategories of planemos, so they should stay. WolfmanSF (talk) 10:10, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Okay. Let's ditch the others, then. — kwami (talk) 10:10, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

van Gogh

Sorry about the reversal, we must have been editing closely together -- please redo your edit. _ _ _ _ 83d40m (talk) 02:56, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

OK. WolfmanSF (talk) 05:50, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Ceres–Pallas

Does your ref say how close they are to resonance? % off per revolution? randomization time?

thanks, — kwami (talk) 03:11, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

No, although I can calculate this. However, this can't be a true resonance, as I understand, since the masses of these bodies are too small to maintain such a relationship. They may both be in similar near-18:7 resonances with Jupiter (see 2 Pallas#Near resonances). WolfmanSF (talk) 03:21, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Okay, never mind. I never thought about how small they are. Maybe a note to that effect in the article, for other readers who won't think of that? — kwami (talk) 05:34, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

It appears that genuine resonances between asteroids, while unlikely, are not impossible. Christou (Co-orbital objects in the main asteroid belt, 2007) came up with 4 examples: 1372 Haremari and 8877 Rentaro with Ceres, and 855 Newcombia and (4608) 1988 BW3 with Vesta. These are all 1:1 relationships. However, these are examples of much smaller asteroids being held by a large asteroid. WolfmanSF (talk) 07:18, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

re: Laplace resonance animation

I currently can't do it, but as far as I remember I paid attention to make the .gif editable - you can open it in any good editor like GIMP or Photoshop, and every frame will be shown as layer - you should only have to edit the bottommost frame (background), as the text is not replicated in amimation frames. Matma Rex pl.wiki talk 09:47, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll look into that when I have a chance. WolfmanSF (talk) 10:35, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Rachel Barton Pine / moved period before <ref/>

Thanks! I normally catch those myself, but I guess I was so focused on the wording, that I forgot to check the <ref/> tag after changing the punctuation so many times in trying to come up with that wording. ~David Rolek ^(talk) 07:11, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

No problem. Thanks for your careful copyedit. WolfmanSF (talk) 07:20, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

titanic fracture/break up

Fracture has many different meanings. Plus the sentence after it confirms that the ship broke apart after fracturing. I believe this should have more clarity as "broke in two" states the ship immediately seperated during the point of splitting, as was not the case. The stern held the bow for some time before actually breaking. Zyon788 (talk) 07:39, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

frac·ture (frkchr) n. 1. a. The act or process of breaking. b. The condition of having been broken or ruptured: "a sudden and irreparable fracture of the established order" (W. Bruce Lincoln). 2. A break, rupture, or crack, especially in bone or cartilage. 3. Mineralogy a. The characteristic manner in which a mineral breaks. b. The characteristic appearance of the surface of a broken mineral. 4. Geology A crack or fault in a rock. v. frac·tured, frac·tur·ing, frac·tures v.tr. 1. a. To cause to break: The impact fractured a bone. b. To undergo a break in (a bone): He fractured his ankle in the fall. 2. To disrupt or destroy as if by breaking: fractured the delicate balance of power. 3. To abuse or misuse flagrantly, as by violating rules: ignorant writers who fracture the language. 4. Slang To cause to laugh heartily: "Jack Benny fractured audiences . . . for more than 50 years" (Newsweek). v.intr. To undergo a fracture. See Synonyms at break.

fracture [ˈfræktʃə] n 1. the act of breaking or the state of being broken 2. (Medicine / Pathology) a. the breaking or cracking of a bone or the tearing of a cartilage b. the resulting condition See also Colles' fracture, comminuted fracture, compound fracture, greenstick fracture, impacted [2] 3. a division, split, or breach 4. (Earth Sciences / Geological Science) Mineralogy a. the characteristic appearance of the surface of a freshly broken mineral or rock b. the way in which a mineral or rock naturally breaks vb 1. to break or cause to break; split 2. (Medicine / Pathology) to break or crack (a bone) or (of a bone) to become broken or cracked 3. (Medicine / Pathology) to tear (a cartilage) or (of a cartilage) to become torn [from Old French, from Latin fractūra, from frangere to break] fracturable adj fractural adj — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zyon788 (talk • contribs) 07:38, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

OK, I see your point. WolfmanSF (talk) 04:44, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

However, since a ship has many structural elements, "fracture" may not be the best terminology. WolfmanSF (talk) 01:43, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

MSW3 templates

Links to a journal or to the authors or editors of a publication being cited are potentially helpful, as they're likely to have a close connection to the subject of the article, and I've therefore left those in place. However, links to a publisher are highly unlikely to be helpful - publishers generally publish a large number of books on a wide range of subjects, almost all of which will be unrelated to the subject of the article. A publisher link would only be helpful when it's a highly specialised publisher whose output is focused on a single subject area. Colonies Chris (talk) 23:52, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Genus as adjective

This isn't such a case. Imagine we were talking about space exploration, in which case you could say the "Saturn rocket" or the "Spirit rover" or the "Apollo mission". "Encephalartos genus" is the same case. Not that I'm reverting you or anything. —howcheng {chat} 16:04, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, but the point I'm trying to make is that in formal English, the normal convention is to use the opposite word order when mentioning Latin taxon names: "genus Encephalartos", not "Encephalartos genus", "species Homo sapiens", not "Homo sapiens species ", "kingdom Animalia", not "Animalia kingdom". This is true for all other Latin taxon names as well (although the rule is frequently broken for family names, due to confusion with the nontaxonomic sense of the word "family"). However, when common names for taxa are used, the opposite word order is used: "human species", "cat family", "animal kingdom", etc. I am only suggesting we follow the convention generally used in literate sources. From my perspective, "Encephalartos genus" looks bad, and I'm embarrassed to see it on the main page. WolfmanSF (talk) 17:48, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Maffei 1

I noticed that you copy-edit astronomical article. May I ask you to look at Maffei 1? Thanks. Ruslik_Zero 09:25, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

I think it's in reasonable shape at this point. WolfmanSF (talk) 04:15, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much. Ruslik_Zero 06:19, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

You've been quoted

For your information, your wise words have been quoted here. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 16:20, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your copy editing

	Thanks for your copy editing
	Thanks for your copy editing on Isidor Isaac Rabi! Hawkeye7 (talk) 02:39, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Credo Reference Update & Survey (your opinion requested)

Credo Reference, who generously donated 400 free Credo 250 research accounts to Wikipedia editors over the past two years, has offered to expand the program to include 100 additional reference resources. Credo wants Wikipedia editors to select which resources they want most. So, we put together a quick survey to do that:

• Link to Survey (should take between 5-10 minutes): http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/N8FQ6MM

It also asks some basic questions about what you like about the Credo program and what you might want to improve.

At this time only the initial 400 editors have accounts, but even if you do not have an account, you still might want to weigh in on which resources would be most valuable for the community (for example, through WikiProject Resource Exchange).

Also, if you have an account but no longer want to use it, please leave me a note so another editor can take your spot.

If you have any other questions or comments, drop by my talk page or email me at wikiocaasi@yahoo.com. Cheers! Ocaasi ^{t | c} 17:37, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Done. WolfmanSF (talk) 20:55, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Valles Marineris

Both David Talbott and Wallace Thornhill are researchers, and Thornhill is a physicist. Electrical experiments have successfully reproduced the spherules found on the surface of Mars. Until you can disprove a theory it has just as much right to be advertised to the public as any other theory. I welcome edits and corrections to my contributions but to delete my entire section based on your personal beliefs was not in the spirit of what Wikipedia is about. Convince me that the planetary plasma theory is utterly ridiculous and without merit and I will take down the section myself.

(134.20.11.89 (talk) 18:26, 20 July 2012 (UTC))

The burden of proof is on you to show that the theory has some degree of acceptance in the scientific community (through peer-reviewed publications, etc.). Thus far, you have not done that. WolfmanSF (talk) 19:19, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

GAR

Megalodon, an article that you may be interested in, has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the good article reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Obtund^Talk 01:10, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Nice job

Nice job User WolfmanSF doing trail sweep on a passel of flying edits made in series late last night on the Marine Iguana article. Good catches, constructive changes, deft touch. A rare pleasure. Cheers. Wikiuser100 (talk) 10:41, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

African elephant

This paper seems to indicate that the species is not quite undisputed. What do you think? LittleJerry (talk) 17:59, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

I think there was already a pretty strong consensus for 2 species. Complete consensus often takes a while to achieve on taxonomic issues, but this paper appears to eliminate any possible objections. It's a good paper, and I've added a citation to it to the "Classification" section. WolfmanSF (talk) 19:37, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Growling grass frog

Hello, maybe you were getting around to it, but this is the way to treat redirects blocking a move. Regards Crusoe8181 (talk) 08:15, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Exactly what did you do? WolfmanSF (talk) 17:34, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

laconic phrases

Thanks for straightening it out.

BobShair (talk) 23:06, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Tres Marias island mouse

I note that you changed the capitalisation of this article, stating that "Tres Marias Island" is a proper noun. I had thought the same when I initially saw the article, but when I looked into it further to edit the page, I decided to leave it as was. My reasoning was as follows: There is no such place as Tres Marias Island, and my understanding is that proper nouns are used only to refer to unique entities. But what is the unique entity being referred to here? The Tres Marias ("three Marys") are a group of islands: Maria Madre, Maria Magdalena, and Maria Cleofas. Were the name of the mouse "Tres Marias Islands mouse" there would be no dispute, but since it isn't pluralised, I parse it as "mouse living on islands in the Tres Marias", rather than "mouse living on (the non-existent) Tres Marias Island". If the 'I' in the name really is capitalised, shouldn't we also capitalise, for example, Caribbean Island? Which doesn't seem right... Anaxial (talk) 21:15, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Now that I look into this, you're correct. We just went through similar issues with several species that have "Atlantic Forest" in their common names, with the opposite outcome. WolfmanSF (talk) 22:14, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Antarctic forest fires

Hey Wolfman. Didn't want to edit war, so leaving a note. From my reading on Pyne, he looks at both ice and fire together when looking at fire ecology, especially the push-pull of global warming/cooling. I haven't read the 1986 book, but I assume it discusses Ant. within this paradigm. I know fires and Ant. seems a bit ridiculous, but I'd like to go with the source on this one. The Interior (Talk) 20:10, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

The problem is the wording used, "...he has covered forest fires in the U.S., Australia, Antarctica..." which implies that he has covered forest fires in Antarctica which implies there are forest fires in Antarctica, an obvious impossibility. You could solve the problem by going into a more in-depth discussion of the content of the series (as being broader than forest fires) but I'm not sure the added information would be very relevant to the article. From looking at the Google Books listing, "The Ice" may not have a lot to say about forest fires. I would feel differently if the article was about Pyne. So, I suggest changing the wording if you want to include mention of "The Ice", but I think it would be simpler to leave it out. WolfmanSF (talk) 22:32, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

valles marineris

hi there ,.thanks for editing out Valles Marineris i was a bit sloppy there ..i think it would be great to mention there about late heavy bombardment as the age of valles marineris coincides late heavy bombardment .it is also said in the reference link

i don't know where to fit it correctly ,

thanks ```` — Preceding unsigned comment added by Levelswung (talk • contribs) 22:03, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

OK, it is now mentioned, although Valles Marineris probably formed after the Late Heavy Bombardment (~3.5 vs. 3.8-4.1 billion years ago). WolfmanSF (talk) 01:00, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

2013 Russian Meteor

Yes, the leading text is inadequate, but anytime anyone uses the terms "asteroid" (which is what it was, in space), or "fireball" or "bolide" (which is what it looked like), someone comes along and reverts those to "meteoroid" and "meteor" and demands citations for usage of the alternative words. They have been given on the talk page, yet that still does not seem to be enough. Check the page history over the last couple of days. You'll likely be edited and reverted soon enough, going by recent past history. -- 212.139.104.161 (talk) 00:27, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

The reality is that we don't need citations to use terminology that we know is appropriate. Citations are needed to establish facts, but not to justify wording. I know who's behind the situation you describe (see the history of this talk page). At any rate, it's off the main page now, so the situation may improve. WolfmanSF (talk) 00:54, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Can you help with a citation, please?

Hello WolfmanSF, I have noticed that you know how to handle citations. Perhaps you can fix something that I may have messed up. At 06:52 hours on the 18th of March I edited the Water on Mars article with the edit summary: "make reference link work". The reference link (#174 at the time) now works but the details in the named citation may not be all correct. Also the citation is named twice while I think citations should be named only once and repeats refer to the one instance of naming. If you can check this out and make it right I would appreciate it and I might learn something. - Fartherred (talk) 08:24, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Repeat citations of the same source are handled by just using the same "<ref name = " (whatever), followed by "/>". The "work" field would probably be generally considered optional. WolfmanSF (talk) 18:03, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. The article still is not perfect, but it is better. I may get to understand citation format yet. - Fartherred (talk) 02:39, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Template:MSW3 Didelphimorphia and page numbers

Hi, regarding Template:MSW3 Didelphimorphia. The way this operates currently causes some articles using it to appear in Category:Pages with citations using conflicting page specifications. Would you be able to tweak the template logic such that only one of |page= or |pages= is output in the citation? Thanks Rjwilmsi 11:07, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

We've got about 55 different MSW3 templates, most of which generate this fault every time they are used, as far as I can see. They could potentially be used in every single mammal taxon article. I could perhaps avoid generating the fault if the | pages = and | page = lines of the template can be inserted into some kind of conditional, like an if statement. For MSW3 Didelphimorphia, I would need a statement along the lines of:

IF <"page" has a value> THEN <page = {{{page|}}}> ELSE <pages = {{{pages|3–18}}}>

At the moment, I'm not familiar enough with the syntax of template coding to know if this would work. Do you know of any examples of such conditionals?

Another thing that occurred to me is that perhaps the category listing could somehow be set up to ignore certain triggers, like the MSW3 templates. WolfmanSF (talk) 01:06, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Pygmy marmoset

Hi WolfmanSF, I was thinking of preparing pygmy marmoset for GAN today. I know you have done some great work on the page in the past, just wondering if you had any plans to get it there yourself? If so, I'll find something else to work on, if not, I'll start when you reply! Cheers, Jack (talk) 08:05, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Considering my priorities and available time, I probably won't do much with it in the near future. So by all means work on it, if you want to. WolfmanSF (talk) 21:59, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll make a start today! Jack (talk) 07:35, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Rings of Saturn

This is crazy stuff, I was LITERALLY adding the template "for the deathcore band, see Rings of Saturn (band)". And I actually got in an editing conflict with you that was reverting the person that removed the template. Talk about weird! 69.225.141.121 (talk) 00:45, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

ITN credit

ThaddeusB (talk) 05:24, 17 July 2013 (UTC)