Portal talk:Biology/Archive 2

message: Hey guys, I'm volunteering to maintain this portal.  Just so you know my main area of expertise in biology is evolutionary biology, so if you see me tending to focus on evo bio to the exclusion of other disciplines, say something about it.  I'll be maintaining this portal but that doesn't mean I don't need your help!  Here are some things you can do to help me:
*Locate good biology pictures.  These may be good pictures of animals or living things, interesting pictures of microscopic life, or maybe just good diagrams of biological processes.  Post links to the pictures in here (as well as your caption) and on my talk page.  Or, if the highlighted picture is already several days stale, be bold and update the picture!
*Locate good biology featured articles.  For now we can work off of Wikipedia:Featured articles but at some point we're going to run out and it might become a bit more difficult to locate them.  If you have any leads please post in here and on my talk page.  It would help me a lot if you could write a short one or two paragraph summary for use in the portal infobox.  Or, if the featured article is already several days stale, be bold and pick and link to a new one!
*Update the "Did you know?" section with neato biology factoids.  I'm sure there's a lot more out there than I could ever come up with, and it's kind of lame to just randomly browse biology-related articles hoping to find something useful.
*Update the "Things you can do" section.  I just blanked it because everything in it was several months out of date.  As you run across biology articles that are, for whatever reason, of inferior quality, please link them in the section.
*Contact me with any concerns or questions you may have at my talk page.  I'm always open to suggestions or comments.
One more thing: I'm working on a system for preserving previous featured articles, highlighted pictures, and did you know factoids.  Once I standardize a way to do this I'll post a how-to on here.  This will be a good system because in the boxes on the portal page we can have a link that says, "View previous featured articles".  It's much better than having to tangle with the edit history.
Thanks, and I look forward to looking forward with all of you on Portal:Biology!  --Cyde Weys votetalk 03:55, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  I volunteer to maintain this portal 

message: 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)
thread_title: Improvement Drive

message: Chronospecies is a current candidate on Wikipedia:Science collaboration of the week. If you would like to see this article improved  vote for it here. --Fenice 17:48, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Wikipedia:Science collaboration of the week]]

message: would you like to create certified articles in science? -- Zondor 03:31, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia talk:Stable versions#Certification gang]] 

message: Idea for the next article:
Caenorhabditis elegans is a free-living nematode (a roundworm), about 1 mm in length, which lives in a temperate soil environment. Research into the molecular and developmental biology of C. elegans began in 1965 by Sydney Brenner (he was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work).  C. elegans has a male (very rare, makes up 0.05% of the C. elegans population) and hermaphrodite sex.
C. elegans is used as a model organism. Specimens are cheap and easy to maintain in the laboratory. C. elegans has been especially useful for studying cellular differentiation, and was the first multicellular organism to have its genome completely sequenced.  From a research perspective, C. elegans has the advantage of being a multicellular eukaryotic organism which is simple enough to be studied in great detail. The developmental fate of every single somatic cell (959 in the adult hermaphrodite; 1031 in the adult male) has been mapped out. These patterns of cell lineage are largely invariant between individuals. In both sexes, a large number of additional cells (131 in the hermaphrodite, most of which would otherwise become neurons), are eliminated by programmed cell death (apoptosis).
:Seconded. Samsara contrib talk 19:10, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thinking out loud 

message: Why don't you use featured pictures for the "selected pictures" section? There is currently 128 photos which would be suitable, I don't see a reason to dip into non-featured pictures yet. --liquidGhoul 08:47, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There were at least 20 invertebrates in the featured picture list. Granted most are insects, but since most invertebrates are, there is no problem there. Secondly, I have noticed there is a bias on your choice of "selected pictures" for animals. Why do you have to choose an animal when there are plenty of good plant photos available. It just doesn't make sense to me, that you have to choose a sub-par picture for the reason of variety, when you haven't nearly used a variety of images. You did not have to choose an aquatic invertebrate, and if you did, you could have used the antarctic krill eye image. --liquidGhoul 03:25, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Please, please, go ahead and pick the picture next week then.  I just don't like being complained at for the way I did something when no one else was willing to do it.  --Cyde Weys 04:17, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've put a reminder in the source to that effect. - Samsara contrib talk 04:21, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Unfortunately, I couldn't find any featured pics of bacteria. Grave omission! Bacterial colonies can actually look very visually appealing, and are phenotypically extremely diverse! - Samsara contrib talk 23:39, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Pictures

message: Can we do something about the glaring cyan headers and photo? Back in the day when I was doing webdesign, these were colours we were warned about using; almost on a par with bright magenta... SOC (Save our cones). - Samsara contrib talk 14:39, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: How about a deeper shade of blue? Water, after all, is the basis of all life! - Samsara contrib talk 19:04, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I've suggested a colour palette here. Please be clear on the fact that I suggest we pick ONE of the possibilities, not do patchwork! If there's no objections filed here within the next three days or so, I'll go ahead with putting one of these into practice to see if it gets reverted. The main decision to be made would be whether to stick with the white writing. If we do, the background should probably become a little darker. My current favourite is the colour scheme of the "selected picture" box on my example page, although it could be a bit bluer, as in the bottom example of the left hand column. - Samsara contrib talk 19:28, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

text: What do you say now? ;) - Samsara contrib talk 03:21, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ahh, my eyes! 

message: So here is my current suggestion for a new colour scheme. - Samsara contrib talk 03:37, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I like the idea of using green for biology. How about HEX:339966 ? I don't know how to change the colours though, sorry. --liquidGhoul 03:50, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You can change the colour here. Your suggestion is in the history: . Just edit and save and return to the main page to see the changes (after refresh, obviously). I still prefer my suggestion and think that it might even be worth explaining the colour, e.g. blue because all known life depends intimately on the peculiar chemistry of water. - Samsara contrib talk 03:56, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Ohhhhh, now I like your idea. Except that it is purple. :) --liquidGhoul 03:59, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe it's your screen? ;) But seriously, I've just raised the green value by hex 11, so it should come out looking less purple. What do you think? - Samsara contrib talk 04:13, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Much better, I like it. --liquidGhoul 07:08, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  New colour scheme 

message: Just to let you know that Human genome has been voted Science Collaboration of the Week. - Samsara contrib talk 10:45, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Human genome]] is [[:Wikipedia:Science_collaboration_of_the_week|Science Collaboration of the Week]] 

message: Hi, the main page currently contains a link to the 2006 Table Mountain fire (under the news items), which according to this source has destroyed between 40 and 50 percent of the world's silver leaf tree population. This fact is noted in the fire article and thus it contains a link to the silver leaf tree article (which I created). Unfortunately, my knowledge of trees is VERY limited so the article in its current for is an unsatisfactory stub. Given that the article is only 2 links deep from the main page I think it needs to be expanded... Help will be much appreciated. Mikkerpikker ... 23:56, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: non-biologist needs help!

message: Anyone that hasn't voted yet feel like giving frog the edge over the cold war? Vote at :Wikipedia:Article improvement drive! - Samsara contrib talk 20:22, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Frog vs. cold war in [[:WP:AID]]

message: A scientific peer review has been started and we're looking for Wikipedians who are members of the scientific academic community to run for the board. If you want to give it a shot come over and post a little about yourself. New nominations are being accepted until the 00:00 on the 17th March.
The project aims to combine existing peer review mechanisms (Wikipedia peer review, featured article candidate discussion, article assessment, &c.) which focus on compliance to manual of style and referencing policy with a more conventional peer review by members of the scientific academic community. It is hoped that this will raise science-based articles to their highest possible standards. Article quality and factual validity is now Wikipedia's most important goal. Having as many errors as Britannica is not good–we must raise our standards above this. --Oldak Quill 18:15, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Wikipedia:Scientific peer review]]

message: Image:Aus soldier Crab.jpg
Image:Orb weaver black bckgrnd03 crop.jpg
Image:Grapevinesnail 01.jpg
Image:Anthomyiidae sp. 1 (aka).jpg
I'm just finding cool stuff on WP:FAC.  --Cyde Weys 21:03, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I was just came here to say something similar. Finally some invertebrates are coming through FPC. We will also have a snail promoted in the next week (I've added it to the gallery). --liquidGhoul 09:40, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, and another from FPC. This one is brilliant! It won't be promoted for over a week. --liquidGhoul 22:22, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Upcoming pics