Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Microbiology

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This page has a floating Escherichia coli taxobox that blocks the link to the WikiProject Microbiology participants. I can't seem to figure out how to edit it. I think adding WikiProject Protists to this umbrella is a good idea, maybe more folks will join. KP Botany 20:22, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks KP Botany. I have been editing the page in firefox and it turns out that the page was displaying improperly in internet explorer. Hopefully it works ok now. Great to have you aboard! ◄§ĉҺɑʀκs► 23:40, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I've been trying to get folks going on the Wikipedia project Protists, but I'll take it anyway. The protist articles really need a lot of work. I assumed it was a IE irregularity. KP Botany 00:02, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Are disease articles part of this project?

For instance, should I keep the microbiology tag I have added to malaria, leishmaniasis and tuberculosis? TimVickers 17:04, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

That is an interesting question. The diseases are integrally related to the microorganism causing them and in that respect could be considered as microbiological topics. On the other there is the Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine the scope of which definitely includes these dieases. I'm sure microbiologists have something to contribute to these topics and I don't believe that any one article should belong to ONLY one wikiproject. If there are any members of the project who wish to add info to these articles then I don't see the harm in having them under the scope of this project. GAThrawn22 22:20, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
I've checked and malaria is listed in the index of my microbiology textbook, which is as good a criteria as any. TimVickers 22:24, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
The Viruses project has been including viral diseases within their scope. That seems like a precent to me. – ClockworkSoul 01:21, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
What about plant diseases? I'm an agricultural scientist working in pesticide registration. Wikipedia has poor coverage of plant pathology and plant protection generally. I've aded a few articles and expanded others, but I'm not really a plant pathologist. –Maccheek 21:00, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] FAC for DNA

Hi there. This article is now a candidate for a featured article. Any comments or suggestions would be welcome on its nomination page here. Thank you. TimVickers 23:10, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 17:07, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Telonemia

Telonemia was mentioned in my morning newspaper today, and much to my surprise, there was no further information on wikipedia. Minutes later, a stub was created, but it still needs quite a lot of attention from a knowledgable person. --Thorsen 06:05, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Immune system FAC

Immune system has also been nominated as a FAC, any comments or suggestions are welcome. Thank you. TimVickers 16:34, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Douglas Stirling

This article is up for deletion.[1] I don't quite know enough about current research into the genetics of the mitotic spindle to understand either the author's main article, or its important in the field. Can someone more knowledgable make a call? Look particularly at this article[2], oh, and articles that cite it.[3] Thanks. --KP Botany 02:46, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cavalier-Smith does it again

If you go to this site, http://www.biology-direct.com/content/1/1/19, you will find a paper Mr C-S published in July of last year. I didn't understand most of it, but what I did understand really changed my views on a 3-domain system and the monophyletic-ness of Bacteria. Take a look. Werothegreat 17:10, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I haven't seen any attempt on the pages I've read regarding 'Candida' as to possible treatments. I suffered with candida for a while, resarching many web sites, health food stores, etc. and was horrified at what they all said was the only treatment they could tell me was 1) altering my diet for not just weeks but possibly years to litteraly 'starve' the candida out of my system along with 2) a long and expensive dosing of vitamins and such. It all seemed quite daunting. I kept looking. And finally found what I call the 'good ole home remedies' that I alway find to be the most effective, too, was simply drinking apple cider vinegar. A tablespoon in a glass of water once a day until it's gone. And then periodically to keep it at bay. Anyone who has had it knows the symtems and when it's about to rear it's ugly head and can administer accordingly. I can only hope to help someone with this information, that I had to go to great lengths to find out.

[edit] Article grading

In order to facilitate the categorization and grading of microbiology-related articles, I suggest that Project Micro consider using a more focused Importance scale in the {{WikiProject Micro}} template. Borrowing heavily from the Project MCB folks (their version is here), I propose that we use something like this:

Importance
  • Top — Subjects that are first closely examined by the average person in high school or earlier (Bacteria, Yeast), or that general public has at least a passing awareness of (Influenza), or a subject that has received significant media coverage (HIV, Smallpox).
(All of the examples are, of course, simply my gut instincts and can be rearranged / replaced / etc.)
Comments? -- MarcoTolo 21:10, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

The list of topics listed from the project page should be listed in order of importance, rather than quality. This might help focus readers on what needs to be done. TimVickers 21:53, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Excellent point. I was all fired-up to change the format of the WP 1.0 bot report.... then I realized that (a) it doesn't offer automagic formatting by importance; and (b) you've been maintaining the MCB importance tables by hand (ouch!). Before I charge off and ask the bot maintainer (Oleg Alexandrov) - have you already looked into the bot-driven sort-by-importance option? -- MarcoTolo 22:22, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

I know nothing. Opabinia regalis and ClockworkSoul are the alpha-geeks in the MCB community. TimVickers 22:39, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Template modifications

Hi all,

I made a few modifications of the {{WikiProject Micro}} banner today, to allow people to note whether a page would benefit from a taxobox or more images. Please check it out and let me know what you think!

I'd also like to know your opinions about the importance rankings for the various microbiological taxa. I was about to use the ranking Top=(Domain, Kingdom, Phylum), High=(Class, Order, Family), Mid=(Genus, Species), and Low=(Form, Pathovar, etc.) with exceptions for notability (E. coli might be High, for instance). What do you all think? This scheme may over-inflate the importance of the taxa; there are hundreds of orders of bacteria!

BTW, I just joined today, and added {{Archaea-stub}}; I hope that's OK, too. Happy to be here, Willow 00:50, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Welcome Willow. TimVickers 04:37, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Need help proofreading taxonomic refs

Hi, a few of us are working on a system for generating the taxonomic references for arbitrary taxa, but we need help checking that the references produced are OK, i.e., proofreading them. It's described on my Talk page, if you have time to help out — thank you very much! :) Willow 13:46, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bacteria

Hi there, are there any members of the project who would like to volunteer to be additional contacts for verification and sources of the bacteria article? In practice, you get a couple of e-mails a month and a bit more traffic on your talk page. TimVickers 23:11, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Sure. I will volunteer to help out. MetsFan76 11:23, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Protista=Kingdom

Hey everyone, I was wondering why there is no longer a single article that lists an organism's kingdom as protista. I understand there is some controversy about whether or not Protists can be considered a single kingdom, but I feel that since most biologists still list it as one, we should as well. Thoughts?- Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg | Talk 05:53, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Thats all the more reason to make sure there is some kind of standardization. Look at articles like Euglena, where protista is not listed at all.- Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg | Talk 19:20, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
Ok...so then feel free to add the kingdom Protista to the appropriate articles. MetsFan76 19:28, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New article

Hi, I am new to Wikipedia. I just added this article Streptococcus oralis, I am not sure how to format it correctly. Could you please have a look at it. --Souad27 19:04, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Indicator bacteria

This article is pretty bad, but I'm wondering if perhaps it oughtn't be discarded in favor of merging with an as-yet-unwritten Indicator organism article. Any takers?

There are similarly-named articles Bioindicator (which includes indicator organisms as #3 in its list), Indicator species and the vaguely-related Indicator plant. Another article idea is Microbial challenge, to include Microbial challenge organism. OK, back to work. Tomertalk 15:44, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Nontuberculous mycobacteria

Hello. I am hoping that this is the right place to get help with this item.... Category:Nontuberculous mycobacteria is currently a red category with 72 contained pages. I would just create the category, but I don't have the subject matter knowledge to know if these articles are truly meant to go there and also I don't know what its parent cat should be. If someone here has the knowledge, can they please take a minute and check this out? --After Midnight 0001 17:00, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bartonella rochalimae

Cross-posted to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Clinical medicine.

This has been making minor waves in the popular press, and our recently-created article seems to be in need of serious TLC. Relevant NEJM article if anyone has access. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 15:59, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] allowing unconverted metric units in scientific articles

I'm seeking consensus at MOSNUM talk for a change in the wording to allow contributors, by consensus only, to use unconverted metrics in scientific articles. Your opinions are invited. Tony 15:14, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bacteria in the human body Page

I have outlined that this page should be renamed to "Normal Flora", as not all normal flora is bacterial. It has been sometime since anything has been done, how do I propose a name change to an article? Eedo Bee 08:20, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Changed to "Human flora" Manning (talk) 15:15, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
We will need to add a section on archaea/fungi etc. Tim Vickers (talk) 16:55, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
Added, needs expansion though, it's still rather bacteria-heavy!. Tim Vickers (talk) 17:45, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Organisms Wiki - a wikia on Organisms

Organisms Wiki was recently started as a wikia to educate on all types of organisms and their biological counterparts. This wiki will aim to provide free, excellence-quality and concise articles dealing with organisms and habitats. Organisms Wiki is a wikia, and is also very small and new, which is why I would like to leave a note here that we appreciate any helpful contributions.

I have had people criticizing the sense of making a wiki on this topic when indeed Wikipedia covers just about anything related to organisms. Sure, this may be true - but a major advantage of having Organisms Wiki hosted at wikia is to cover the topics in broader depth. Thank you. Organisms Wiki

Paul Davey 08:12, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Taxobox colour change

Hello,

After much discussion, it has been agreed that colour changes for taxoboxes are necessary; it's currently proposed that amoebozoa taxoboxes should become #FFC8A0 and rhizaria, lavender. These changes would be carried out automatically, determined by regnum/phylum/etc entries in the taxobox. Your comments and opinions would be gratefully received here!

Thanks,

Verisimilus T 20:19, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Any interest in a WikiProject Microscopy?

I was wondering if anybody here was interested in starting a WikiProject for Microscopy, since many of the microscopy-related articles on Wikipedia are in need of cleanup, expansion, or other work. Microscopy topics have so far been a subset of this project, however, the applications of microscopy go far beyond microbiology, and use of microscopes is central to many other biological and non-biological sciences. And, of course, the optics underlying microscopy are essentially applied physics. Anyway, I just thought I'd float the idea and see if there are any takers. Peter G Werner (talk) 21:55, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I've put together a formal proposal here: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Proposals#Microscopy. If interested, please add your name under "Interested Wikipedians". Peter G Werner (talk) 22:30, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed move of bubonic plague

Please view proposal and submit ideas on the talk page. cyclosarin (talk) 06:21, 15 March 2008 (UTC)