Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Birds/Archive 5

message: While blundering around Wikipedia trying to avoid work I came across Wikipedia:Featured topics. It occured to me that while we have huge amounts of great stuff regarding birds, our coverage of what might be the core subjects regarding birds is perhaps a little weak. Bird itself, while listed as a GA, is pretty poor (though improving for the efforts of Pmeleski and others), and while there are some reasonable other important articles there is a lot of scope for improvement. 
Consider this a suggestion, or perhaps a request, that we devote some time towards core subjects. This includes dragging bird up to FA, turning bird evolution into an article rather than a redirect, and so on and suchlike. A lot of the family pages are barely more than stubs, and the same goes for orders. It isn't as much fun or as easy as doing species but it needs doing.
I know that we're all volunteers and we all pretty much do what we want to (or at least I do) and we all try and do way to much. But perhaps a little bit of time can be devoted to this? By way of a start I'll be concentrating on Bird, parrot and the newly started Bird conservation over the next month and I've nominated bird migration as a possible collaboration for next month. Anyway, let me know what you think. Sabine's Sunbird  talk 06:26, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I do support the idea to improve the core topics (I voted for bird in the previous nomination). But since the common raven is the current WikiProject Birds collaboration article, we should get it done first rather than divert the attention onto other matter. Luffy487 06:44, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed, and I'll be doing that too, but most of do multiple things, so just bear it in mind, ya? Sabine's Sunbird  talk 07:01, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Alright, I will see what I can find to improve the core topics. I am aware that you have did a pretty good job in a day's time to create an article, Bird conservation. Currently, I am quite busy with my work. I will be free in weekends, most probably... Luffy487 14:57, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Core topics 

message: *I think a category should be created, "Bird species without pictures". It would make the task of hunting down pics for articles that have none a lot easier. Abbott75 21:50, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *I'm actually fairly sure one exists. Or, rather, a list does. I remember following one down from a 'what links here' from a species. Don't recal where it was hiding though. I don't know how much it helps, finding images of neotropical, asian, african and pacific phots is hard, and if I find a free one I tend to check to see if it is needed and add it straight away.  Sabine's Sunbird  talk 22:04, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *Yes but editors have to manually place the article in the list. Maybe if there is no pic in the taxobox it should be automatically added to the list as a quick reference to anyone who wishes to find/add pics. Abbott75 05:37, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

text: You probably want this missing images. Shyamal 06:32, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Missing Pictures

message: Does anyone know of any media files anywhere that are free to use that have bird song or bird calls on them? I want to use some examples in the bird#Communication section. Cheers. Sabine's Sunbird  talk 05:17, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Never mind, found one. Sabine's Sunbird  talk 05:26, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bird song 

message: Has anyone else noticed the Addition of further reading contributions that User:CephasE has been making to many bird articles? For examples, see Brown Thrasher, Northern Mockingbird, or Cedar Waxwing (among many others). I hate to say anything negative about these contributions - because it's clear that a ton of research has gone into them, but when the Further reading section is larger than the article itself (often by a significant margin) I have to wonder if maybe that isn't a bit excessive? 'Card 01:39, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It doesn't bother me.  I've seen people who don't like Wikipedia say that the best thing about it is when it has good references.  It would be great if someone would link to those articles when they appear on line, as at SORA. —JerryFriedman 22:49, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd suggest to leave them standing as they are (the italicization is unconventional, no offsite links for reprints, abstracts... are given - this formatting makes them easy to recognize) and only change them one by one as the sources are read and evaluated - they are not presently being used in the articles (or inlined; speaking of which, we NEED a good citation code that leaves articles editable instead of destroying the coherence of the actual output text by drowning it in "<ref" tags). For the time being, to have a list of references (even if the article does not use them) is a Good Thing. Dysmorodrepanis 23:58, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: At the very least the CAPITALISATION needs to be removed. Someone (with the necessary resources) should also check a random sample, to see that that they actually exist. Andy Mabbett 00:22, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've Googled many of the listed titles, and while I wasn't able to get hits on all of them, I did get hits on enough to convince me that they're legitimate. Besides, if they were fabricated, the sheer number of them would constitute a veritable masterpiece of creative (not to mention labor-intensive) vandalism. 'Card 00:31, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

text: At a glance, the articles are legit, and most are even available for free (on SORA). The theses (is "theses" the correct plural or is this an hypercorrection?), thus, should also be good, but these might be more hard to come by. Dysmorodrepanis 10:10, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

text: Looks great.  These "further readings" should be merged with the "references" section in articles that have both (such as Cedar Waxwings). Footnotes can remain in a separate "references cited" section, but an uncited bibliography should not be called "references".Fredwerner 22:39, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

text: In fact - would it not be better to  the entire block of refs initially? In some cases where the article itself is not a stub anymore, it now gives the impression that the article is based on peer-reviewed research and thus "encyclopedia standard" reliable. If the refs are removed from the displayed page but kept in the source code, they can be worked into the article at leisue. CephasE, I think you collected an outstanding amount of data there and I for one am quite happy about it. None of these refs should be deleted, but it might be better to remove the uncited ones from view when "further reading" is deleted so as not to confuse readers. Dysmorodrepanis 21:30, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Further reading?