Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spiders/Archive 001

message: I added a stub for stabilimentum. Please help flesh it. Shyamal 12:02, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Never mind, I discovered the article Web decorations and have redirected to that. Shyamal 12:08, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

text: *I was just about to tell you :) I found it yesterday when re-ordering the Argiope article. --Sarefo 12:18, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Stub needing help

message: The section on "bite ranks" (which appears to be added by an anonymous editor) is thoroughly lacking in encyclopedic tone; full of typographical errors, is either unsourced or original research, and doesn't correspond well at all to modern science on spider bites in general, the hobo in particular.
I think it ought to be axed; but wanted to ask you all first.  If this "bite scale" is modern scientific thought, a recent reference to it would be nice.  :)
Speaking of which--I'm sorely tempted to create a new section in the (urp) Poisonous spiders article, "spiders whose danger to humans is disputed", to put such critters as the hobo, the yellow sac spider, the white-tailed spider, and a couple of other species which recent research has indicated may have undeserved reputations (but which many medical and wildlife authorities still consider dangerous).  The common theme to all of these is that many necrotic injuries/illnesses are chalked up to spider bites by medical personnel, based on flimsy evidence, but when cases are limited to those where the spider is positively identified by an expert, the nasty symptoms go away or are greatly reduced in scope.  I'm not taking a side in the controversy; but given that many experts have chimed in on the subject, Wikipedia should track the issue. 
--EngineerScotty 05:35, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bite ranks section on [[hobo spider]] article

message: * It's mentioned in the project page that Araneae may get moved to :Category:Spiders.  How about other uses of "Araneae" in article titles, such as Araneae families?  WP's longstanding practice is to prefer common names over scientific names.  Reasons to use scientific names include the case where a given critter has no common name, or if the common name is ambiguous or poorly defined; however, "spider" is not ambiguous (and refers precisely to those arthropods in order Araneae).  Who's for moving Araneae taxonomy to Spider taxonomy, etc, leaving the Araneae links as redirects? --EngineerScotty 18:00, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Araneae -> Spider 

message: (following content from User:Sarefo moved from my talk page --EngineerScotty 04:39, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Species lists: split by subfamily 

message: * User:Ardric47 started to split the larger family species lists into smaller chunks. Probably this is a good idea, but let's not rush things. These lists are automatically generated, and this should be considered in any changes on them.
:* What I think speaks against it is that linking is more complex with split pages: You always have to check back and forth where the pages where split (in case Araneidae: A, B-F, G-M, N-Z). Before that it was just diversity_link=List of Araneidae species#Argiope. So, pro: smaller files, contra: easy to produce "dead" anchor links by accident when writing pages --Sarefo 23:00, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: *Very true. The best way to resolve this would be to divide it into subfamily pages, if such subfamilies existed. Do they? Ardric47 00:16, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

text: *That was also the first idea I had. However, I could not find anything about subfamilies. I'm relying heavily on Platnick's World Spider Catalog, and he only recognizes Families, Genera, Species and Subspecies. I would like to find such a list of subfamilies, but so far, i had no success, and I'm not even sure it exists. But see Theraphosidae for an example where User:EngineerScotty is working on organizing the species into subfamilies. btw, I reverted the Araneidae species list so that I can use it the old way, but of course linked to the split pages. This way, I can work like I used to until we found a solution. Sarefo 00:55, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

text: *I moved this conversation below the related one I had with EngineerScotty earlier; at the moment, everything is still a bit chaotic in the project pages, we still need to sort out where everything has its place :) --Sarefo 03:15, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Species lists: split by alphabet

message: hi,
while browsing the Theraphosidae category tree, i got the idea that a Theraphosid sub-project could make sense. 
cheers --Sarefo 02:46, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Theraphosid sub-project 

message: Hello,  I was directed here from my page on Dolomedes.  I think your project is a much needed one, given all the folklore, myths, and misinformation about spiders!  I'm mostly an expert in Dolomedes, though I'm fairly knowledgeable about most of the lycosoids (members of the superfamily Lycosoidea).  The Dolomedes page is a work in progress, I hope to add a lot more content once I finish my move to South Dakota next month.
I have one correction  - POM, the spider you have labelled as Dolomedes scriptus, is actually a female Dolomedes tenebrosus.  D. scriptus females have W like markings on the abdomen, and tend towards grayish body color (north) or darker, almost black (seen while I was at spider camp in North Carolina).  Unfortunately there are a lot of mislabelled pictures on the web, but I'm doing my best to correct them! 
If you would like, I could contact some of the folks you have listed as sources of photographs, or contact some of my colleagues for photos to use here.  Jerry Rovner and Fred Coyle are both retired.  Rick Vetter is very vocal on misinformation on spider bites, I've seen a couple of his passionate talks about Loxoceles reclusa (brown recluse).  Another person you may contact is Chuck Kristensen, who is very knowledgeable on spider venoms (he is the founder of SpiderPharm).  --User:Dolomedes 04:34, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: *that would be great! so that's the reason why i could not reach Fred Coyle :) by mistake, i sent an email to iirc Paul Coyle, who is a professor for sociology on the same university where Fred used to be. I think it would be important to license all pictures under something like Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5; so that commercial works are explicitely allowed, but only if they also use the same license. I had some people that wanted to license pictures to wikipedia, but only under a non-commercial license, and I think that could actually be detrimental, because there would be all these nice pictures, and once you want to make a book from it, you would realize you cannot use most of them. when there's no picture, there will be more effort to upload ones with a more ideal license. About the venom thing, Ed Nieuwenhuys mentioned he would send me an interesting draft about this soon. He says it's completely overrated. --Sarefo 04:14, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spider participants 

message: hey P0M and scotty,
maybe we could find some distinct place(s) where all the venomousness information goes, nicely sorted and all, and direct interested people there instead of permeating it into all general articles. Me for example, I'm not in the least interested in the presumed danger that spiders pose. I've never been bitten by any, don't know anybody who has, and find it problematic to perpetuate the view that spiders are a dangerous nuisance. I know you don't mean it this way, but, you know, people tend to extract the view from what they read that they already have.
While editing for example, i found it on the main spider page under "taxonomy", now under Types of spiders, and so on. 
Types of spiders starts with a key to bite severity; when there are 40,000 species, and only 40 are supposed to be dangerous, why start by sorting them after this criterium?
I think you're doing a good job in sorting out the often conflicting information on spider venom. Let's eg. put it into Spider bites, and link there. 
cheers --Sarefo 16:44, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: DANGER!!! ;) 

message: The Sacrificial males section in the main Spider article is too long, there should be an equal level of depth in all sections. any ideas where could be a good place to go into much detail on this topic? I can't think of a good name for a page title. --Sarefo 17:17, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sacrificial males 

message: I've formally requested that Poisonous spiders be moved to Spider bite; as the latter page exists and has non-trivial edit history, this action requires an administrator to perform.  Please express your opinion as to this move on Talk:Poisonous spiders, so a consensus (for or against) can be established.  --EngineerScotty 23:49, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Poisonous spiders -> Spider bite move requested 

message: Dear spider group, I'm pretty new at wiki, so forgive me if I'm at the wrong table. But I would like to know if thermographic images are interesting enough to be part of the spider pages. We made a pretty big collection of this kind of images to learn a little about thermoregulation tools of animals. I'm a bit looking for the right spots an persons who are interested in this subjes aswell.
--Nutscode 20:00, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: oh, nice pictures :) I'm sure we can find a place for this nice picture. do you btw know the species of tarantula? if you have any questions, regarding the spider pages, or WP in general, don't hesitate to contact me :) --Sarefo 10:55, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thermgraphic images of spiders 

message: Image:Spiders eating 150.jpg]
Image:Spiders eating 149.jpg
Image:Spiders eating 148.jpg
Image:Spiders eating 147.jpg
Image:Spiders eating 146.jpg
Image:Spiders eating 142.jpg
Image:Spiders eating 141.jpg
Image:Spiders eating 140.jpg
Image:Spiders eating 139.jpg
Image:Spider 026.jpg
Image:Spider 028.jpg
I've taken a few pictures of spiders.  Not very high quality, but maybe they can be used somewhere until better images are found.  I don't know what species they are; they're from the northeastern US.  Anyone with a good camera should try the same trick of attracting lots of insects to a light at night and then taking pictures of the spiders that show up for the feast.  I bet you could get some nice ones. — Omegatron 14:37, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some images 

message: It would be nice for each page to state the best preventive measures, killing agents or methods, as many seek the subject looking for that.
74.33.42.42 05:09, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the premise is flawed, that all 40,000 species are harmful. In fact, only a handful seem to be, and there seem to be already people that are writing about this specific subject. --Sarefo 01:03, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  anti spider 

message: There is currently a barnstar proposal at :Wikipedia:Barnstar and award proposals/New Proposals#Wildlife Barnstar for a barnstar which would be available for use for this project. Please feel free to visit the page and make any comments you see fit. Badbilltucker 15:30, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wildlife Barnstar 

message: 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 17:22, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia Day Awards 

message: I took these two pictures this summer of two ants (Lasius niger) carrying around a pair of chelicerae and a leg of some unfortunate spider. They are most likely from the same creature. Does anyone have an idea as to which family of spider these parts might belong to? Thanks, IronChris  |  (talk) 17:51, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: ahww, poor spider :( alas, i don't think there's any easy possibility to determine the species. DNA analysis might help ;) --Sarefo 21:15, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh well, too bad. I really wish I was there to see them attack that spider. It seems like quite a daring move for a bunch of little ants with a head the size of one chelicera! IronChris  |  (talk) 03:04, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ant with chelicerae