User talk:Z3lvs

Welcome![edit]

Hello, Z3lvs, and welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Below are some pages you might find helpful. For a user-friendly interactive help forum see the Wikipedia Teahouse.

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, please see our help pages, and if you can't find what you are looking for there, please feel free to ask me on my talk page or place {{Help me}} on this page and someone will drop by to help. Again, welcome! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 19:32, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome to Wikipedia: check out the Teahouse![edit]

Hello! Z3lvs, you are invited to the Teahouse, a forum on Wikipedia for new editors to ask questions about editing Wikipedia, and get support from peers and experienced editors. Please join us! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 19:33, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I'll take a look! Z3lvs (talk) 19:34, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

ecoregions[edit]

Be thoughtful in moving ecoregion articles from the WWF-defined ones to the One Earth ones. Some of them have the same boundaries, or are pretty close. Others have different boundaries.

For example, One Earth's Northern Mesoamerican Pacific Coast mangroves ecoregion includes the Northwest Mexican Coast mangroves, but also includes the Marismas Nacionales–San Blas mangroves and Mexican South Pacific Coast mangroves ecoregions. The Ethiopian xeric grasslands and shrublands and Djibouti Xeric Shrublands ecoregions overlap but have considerable differences. If you just move the article and retitle it, the map, geography, area, description, etc. will be inaccurate. Also some entities, like DOPA, still use the WWF boundaries.

One Earth mostly uses the WWF boundaries, but the major areas of difference between the two systems are with mangrove ecoregions - One Earth ecoregions are much larger and encompass several of the smaller WWF ecoregions – and the desert and grassland ecoregions of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. For the time being I have started new ecoregion articles for the One Earth ecoregions where the boundaries between the WWF and One Earth systems differ a lot – South Arabian fog woodlands, shrublands, and dune, for example. In those articles I add a section explaining how the ecoregion's delination relates to and differs from the other system. That is what we have been doing for years for US ecoregions where the WWF and EPA ecoregions use markedly different boundaries. It seems like the best way to handle these differences between WWF and One Earth for now. Tom Radulovich (talk) 22:53, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I've noticed that a few boundaries have differences too. I was unsure about whether to create a potentially redundant new page on the same subject or to update the WWF page. I decided that at the time that it would be better to update the page so that the original contributions would be in the history. As for me, I would love to make some new maps for the One Earth boundaries, but I currently lack the knowledge of how to do so. I was planning on that type of update at a later stage, at least not until the framework of the categories was finished.

Moving forward, I am content to make new pages for the One Earth designations of ecoregions when they are significantly different from that of WWF. Thanks for the comment. Z3lvs (talk) 23:09, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Nicer way to link to Commons[edit]

Thanks for all of your work over at Commons for ecoregions. I see that you've added Commons links to some ecoregion articles. A few things to consider:

There are templates that use Wikidata to automatically look up the corresponding commons gallery or category to an article in en, e.g., {{commons}} or {{commons-inline}}. I would encourage you to use those, because if the Commons category or gallery changes name, it will automatically update. It's also easier to type.
The templates {{commons}} and {{commons-inline}} automatically figure out whether there is a category, a gallery, or both. They choose the best one to link to, and hide the namespace in the display. You shouldn't need to specify both a category link and a display name without the category. If there are both a category and a gallery, and you want to specifically select the category, then you can use {{commons category}} or {{commons category-inline}}.
For {{commons}} and {{commons-inline}}, you don't need to specify the target to override the display. For either template, you can simply leave the first argument blank and specify a display variable as the second argument. One trick I've used is {{commons-inline||{{subst:PAGENAME}}}} to make the link match the page header. — hike395 (talk) 18:06, 12 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If there is no external links section, or if the links section is very short, then the inline version of the commons link, e.g., {{commons-inline}} often looks better than a floating box by itself (this is per WP:MOSSIS).
An external link section is not supposed to consist purely of boxes (again, per WP:MOSSIS), and you haven't done this, don't worry. But WP:MOSSIS doesn't forbid an external link section that consists only of {{commons-inline}} (or similar inline templates). I find it nicer to pull the Commons link inline into a new EL section, rather than having it crowd the references.
MOS:ORDER is the guideline for the ordering of material in articles, especially at the end of articles. Floating commons boxes belong in either an external links section, or in the last section (e.g., bibliography), if there is no external links section (per WP:MOSSIS). Commons boxes shouldn't get mixed into the navboxes.

Thanks again for all of your efforts! — hike395 (talk) 16:06, 12 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, thank you for your advice. That is a much simpler way of linking to the commons page than what I was originally doing. It is also a good thing to know where to place to link, thanks for making me aware of the standard.

I'm glad that you appreciate the work on the ecoregions. I hope to continue working on the Wikimedia Commons ecoregion pages for the foreseeable future. Z3lvs (talk) 02:22, 14 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I just attempted to apply your advice on the "Jiang Nan subtropical evergreen forests" Wikipedia page.

The link works well, so I'm pleased with that. This page did not have an External Links section, so I added one below the References section. If you had the time, would you mind checking this page to see if I did it correctly? Z3lvs (talk) 16:51, 17 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I edited Jiang Nan subtropical evergreen forests. You placed {{commons-inline}} in the "See also" section, but that is for internal links only (per WP:SEEALSO). MOS:ORDER also says that we should not put commons links below the navboxes (which happened at Blue Mountains (ecoregion)). i fixed both of those articles, no problem at all. — hike395 (talk) 05:12, 18 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, thanks for letting me know. I think I am understand the method now.

On another note...

I am not sure how much longer it will be before I have linked Wikimedia Commons on all the relevant pages. If I am quick, perhaps less than a week. But, I will soon be reaching the point where remaining One Earth names are mildly different than the WWF names (ex:Patagonian Desert vs Patagonian Steppe; Brigalow Belt vs Brigalow Tropical Savanna). A more extreme example is what Tom Radulovich described above where the Arabian peninsula is defined entirely different by WWF and One Earth. I have been avoiding doing too much with these types of pages for the time being. I like linking pages that are practically the same (ex:English Lowlands Beech Forests with English Lowlands Beech Forests). There may be slight differences such as the amount of square km that WWF and One Earth defines for these ecoregions with the same name, but I think it seems acceptable in most of these cases to bring them together. Not all WWF and One Earth ecoregions with the same name are the exact same as Tom Radulovich pointed out above, there are few with a drastic difference (ex: South Arabian fog woodlands, shrublands, and dune). So it seems perhaps some though will be needed in order to find the acceptable standard.

Ultimately, my goal is to bring together existing images on Wikimedia Commons, so that there can be a visual resource for anyone researching these ecoregions. With the use of iNaturalist, I believe that there are even more images that can be added to these pages; there is the additional benefit that iNaturalist images are already geotagged. There is still a lot more that I can do with collecting images, I still look forward to filling out pages that are empty.

In terms of the naming of the pages, I am not overly dogmatic about how it has to be. I am willing to compromise and to let others decide what makes the most sense. But I am not sure where would be the best place to pose that kind of a question for discussion.

Cheers! Z3lvs (talk) 06:28, 18 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I know, there is not a centralized place over at Commons to discuss category naming, nor is there the equivalent of WikiProjects. I think editors at Commons are relatively tolerant of naming systems, as long as they obey the simple naming system: use English, use common names, and use plurals for groups of objects. (Ecoregions should each be singular, I think).

You could possibly discuss your ideas at the Ecoregions WikiProject, although that's not very active. My own opinion is that if the WWF ecoregion and the One Earth ecoregion are largely geographically similar, then you should combine the categories. If the WWF and One Earth ecoregions cover very different regions and have the same name, then you should use a disambiguator like (WWF) or (One Earth). If they are geographically distinct and use different names, then create a new category with the One Earth name, but no disambiguator.

By the way, I see you are creating "External Links" sections that contain only {{commons}}. There are two problems with that:

Section headers should only have the first letter capitalized, so it should be "External links" (per MOS:HEAD)
External links sections should not contain just a box, per WP:MOSSIS. In this case, you should use {{commons-inline}}, not {{commons}}.

I'll clean up any issues, but just thought you'd want to know the style guide. — hike395 (talk) 21:24, 18 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]