Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ecology

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[edit] 2004 participation notes

Hi - this looks interesting - let me know what I can do! Mark Richards 18:51, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If you'd like to be part of the project please add your name to the participants list. There's now a long list of open tasks too to give you an idea of what can be done. I'm hoping to make Wikipedia a really valuable resource for sustainability and ecology.

Thanks for your interest!

--Pengo 10:58, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] missing articles and stubs

I just removed a couple entries from the broken links section. I left some things in that link to (sub)stubs. These need to be expanded upon, so they should probably be listed somewhere. But would it make sense to have a separate listing for ecology related stubs separate from broken links? Jmeppley 18:26, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Re-writing the series

The Ecology and related articles are in serious need of a re-write. As Jmepply mentioned above, there are lots of stubs and sub-stubs that radiate out from the articles in no particular order. Some of the existing ones should really be subsumed within larger topics which, as it so happens, don't exist. Also there is no sense of hierarchy - the list of sub-fields, for example, does not convey the sense that there is any difference between the fields; thus, Ecosystem Ecology (one of the major subfields in ecology) is a red link which is on par with everything else. In addition, regional "flavours" of ecology (tropical ecology, polar ecology) are simply mixed in with the rest when they represent very different (though important) levels of organisation: you can, for example, have ecosystem ecology studies in the tropics, or theoretical polar landscape ecology. I don't have a better fit, but I don't think the list does a very good job of conveying knowledge (as opposed to just spitting information at readers).

I am interested in contributing to a major-reworking of the Ecology articles, but I am not quite sure how to go about it, and how to establish concensus on the final product. It would need to be done in a /temp folder, I suppose - I think many of the sub-articles should be merged or deleted, but I would not want to simply offer changes up one at a time...that would just result in chaos. While many of those articles have very little in terms of histories, some do, and these would have to be preserved in some way (I am pretty ignorant still about how these things really work in Wikpedia). So - thoughts? Guettarda 22:50, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I have not fully explored the ecology pages, but I do agree that what I have seen could use some re-organization. I made a small push last month to clean up the biological interaction pages last month. I opted for the incremental approach with those pages, but there are only a handful of pages there and I didn't know you could create a temporary area. I don't feel like I know enough about the field or Wikipedia to pull it off myself, but I'm happy to help. Jmeppley 22:58, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Biology portal

I encourage you all to help with maintaining the biology Wikiportal connected with this project! Ausir 23:03, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Energy development

Hi! We seem to have some parallel efforts starting here lately. You may not have noticed the ill-named Wikipedia:WikiProject Energy Related Development by Civilizations. It seems to me there should be a single umbrella project that includes Hubbert Peak, Energy development, etc. But the name Ecology seems a little funny for a project name. Why is it not Sustainability? Or am I knocking on the wrong door? Can I think this through with somebody? Thanks a million. Tom Haws 22:51, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)

Let me see if I understand. Tom Haws

  • This project is a child of the biology project.
  • Sustainability project redirects to this ecology project.
  • Energy development and Hubbert Peak probably go under sustainability.
  • Therefore Energy development and Hubbert Peak are children of the Biology project?

I think we need to figure this all out somewhere central. I am driven by two needs here: 1) Topics like Hubbert Peak, Solar energy, Wind energy, Fuel cell cars, Hybrid cars, Energy development, Nuclear energy, etc. need a central place where relationships, policies, organizational hierarchies, and issues can be centrally discussed; 2) It is good to have people of different POVs working on the same issues; we should avoid splitting projects on POV lines. My gut feel is that Sustainability should be a separate project from Ecology, and Sustainability shouldn't be a child of Biology. But that may be wrong. Whatever Sustainability (including Hubbert Peak and Wind energy) goes under, I think it needs a central place to discuss organizational and presentational issues.Tom Haws 17:09, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Improvement Drive

Agricultural subsidy is currently nominated on Wikipedia:This week's improvement drive. You can vote for it if you want it to be improved.--Fenice 13:39, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Land trust

Hi, I thought this would be the best place to mention that the Land trust article needs improvement. I would be glad to help out, just drop a note on my talk page :) --JJF 06:08, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ecology is not the same as Environment

I feel that the scope of this project is not correctly focussed. It seems that Ecology is being confused with Natural Environment. Ecology is generally the study of the interactions of species within a habitat and excludes the effect of over-population and technology. Environment on the other hand, or perhaps qualified as Natural Environment, is topics on the effect of human activity on ecology or the environment in general. Alan Liefting 08:37, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

I have started a Wikipedia:WikiProject Environment for environmental articles. Alan Liefting 06:10, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
Alan, thank you. I agree with your comments. Ecology is a science, and a big one at that, and this wproject should be concerned only with the organization of the many subdisciplines that compose it. That is a big job in itself, and does not need to be hamstrung by confusion with other topics. Ecology is still commonly confused with environment, environmentalism and the like in popular use.
So, let's please have a discussion of the topics that should be managed under this wproject, and those which should be managed under the new Wikipedia:WikiProject Environment project. Jeeb 19:24, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] AfD articles

Hi, I stirred up a ruckus by nominating

It seems that most of these will survive the vote. They are articles dealing with concepts advanced by H.T. Odum, but were so questionably written that they got nominated for deletion. Can anyone here take a shot at cleaning these up? linas 04:00, 5 December 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Improvement Drive

Frog has been nominated to be improved by WP:IDRIVE. Help us improve it and support Frog with your vote on WP:IDRIVE. --Fenice 07:53, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Open tasks list

Please help to keep the Biology portal's Open tasks list up to date. This is one of our main communication methods to help get newcomers more involved in editing articles. It contains a list of articles that need improving, articles that need creating, articles that need cleanup, etc. And of course, if you have the time, please help and work on some of the tasks on that list! --Cyde Weys 05:18, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Images on Chinook wind

Hello, there is currently a discussion on Talk:Chinook wind regarding which image (or images) best convey a chinook arch. Please join us to express your opinion. Thanks. -- JamesTeterenko 21:55, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Articles for the Wikipedia 1.0 project

Hi, I'm a member of the Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing using these criteria, and we are looking for A-class, B-class, and Good articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Can you recommend any suitable articles? Please post your suggestions here. Cheers, Shanel 20:12, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kibbutz

Kibbutz is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 14:04, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tea

Tea is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 22:50, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 23:35, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Gap analysis

I created an entry for gap analysis. Perhaps someone interested could take a look and improve it? AppleJuggler 09:18, 6 December 2006 (UTC)


[edit] categorization / category diffusion

Hi -- the categorization in Category:Ecology is a bit of a mess right now -- there are many, many articles not subcategorized, and it extends to three pages. I created a few of the standard subcategories that help organize articles in other science hierarchies (Category:Ecology lists, Category:Ecology literature, Category:Organizations), but that only pulled out so many articles; most of the rest require subject categorization. Anybody else (more subject experts) want to help work on this? --lquilter 21:23, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I've worked on this a little myself - some include Category:Community ecology, Category:Biological interactions etc. Richard001 09:34, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A bunch of AfDs on people in the field of eco-cemeteries

I recently filed AfDs on articles about five people, who all have something to do wiki eco-cemeteries. Maybe people with an interest in ecology would be interested in taking a look?

// habj 19:36, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] AfD on Natural History of South Asia mailing list=

Discussion now in process at Natural History of South Asia mailing list (2nd nomination) DGG 21:01, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Project Banner

I have recently created a banner for Wikipedia:WikiProject Biology which has assessment parameters. I was not able to determine whether this project has its own existing banner does not. Given the amount of overlap in the biology sector, and the concerns expressed elsewhere about the proliferation of project banners, I was wondering whether the members of this project would be interested in perhaps utilizing the Biology banner, with a "drop down tab" for this project, perhaps similar to the {{WPMILHIST}} banner. Doing so would permit for individual assessment for each project, as that is something the Military History banner does, while at the same time reducing the amount of banner "clutter" on talk pages. If you would be interested in such an arrangement, please let me know and I will work to revise the Biology banner to include the "drop-down" tab and make the other arrangements required for your project, as well as theirs, to have assessment data available. Thank you. John Carter 20:57, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Just a note on this: I created a separate one myself a little while ago, see Template:Ecology. Richard001 09:32, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Heads up on some controversy

Not really my area of expertise, but user Wiki Skylace has made a number of edits suggesting that there is no such thing as an invasive species or a damaging introduced species. From the narrow confines of my field (introduced mammals and birds in New Zealand), I know this to be complete garbage; the role of introduced species as a bogeyman has been overplayed for sure but that doesn't mean they are harmless. The Wiki Skyklace also adds links to a site with a POV essay about the subject, but the site is mostly a comercial site selling seeds (can't imagine why someone who sells seeds might argue that they are harmless). Anyway, this isn't an area of Wikipedia I know much about but I'm concerned about POV pushing. Sabine's Sunbird talk 04:04, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Please someone fix this terrible page

Optimum population - Totaly unreferenced. An OR nightmare. Please someone with an interest or knowledge of the subject (that rules me out) fix this. Willy turner 15:40, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Plantesamfund

This is an ecology article that could use some attention, particularly from plant ecology folks. KP Botany 04:18, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fallon, Nevada

It has been mentioned that the content of the Cancer Cluster section of this article seems to rely entirely on one source. In fact, a recent article in a local newspaper here writes

"Arsenic in the water, tungsten in the air, polonium in wells, underground atomic testing to the east - all have been reported by the media. The entry for "Fallon, Nevada" on Wikipedia, a popular online encyclopedia, mentions the leukemia cluster. It's no wonder some outsiders unfortunately perceive our community as unhealthy."

If you have access to any further information regarding this subject which might be relevant to this article regarding this subject, such as perhaps contrary opinions and/or further research, it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. John Carter 14:59, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Seed for ACID nom

I've nominated seed for the Article Collaboration and Improvement Drive. Since there is no Plants COTM, please vote!

More importantly, help if you can. There are several sections on ecological aspects of seeds, including seed dispersal, seed dormacy, and seed set. This basic article really should be up to "Good Article" quality or better. --EncycloPetey 17:41, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed deletion: Phagy

Phagy (via WP:PROD on 2007-10-22) Deleted after transwiki

--User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 13:15, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
updated --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:31, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Notice of List articles

Page(s) related to this project have been created and/or added to one of the Wikipedia:Contents subpages (not by me).

This note is to let you know, so that experts in the field can expand them and check them for accuracy, and so that they can be added to any watchlists/tasklists, and have any appropriate project banners added, etc. Thanks. --Quiddity 19:31, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pelagic Ecology of the Low Salinity San Francisco Estuary

Not sure if anyone in this WikiProject noticed this article but it definitely needs a thorough examination to see if it complies with the MOS and wikipedia policies. Just thought I'd let you know! --Rkitko (talk) 21:11, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Reminder of the Philip Greenspun Illustration project

Hi. You may be familiar with the Philip Greenspun Illustration Project. $20,000 has been donated to pay for the creation of high quality diagrams for Wikipedia and its sister projects.

Requests are currently being taken at m:Philip Greenspun illustration project/Requests and input from members of this project would be very welcome. If you can think of any diagrams (not photos or maps) that would be useful then I encourage you to suggest them at this page. If there is any free content material that would assist in drawing the diagram then it would be great if you could list that, too.

If there are any related (or unrelated) WikiProjects you think might have some suggestions then please pass this request over. Thanks. --Cherry blossom tree 16:52, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Parasite v. Disease

I've been editing parasite articles a bit and have noticed that there seems to be a re-occurring debate. Should parasitic diseases be the same article as the organism that causes them? Should malaria and plasmodium be the same article? Parasites obviously are important simply for being alive, but they also impact organisms, and this might be what makes them significant to the average reader. However, how much are we willing to repeat ourselves? Where do we make the distinction between which information should be where? Plcoffey (talk) 02:32, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

It depends on the case. For something like human immunodeficiency virus and acquired immune deficiency syndrome we definitely want two articles, but for less important diseases one might be acceptable. For the diseases you're going to be looking at things like symptoms, treatments etc, whereas with the causal pathogen/parasite you're looking more at its biology etc. There will be some overlap but not too much to render two articles superfluous. Richard001 (talk) 05:33, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
No, they shouldn't be the same article. There should be enough about malaria in the plasmodium article to be useful to the reader (i.e., more than just a teaser) but not so much that the articles are the same. But, of course, if both articles are very short, it might be useful to merge them (at least for the time being) and make one redirect to the other. Guettarda (talk) 13:06, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Userbox WikiProject Ecology

Hello !

I'm a new French user of the English Wikipedia. I have recently joined the Project Ecology, but I haven't found any userbox for it...

That's why I've created one :

This user is a member of the WikiProject Ecology




What do you think of it ?

Shouldn't I make it available on the WikiProject Ecology page?


PS : Don't hesitate to talk to me if you need someone to create articles about France, or to translate articles from French, Spanish or Italian into English...

Bye!


JeanSolPartreTalk page 11 May 2008, 23:37 (UTC)

Looks good! Yes, please include it on the project page. —Pengo 02:43, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism - rampant ?

Out of curiosity I have been watching pages like Grassland, Savanna, Desert, Forest, Swamp, etc., for the last few weeks. They seem to be subject to continuous vandalism. May I ask why they have not been semiprotected ? Ronnam (talk) 01:40, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

They do seem to get a bit of vandalism, perhaps because they are used by school children a lot. Pages don't protect themselves, you have to ask for them to be protected at WP:RFP. They aren't protected because nobody has asked or the request has been turned down. What would be better is a water tight net that would ensure vandalism is quickly removed from each article, but there is neither enough editors at the project nor the political will to create such a net. Richard001 (talk) 06:17, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
Thanks Richard. Yer, I figured possibly school kids too. I did know that protection had to be requested. I suppose the real reason I asked my question above was that I was thinking of requesting it myself, but was wondering why no one else had when so much time and effort seems to go into cleaning up all the time ? If I do request protection, it would be to stop only unregistered editors. Ronnam (talk) 07:54, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Infobox and 'linking' templates for ecological areas ?

Folks,

I note on your project page that the Things you can do to do list includes matters relating linking of soil types, ecoregions, biomes, climate, etc.

There seems to be no infobox for an ecological area in Wikipedia ?

I have some ideas for an infobox, for example {{Infobox Ecological area}} which include:

  • ecological classification
  • conservation status
  • anthropomorphic status
  • age, area, date defined / designated
  • major physical features
  • major geological events
  • typical image
  • typical eco structure schematic

This tempalte would cover from ecozone down to ecotope.

The infobox template would also do wikilinking for you, and do intelligent categorisation automatically to 'link' articles on the same meta subject, etc.

I note that there are multiple classification systems for some of these characerists. If useful, the template could allow for multiple parallel classification schemes for relevant characteristics.

If such an infobox template would be useful. I could have a first cut ready for comment by the middle of next week.

Cheers. Peet Ern (talk) 02:17, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ecology expertise needed at FPC

It seems we don't have the expertise for judging this picture. Maybe you could take a look at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Forest in Autumn. Thank you. Papa Lima Whiskey (talk) 19:54, 1 June 2008 (UTC)