User talk:Berton

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[edit] Welcome

Hi! welcome to Wikipedia!

Hope you enjoy contributing to Wikipedia. Be bold in editing pages. Here are some links that you might find useful:

Please use edit summaries and Show preview button more liberally. Welcome!! --Gurubrahma 18:02, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Rubiaceae pic

Hi Berton - thanks for the note; sorry, it isn't a plant I am familiar with, so I can't really help. If you're sure of it, go ahead and change it, though - MPF 09:10, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Race and cladistics

Hi,

I found your sub-page on cladistics via Google while trying to get some information to help straighten out a perennial problem, the race article. The page has a couple of owners who have resisted any changes and who have been quite dismissive of people who do not agree with them. A major source of trouble with the article is simply that some people cannot read and cannot write. When I can figure out what the actual intent of the writer is sometimes I have been able to make improvements. However, a major dispute has broken out because, it appears, some people who like the idea of "race" have made it appear that what they term a "clade" or what they term a "lineage" is a candidate for what I guess they might term "the true definition of 'race'," or "the true explanation that justifies the use of the term 'race.'"

I suspect that some people are taking the definitions given in Wikipedia articles on cladistics and lineage in a much too literal way. I know that to leave my present condition of being in over my head I would have to make myself thoroughly conversant with what is a rather large field, and that task is not one that I would finish in a few weeks or even a few months. So I thought I would ask you to have a look at the relevant parts of the article and the talk page and see whether you might have something to contribute.

Thanks.

Patrick Moran (P0M 06:28, 6 June 2007 (UTC))

[edit] Random Smiley Award

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[edit] Flood

Hi Berton - thanks for the note! It has been wet up here, but no flooding like further south. Even if there was flooding up here, I am safe on a hill ;-) MPF 17:34, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Acampe

Hi Rkitko, I notice that you substituted the category African flora to Flora of Africa, but I am trying to do exactly the inverse, I consider that to classify the Flora in continents unnecessary, because either the plants are classified by country or by region, that is, floristic areas (Kingdom, Subkingdoms, Regions, Provinces). The name African refers to African subkingdom, and not to continent African. Thanks Berton 16:33, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Greetings, Berton. From what I understand, the convention or consensus is to place species or genera into their respective flora by country. The convention appears to be Category:Flora of Country or Flora of Continent not Country flora etc. That's why I moved the page into the other category since Category:African flora appears to be redundant with Category:Flora of Africa, so I was emptying it out to be nominated for deletion. Following from this discussion, I believe consensus was to keep the Flora of Country categories. If you'd like, you can again bring this subject up at WT:PLANTS. User:Hesperian would be able to describe the flora categories better than I. Cheers, --Rkitko (talk) 17:00, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Rkitko, the formula Flora by country, without a doubt should be preserved. The problem is in Flora by continents, there is not any importance in classifying by continent, the floristic regions they don't correspond to that are considered the continents, examples: African subkingdom excludes Capensic Kingdom (in South Africa), Antarctic Kingdom includes areas of Chile, Argentina and New Zealand. I uses African flora to differentiate the floristic region of the continent, for this reason there is not redundancy. These categories by region, are important to avoid overcategorization of genera or species with large distribution areas, for this reason, not at all, they should be deleted.Berton 17:17, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Unfortunately, I don't know much about floristic provinces. See World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions for information on the system that I think we had consensus to use. I also meant to say something about Category talk:Flora of Togo. There's no consensus for the category circumscription you described in the category main space, so I moved it to the talk page where we can discuss it. Take a look! Cheers, --Rkitko (talk) 17:50, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Categorising plants along political lines is of course totally artificial... but there remains a definite need to do it, not only here but in the wider world. Since the rest of the world persists in categorising by political region, I think it would be wrong for us to abandon the practice here. Yes there are some very difficult problems with this. But these problems have been resolved, or at least compromises agree upon, in the real world. It think it is best follow the published standard, rather than debate and go over the same ground ourselves, have the same debates, and be faces with the same compromises. As Rkitki says above, the World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions is a published standard that lays out a political categorisation for flora. I think we should be following it. Hesperian 00:21, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bombacaceae

Berton, I don't have the new edition of the Heywood book nor is it in our library yet, so I can't check how they handle Bombacaceae (or any other family) except that I have heard they have favored a splitting approach to most families. However, I suspect that if they are recognizing Bombacaceae as a family separate from Malvaceae, they must be circumscribing it more narrowly than it has been traditionally circumscribed, and if so the article should reflect this. Unfortunately this is a major problem with any of these major references--Cronquist, Thorne, APG, Heywood, etc.--in the absence of lists of genera, family circumscriptions are generally implicit rather than explicit and should be approached cautiously. MrDarwin 13:21, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

MrDarwin, I have got the new edition of the Heywood and see my user subpage User:Berton/Malvales for more details. Berton 13:34, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
Okay, but it's not enough to say that Heywood et al. recognize Bombaceae as a family separate from Malvaceae; the text of the article should be more explicit that Heywood et al. are recognizing a Bombacaceae that is more restricted than in the traditional sense in order to make it monophyletic with respect to Malvaceae.
And once again the big question is, how do the Malvales specialists treat these groups? This has been a major weakness of all the Malvales articles. MrDarwin 13:48, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
Are you doubting of Heywood et al.? It is obvious that they followed that the specialists researched on Bombacaceae.Berton 13:52, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rautavaara

hello Berton! do you have facebook? if yes, do join the rautavaara community at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7081010852

rautavaara's also one of my favourite composers!

JohnWYC —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.185.57.66 (talk) 08:33, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Phytogeography

hello Berton. Please get back to me about your comments on the phytogeography article. I am wondering how it was rated; I do not agree with that rating. I have been using the phytogeography article as a way to learn the wiki interface and learn how to contribute articles. I am a professional in the field, and am wondering what specific issues you have with the article. Thanks Threelovemonkeys (talk) 14:56, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] hi

Hi. I found you in categories of users who can contribute in English and Portuguese. I myself am a native speaker of English, but I'm well on my way to learning Portuguese. Just check out my user page and talk page, and join in any of the discussions. To keep updated, you can even put a watch on my user page, which will automatically watch my talk page. :-) learnportuguese (talk) 18:42, 7 February 2008 (UTC)