User talk:Nickrent

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Welcome!

Hello, Nickrent, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Again, welcome! --Curtis Clark 20:22, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rafflesiaceae

Thanks for cleaning up Rafflesiaceae. I feel a bit bad about that one, in the sense that I knew the article lurched between sensu lata and sensu stricta with only the briefest of explanation, but I didn't really try to fix it. You did far better than I could have, however. It is really nice to see someone contributing here who can write about taxonomy in a coherent way (in particular, including relevant morphology and explaining why the classifications are being made, not just listing circumscriptions from a database). Kingdon 05:42, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Welcome!

It's nice to see another editor taking a rigorous systematic approach to botany-related articles. You will find that many of the articles need major work. If you have any problems, questions or comments related to the articles themselves, feel free to post them at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants where many of the other botanical editors hang out. MrDarwin 15:07, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Orobanchaceae question

I realize you asked these questions on Wikipedia:Help desk, but responding here seems easier. First, "The first is the genus Centranthera that, for some reason, links to a page on orchids. This is not correct and it should not point to that page." I couldn't find any reason given in the wikipedia edit summaries, but a google search for "Centranthera orchid" shows what happened - there was an 1842 publication under this name for the genus which should be called Pleurothallis. If there is a need to distinguish between the orchid Centranthera, and the Orobanchaceae one, one way is with an author citation (botany). I've added the rest of the details to Centranthera, so see there for more details. (For how the redirect worked, and how I changed it from a redirect to an article, see Wikipedia:Redirect).

Second, "The second problem is with the genus Melasma. This also refers to a skin condition. So, it needs a disambiguation, with the plant version of the word pointing to the correct page." First of all, some google searching shows that the skin condition is by far the most common use of the word. So the skin condition should stay at Melasma. The plant should probably be Malasma (plant) (although I don't know if we have a rule about naming it that way versus Malasma (genus) versus others you might see). The top of the Melasma page should generally point to the plant, probably via:

For plant genus, see Melasma (plant).

although there are a lot of templates for this and I'm not 100% sure which one to use here. There is no need for a Melasma (disambiguation) until there are more than two meanings for the word. This is the trickiest of the situations you mention. There aren't a lot of steps involved, but each one involves a judgment call and it isn't always clear-cut.

Third, "The genus Striga also goes to a disambiguation page, but maybe could point directly to the plant page". Do this with a piped link.

Oh, and a nitpick (not to a question you asked, just a suggestion). When a species or genus is moved from one family to another, it is generally helpful to say this in the article (maybe with a cite to the paper that moved it or some other suitable reference). Otherwise readers (and future wikipedia editors) will see other sources give a different family and not know which one to believe (for example, which one is new, which one is old, and whether a new name is based on solid evidence or whether it is one of those rearrangements which gets proposed but never catches on).

Anyway, thanks for working on these pages and I hope that these wikipedia complexities aren't too confusing. If you respond here, I'll look at it (for the near future at least), or feel free to leave a note on my talk page if there is anything I can help with. Another good place to ask plant questions is Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants. Kingdon 02:00, 17 September 2007 (UTC)