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I am thinking about a new approach to our Palaeo Peer Review, one that is focused on collaborative editing.

The problem with the existing Palaeo Peer Review is that it is not really distinct from the normal WP:Peer Review; the process is kind of the same, i.e. participants leave comments and wait for the nominator to fix them. In contrast, we also have the Palaeontology Collaboration and the Dinosaur Collaboration; these were great because of the community effort, but just don't work and have been inactive for years now. Maybe it is time to try something new that combines the advantages of the Peer Review (flexibility; fast feedback; a main author behind the article) with those of a WikiProject collaboration (community effort).

The goal of this is to get more folks into article writing, by making such writing easier and more fun. Also, we encourage collaborative working on articles while improving communication within the WikiProject and also making the WikiProject more attractive to new editors.

It could work the same way as the existing PeerReview, except for that we focus on editing the article directly instead of listing minor issues on the review page. On the review page, we could document what we did, and discuss problems that cannot be solved by quick edits. The goal would be to bring the article at least to B-class. This requires that the original nominator of the article acts as main author to push it forwards and, most importantly, addresses any comments. This hopefully sparkles spontaneous collaborations, sometimes with editors becoming more heavily involved so that they may become co-nominators if the article is finally nominated at WP:GAN or even WP:FAC.

Maybe we would need a new name for it, like "Palaeo collabs" or "Palaeo article workshop". This whole idea is quite preliminary; I would like to know what you think about it, and if you would be interested in participating in such a thing. Jens Lallensack (talk) 15:35, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Sounds like a nice reorientation that can probably be of wider use. Like I wrote on Discord: "One thing I've noticed is that many editors feel best writing about specific subtopics within a topic, so they'll often work on specific sections and leave the rest. In some case I've reached out to such editors when I was expanding articles so other editors could work on those sections while I worked on some of the perhaps more complicated sections, and there have come some nice articles from it. So perhaps this could also be a way to facilitate that kind of collaborations, where someone dives into some specific part of the article without having to do the burden of working on everything else". FunkMonk (talk) 16:24, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I think this is an overall improvement over the current review style for even things like Good Articles. Featured articles makes sense for people to critique and have discussions over improvements and layperson details, but all lower levels of "status" review I feel like it is more beneficial to allow people to implement the changes they see to make an article better. Things like rewriting sentences for clearer phrasing shouldn't need the original nominator to handle on their own. It should speed up processes and allow for more consistency, I'm in favour. IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 18:33, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm also in favour of this. It might also help in making bigger projects less daunting to tackle, like taxa with many species, complicated histories, etc. Maybe also a good way to handle those old Featured Articles we still need to reassess and improve? The Morrison Man (talk) 19:14, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, everybody. I went ahead and created a draft: Wikipedia:WikiProject Palaeontology/Article workshop. If anyone likes to edit the text, its concluded from here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Palaeontology/Article Workshop/Header. Once everybody is happy with it, I will activate it and retire the deprecated project pages, including the Palaeo Peer Review, with a note pointing to the new site. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 01:01, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if he old paleo PR should just redirect to there to preserve old links and archives? FunkMonk (talk) 08:17, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I was planning to put a warning box on the old Palaeo PR page as well as the old collaboration pages, noting that these projects have been retired and that we have the Workshop instead taking over these functions. Other than that, I thought we should preserve the original pages including the archives instead of turning them into redirects (to make it easy to re-activate them if needed). Maybe we could include an "history" section in the workshop page, with a little chronology and links to the old initiatives and archives? --Jens Lallensack (talk) 08:27, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds like the most practical solution to me at least. I've made some slight edits to the introductory text at the top of the page. The Morrison Man (talk) 09:57, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I added a "History" section and archives; we could just continue adding to the Peer review archives, I hope. How does that look? And btw, the Palaeo Peer review resulted in 43 reviewed articles, helping with promoting 6 GAs and 3 FAs. Not bad, but I think we can do even better! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 15:57, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good! We shouldn't forget to also change the main project pages accordingly once the workshop is fully operational. The Morrison Man (talk) 23:57, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, it's on my list! I will activate it tomorrow unless there are any concerns. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 00:07, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think this'll be great as a tool to promote collective contributions, like a little noticeboard people can look at and see where it might be worth helping out without the feeling they're making any specific commitment. LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions) 01:16, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I was bold and did all the changes I thought were necessary. The Article workshop (shortcut: WP:PALEOAW) is up and running. Links were added to the templates and bars. I added inactivity notices to both collaboration pages and the peer review, so that newbies will not be confused by dead pages. Those notices are ugly, and if anyone likes to change them, please do.

That said, the Article workshop is open for submissions! Don't forget to add it to your watchlist, so you won't miss any action! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 23:25, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent! I think it also cleans up the bar at the top of the WP:PALEO page quite nicely. Building off this, maybe it would also be valuable to invest in something like WP:MILHIST has at their academy for our project? We could do with a central place of information on how our articles work/should be written, and it would also give us an incentive to decide on some universal structuring. The Morrison Man (talk) 18:01, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For my part, whenever I want to know how to write and structure an article, I look at the most recently promoted featured article (FA) on a close topic. The FA process significantly influences, or at least constrains, how we write articles at a high level. The advantage of the FA process here is that it provides external feedback from non-experts that allows (or forces) us to adjust or writing to meet the needs of the readers. Another advantage is that it is dynamic, as new FA nominations often result in reconsiderations of long-standing practises. I don't know, but if we have our own central guidelines, maybe we risk ending up with something too rigid that will not properly evolve over time and does not serve actual readers needs? --Jens Lallensack (talk) 18:28, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I thought we had it already for the palaeo project, but could be helpful to have something like the dinosaur project "article sections"[1] guidelines here? FunkMonk (talk) 18:36, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Seems User:Zhenghecaris (contribs) is adding information about taxa described by Mark McMenamin (who is famous for Triassic Kraken hypothesis) from Clemente Formation, and trying to create own articles. That include, Zirabgtaria, Korifogrammia, Clementechiton (which is supposed to Ediacaran chiton) etc. Those taxa are described in those books[2][3] and searching in Google Scholar results it is only supported by McMenamin and not discussed in other researches. This user also reverted my deletion in Evolution of the eye, which claimed Clementechiton as the earliest animal with eyes, originally added by one of the supposed sockpuppet of Mark McMenamin (Earthjewels830). So should those information be retained? As Shenzianyuloma, despite poorly described and not supported by other researchers, those taxa seems still available names. (Although those are described in his own books and unreviewed, so maybe can be nomen dubium? I am not sure about those rules.) However, even through claim as earliest mollusk or trilobite-like animal is quite surprising, none of them are used in other researches about origin of existing groups. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 08:41, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I didn’t know, is still okay to write such content with notices about the situation? Zhenghecaris (talk) 20:52, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe you have opinion for that @Headbomb:? Should those taxa valid and enough to have mentions in articles? Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 09:43, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think nobody trusts McMenamin because of the Triassic kraken thing so everyone thinks his taxa are invalid. Zhenghecaris (talk) 15:29, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If you think so why you continue to adding that? Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 22:41, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think they are still valid taxa. Zhenghecaris (talk) 19:50, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If the taxa are supported by nobody aside from McMenamin himself, they shouldn't have their own articles. Clementechiton, for example, is only mentioned by him in his own books, and until other papers or other publications recognize that taxa, it shouldn't have a page yet. Fossiladder13 (talk) 23:23, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Also it is no need to put like "this seems invalid because author is famous with Triassic Kraken theory" or something because no reference says like that. If researchers don't approve of it, there's no need for Wikipedia to acknowledge it. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 15:41, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It seems like other paleontologists ignored McMenamin’s new taxa from the Clemente Formation and forgot about them without considering them invalid. Zhenghecaris (talk) 20:45, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

McMenamin's work is somewhat questionable. He's advanced various fringe theories, like the Triassic Kraken, and Near Eastern discovery of the New world before Columbus. My own opinion is that if any taxa he has named have been largely ignored by other researchers then they don't warrant standalone articles. Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:47, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I went to remove mentions of those things now. Also what about Shenzianyuloma, cause it is only mentioned by descriptions by McMenamin and another single paper by other authors[4] in controversial MDPI? It is not mentioned in other vetulicolian-related papers other than by McMenamin since 2019. This preprint by McMenamin[5] have critical comments and the evaluation is not good. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 07:42, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If that vetulicolian gets an article Clementechiton deserves one too. Zhenghecaris (talk) 12:42, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think the suggestion here is that that veticulicolian probably shouldn't have an article, either. I'm strongly against the inclusion of these taxa on the site, not because of any other hypotheses proposed by McMenamin "tarnishing" his reputation, but simply because these do not seem to be accepted taxa among secondary sources despite the extremely massive implications they are suggested to have (with the exception of Shenzianyuloma, which in this case is the reason it is of special note). Plenty of researchers are wrong about all kinds of things, sometimes hilariously so, and that alone does not invalidate their other work, but if what should be extremely revolutionary or noteworthy genera are flat-out ignored by other working researchers I'm inclined to say they should not be treated as valid genera. Gasmasque (talk) 14:59, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Now started more wide-range discussion in Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#Precambrian_chitons_and_another_reports_by_Mark_McMenamin. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 15:38, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(Copy-pasted from WikiProject Dinosaurs): Hi, I don't normally participate in dinosaur articles, but other members have brought up the idea of bringing older dinosaur GA/FA articles to modern quality standards without taking them to reassessments formally, so here's the link for participation: Wikipedia:WikiProject Palaeontology/Article workshop#Thescelosaurus. PrimalMustelid (talk) 01:03, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I recently proposed that we change the Taxonomy used at WP:Fishes. The proposal was open for three weeks and received unanimous approval from the editors who took part. The WP:Fishes page has been updated Wikipedia:WikiProject Fishes#Taxonomy . Apologies that notification was not put here about this proposal, that was an oversight on my part. It was notified to the WikiProject_Tree_of_Life Quetzal1964 (talk) 20:54, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate explicitly stating that FOTW may be substituted if sufficient recent work shows it to be inaccurate regarding extinct lineages. I've updated several of my pages to cite FOTW5 (although in these cases it does not deviate from general consensus anyway). Relations regarding higher-level extinct fish lineage taxonomy, IMO, should not give any single source too much weight as so many wildly different hypotheses are accepted among different researchers (especially regarding entirely extinct lineages/clades/grades/polyphylies(?) such as Placodermi, Acanthodii, Palaeonisciformes, and several extinct orders of Elasmobranchii/Euchondrocephali. Thank you for discussing this over here as well, even if there aren't all that many dedicated extinct fish editors. Gasmasque (talk) 15:10, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am requesting that someone take a quick look at this draft. Only a quick review is required, in view of the length of the draft. Is there enough information to accept it as a stub? My own thought is that there is too little reliable information for something of such incertae sedis, but I'm a chemist, not a paleontologist. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:11, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Taxa named by Mcmenamin are unfortunately not eligible for Wikipedia per Wikipedia:Based upon, which states All Wikipedia articles should be based upon sources that are secondary and upon sources that are independent. (Remember that Wikipedia:Secondary does not mean independent, so these are separate requirements.) There are no exceptions to this rule, even though we know that we haven't achieved the goal yet in every article. – Mcmenamin is ignored by other researchers, and there are no mentions of this taxon outside of the works of this particular author, and no secondary sources can be expected to appear. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 23:36, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, User:Jens Lallensack. I am inferring that Mark McMenamin is considered a fringe scientist. Is that correct? I thought I ought to ask real paleontologists. Robert McClenon (talk) 06:10, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Robert McClenon Probably good to see Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#Precambrian_chitons_and_another_reports_by_Mark_McMenamin and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Clementechiton. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 12:07, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Endangered species by reason they are threatened has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether it complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you.

About 70 subcategories, the oldest from 2015, are also being proposed for deletion.

These categories are used for extinct species as well as living ones.

There is debate about whether it is possible to list some reasons for the extinction of a species without oversimplification and omissions amounting to misinformation; comments from anyone with an interest in extinction processes would be particularly welcome. HLHJ (talk) 04:43, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What I noticed is that there are some inconsistence of age of paleontology articles. For fish fossils, 2010 and 2011 are named like 2010 in paleoichthyology, after 2012 it sudden become like 2012 in fish paleontology. This extends to 2015 in fish paleontology but after 2016 it again become 2016 in paleoichthyology. Same happens in mollusk paleontology, In 2013 it is named as 2013 in paleomalacology, 2014 to 2016 are named like 2014 in molluscan paleontology but after 2017 it become again like 2017 in paleomalacology. This makes that is really annoying to jump on articles. I created redirect articles to jump on (2015 in paleoichthyology, 2011 in fish paleontology, 2012 in paleoichthyology), but I hope someone can work on standardize them. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 12:05, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Ta-tea-two-te-to: I moved the odd named lists to "in paleomalacology" and "in paleoichthyology" respectively.--Kevmin § 16:22, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Many snails have description sections that only show the shell length, but the references often don’t have links to them , so it is extra hard to get information so you can expand it. Zhenghecaris (talk) 18:26, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Could any WikiProject member review this article? There are questions about the subject's notability. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:55, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is article did by Zhenghecaris to support McMenamin's taxa discussed above (seems now deleted). Either way this is not widely used group and not sure when this group established, so probably better to merge to Kimberella. Also here is discussion about user problem, Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#User:Zhenghecaris. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 06:16, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We recently started the Article workshop, sparkling two collaborations on Good articles (GAs) and Featured articles (FAs) that have been promoted a long time ago but became outdated and in serious need of revision. We also discussed that we want to formally "approve" successfully reworked articles when we all agree that they are up to standards. We now have two such articles in line:

The first – Dracopristis – is a GA. Rework has completed and it has already been reviewed, and we would approve it shortly, but not before giving everyone the chance to comment (here please).

The second – Thescelosaurus, is an old FA that was hopelessly outdated. Expansion is now complete, and it awaits reviews before we can finally "approve" it. As a FA, it has to be a good read, and feedback on readability and comprehensibility are particularly needed. Is the article of the right length and not too detailed; is the prose engaging? Comment here please. Thanks! Jens Lallensack (talk) 23:04, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'll have a look during the coming week. FunkMonk (talk) 00:00, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I added my remarks to Dracopristis. I'm going to leave Thescelosaurus alone because I worked on the article personally. A Cynical Idealist (talk) 09:16, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Most geological formations contain a section which details all the fossil taxa found in the formation. In most cases, this is the largest part of the article, which is unavoidable in some cases. For especially fossiliferous formations (i.e. Green River, Solnhofen, Yixian, Burgess Shale, etc) the paleobiota has an article specifically to list all of the fossil taxa. Do we want to establish criteria for if/when this should take place? Particular examples I have in mind are the Dinosaur Park Formation, the Ouled Abdoun Basin, and the Kem Kem Group. I was going to just do this unilaterally, but I thought it may be useful to establish at least 1-2 guidelines for when this can/should be done. A Cynical Idealist (talk) 09:30, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think we could simply follow the general Wikipedia guidelines here (WP:CFORK and WP:SS). These say that we should create such spin-off articles if the main article becomes too long, or if the readability of the main article would benefit. So I would create separate paleobiota lists only when there is actually substantial text on the formation itself in the formation article. This is not the case for Dinosaur Park Formation, for example, which we would reduce to a stub when moving the list out. The other two you mention are even shorter. I personally would only do spin-offs if the article without that content would be at least as long as Yixian Formation. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 11:55, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Muhammad Sadiq Malkani. Please participate if interested. Thanks. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:04, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. As you can see from my post on this talk page, it appears that I have stumbled across a paleontological nomenclature error. I've been trying to get in touch with an expert, but so far without luck. If anyone here could help me, I would much appreciate it. Anonymous 18:23, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen @SlvrHwk: overturn the italicizations of "et al." in Nipponopterus, Ferrodraco, and Mythunga. Most other paleontology articles in Wikipedia use the italicized version of "et al." What is actually the consensus in this case and why? JurassicClassic767 (talk | contribs) 09:07, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

According to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Abbreviations, it is not in italics, apparently. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 09:09, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hm, alright. I wouldn't say it's such a big of deal anyway. We could just modify them every time we encounter the italicized term while editing. JurassicClassic767 (talk | contribs) 09:20, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"et al." is an abbreviation of the Latin et alii, so it doesn't need to be italicized. Similar to "etc." as an abbreviation of et cetera. "et al." seems to be traditionally italicized on Wikipedia, but I've been (casually) undoing these instances as I come to them. -SlvrHwk (talk) 09:21, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I've also begun changing a few I encountered now that there's some kind of agreement here. JurassicClassic767 (talk | contribs) 20:23, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My reading of MOS:ABBR is that it should be italics. The example given for the use of et al puts it in italics (see legal case in MOS:MISCSHORT). The non-italicisation applies to expansion of acronyms and Latin words considered part of English vocabulary (et al is technical rather than standard English like per cent). However, the citation templates don't use italics, so there appears to be some ambiguity.  —  Jts1882 | talk  09:27, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The example in the MOS is an entirely-italicized legal case name. That doesn't indicate whether or not it should be italicized in other contexts. However, the first column in that table clearly shows it without italics (in contrast to cf. or viz.), and the section MOS:LATINABBR indicates that this formatting should be followed. -SlvrHwk (talk) 09:35, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed – the legal case is a proper name, and that's why it's in italics, but "et al." is not written in italics according to the MOS. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 09:51, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I guess de-italicized should now be the standard here then if that's the case? JurassicClassic767 (talk | contribs) 20:23, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If I'm honest, I will be continuing to italicize et al. as a technical term in reflection of the majority practice for most taxonomy and paleontology (and science in general I expect) articles. Many of the MOS guidelines and rules were written over 2 decades ago and have never been revisited with more in-depth discussion of how they effect specific disciplines and topic areas (such as the MOS for date ranges which are directly opposite for how deep times dating is written by professionals).--Kevmin § 17:11, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. The Morrison Man (talk) 19:05, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what the age of the MOS guidelines has to do with anything. The accepted practice in English (with few exceptions) is to not italicize "et al.". As far as I can tell, most style guides do not require it to be italicized, and it is frequently non-italicized in technical literature. While perhaps not as common as "e.g.", "i.e.", etc., the abbreviation's prevalence in formal writing and the English language (academic and otherwise) makes its italicization as a "Latin phrase" entirely unwarranted -SlvrHwk (talk) 21:38, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We have usually grant Nomina dubia their own article (that means, genus names; dubious species names are usually covered within the article of the genus they had been assigned to). This is an obvious choice for historically important ones, such as Zanclodon, Palaeosaurus, Trachodon, or Titanosaurus. This practise also makes sense in general, as these topics cannot really be covered in, e.g., family articles because those have a much broader scope, and adding details on Nomina dubia would clearly be WP:undue. The question is if we should do it always, and consequently so, even when the article cannot really grow longer than two paragraphs (as would be the case with Leptospondylus and Pachyspondylus, for example). I would say yes, at least as long the content cannot be easily added to other articles without causing some sort of problem with undue, balance, length, or readability. And should we apply the same standards to ichnotaxa? Jens Lallensack (talk) 22:19, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Since they can't be synonymised with anything by definition, and often have very important and complicated histories, I think they should be separate articles in general, as has long been the unwritten norm. Merging them with for example family level articles would swamp those with too specific information. Alternatively there could be a list with short paragraphs for names with very little to write about, but I think what has been doing so far works best. FunkMonk (talk) 22:36, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Given my (often outspoken) inclusionist tendencies, it probably is not surprising that I consider nomina dubina to be notable enough to merit their own articles. A nomen dubium can be viewed as an obsolete scientific hypothesis, which can be perfectly notable (as shown by their plentiful coverage on Wikipedia). The main exception, in my opinion, is for taxa that are technically nomina dubina from a taxonomic standpoint, but are nonetheless more appropriately covered as a subtopic of another taxon, such as Manospondylus being covered as a subtopic of Tyrannosaurus (incidentally, giving your genus a name ending in "spondylus" rarely seems to bode well for it). I suppose it's possible that in some cases, where there is a particularly large number of nomina dubina that share a common theme and would be limited to stub-length articles, it might be appropriate to cover them on a list (e.g. "List of dubious taxa named by author X" or "List of dubious taxa in family Y"), but I can't think of any good examples where that would be necessary offhand. Ornithopsis (talk) 23:57, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Manospondylus is a great example. I decided to cover the mentioned Leptospondylus and Pachyspondylus within Massospondylus for now, as the situation is very similar to that of Manospondylus, but might create article for some others that currently redirect at Massospondylus. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 01:56, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think the covering of Leptospondylus and Pachyspondylus at Massospondylus fits with what I would do, but Aristosaurus (and maybe Dromicosaurus) would be better as separate articles since they have more substantial history and independent use even when Lepto and Pachy are synonyms of Massospondylus. Similar logic is what I apply to dubious species that are uncertain of their generic identity like Ornithopsis leedsi, where it is covered at the most appropriate genus rather than given its own article even though it is dubious and its generic identity is inconclusive. IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 05:57, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In regards to ichnotaxa, I had a concept at one point to congregate all of the ornithopod ichnotaxa (my subject of interest) into a list article since there's so many of them and 95% of them are invalid and have very little information on them. I pivoted to "large ornithopod ichnotaxa" since it's more supported as a genuine unified topic within the literature, but I never User:LittleLazyLass/List_of_large_ornithopod_ichnotaxa and frankly was never sure how it'd be received if I ever did. It's possible this kind of concept could work on a wider scale for ichnotaxa and dubious genera, though the amount of pages for different clades would get quite bloated. LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions) 00:25, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In the case of ornithopod ichnotaxa, there now seems to be some consensus to accept only three (Iguanodontipus, Caririchnium, Hadrosauropodus), although some authors use two additional ones (Amblydactylus and Ornithopodichnus). So no need for a list in this case I think. Theropod ichnotaxonomy is still a mess though; maybe we should just wait until the stuff has been properly revised. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 00:40, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that was the impetus, that a lot of them are invalid and don't really all need separate tiny articles. If I recall correctly a lot of them are just considered indeterminate instead of synonyms, and wouldn't necessarily be folded into those three or four articles. Are dubious ichnotaxa not considered valid topics for coverage in the way dubious genera are? LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions) 02:59, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Following a discussion[6] at WP:Dinoart, grievances about various of the review system's shortcomings have been aired, and I'll try to summarise the proposals discussed there and on the Discord server to get the ball rolling so we can overhaul both review pages. Feel free to point out if there's anything I've overlooked or anything that could be added or improved:

• We need a new or reimplemented system (of the sort we had here[7][8][9]) for marking review sections as in progress so they are kept from being automatically archived until they are reviewed, and only archived when they're either approved or tagged as inaccurate.

• Specify that images have to be approved before being added: "User-made paleoart should be approved during review before being added to articles." - Done

• Specify the general etiquette and mode of discourse, as was just added with this text: "Criticism of restorations should avoid nitpicking of minor subjective or hypothetical details and should be phrased in a way that is respectful and constructive." - Done

• When multiple restorations of the same taxon are submitted, find an unbiased way to choose which one to use. Suggested formulation: "come to a consensus which best reflects and communicates the known data".

• And then the more difficult part: should we have coordinators/delegates with the mandate to enforce and oversee the discussions? And if that is infeasible, who tags the sections as approved/failed etc? FunkMonk (talk) 22:41, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

One major concern from the discord discussion was uneven or random treatment of different art pieces. An extremely high quality piece by Dan might be held up for minor problems in unpreserved areas, whereas a more crude reconstruction with more things to critique may not get any comments at all and go right onto the page. Even standards for critique across all artists regardless of what we expect from them based on their output is necessary. LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions) 22:49, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We just need to formulate that in a way that is implementable and specific. FunkMonk (talk) 22:53, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would also like to add that we shouldn’t give particular artists an implicit or explicit “VIP treatment”. Even if their work is consistent and high-quality, we should try our best to include works from other artists whenever possible so those other artists can have a chance of being on Wikipedia, which upholds the “anyone can contribute” philosophy of the site. 2001:4453:58A:2A00:E48B:67C:50FE:162C (talk) 22:56, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think this should not be stated as any sort of policy. The goal is to showcase the most encyclopedic works, and choosing what is most encyclopedic should be up to the editors of the articles to choose from approved works, rather than a part of the image review process. IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 22:59, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I wholeheartedly agree with IJReid here. The purpose of the paleoart review process is merely determine whether a given artwork is acceptable to use in an article (and to provide constructive critiques to help artists improve their work until they reach that threshold), not to actually make the decision to use it. Once an artwork is approved, it is then up to the editors of a given article to determine which of the available approved artworks are most suitable for use in that article. Ornithopsis (talk) 04:07, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I very strongly disagree with this. A "spot" on a Wikipedia page isn't owed to anyone, and if someone is knowledgable and consistently creates informative, useful, and well-researched art, then I see no reason to cast that aside over some concern of over-representation. If legitimate issues can be found with that art then it should be replaced/reworked, of course.

Also, "vagueposting" is generally frowned upon, and none of us are "superfans" of any particular user. Please stop posting things like this or singling out other artists. Thanks! Gasmasque (talk) 03:23, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Two revisions I would also like to see is that individual pieces are given their own section instead of subsections, so that the bot can archive more efficiently as we move through approving works. The fewer images to review per section, the shorter we can have the approved works sitting on the page. It also allows for the use of the Template:DNAU to prevent unapproved pieces from being archived due to inactivity, so they are tagged before forgotten about. IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 23:01, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I mentioned this on the other page and will definitely be doing this for myself, but I think explicit pass/minor revisions/major revisions/fail votes would be useful to adopt generally as a guideline/policy. Such votes provide a helpful level of structure for targeting and prioritising critiques. It lowers the burden for both the artist and the reviewer. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 03:12, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'd also like to add that I think it would be a good idea to emphasize the Wikipedian principle of verifiability in the process of reviewing paleoart. I think it should be best practice for artists to be clear about what the sources for their reconstruction are (e.g. any skeletals or published descriptions used as a basis, and sources supporting any potentially controversial aspects), and likewise for reviews to focus on critiquing aspects that are at odds with published sources, preferably linking to sources that support the critique when relevant. Ornithopsis (talk) 03:58, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps the DYK symbols could be coopted to indicate pass, revisions, and fails, instead of informal bolded text? LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions) 19:22, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, if there was some easy way to add them without an entire image template. A shorter "done" template was used in the past, maybe something could be made for more icons:[10] FunkMonk (talk) 00:54, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I was planning to create a new "Welcome" template that can be placed on the talk pages of new users, to direct them to the relevant pages of our WikiProject. But it occurs to me that before I can do that, we have to clean-up. Many of our project pages, in particular the main page, are an outdated, inconsistent, and highly cluttered mess, and probably neither helpful nor attractive for newbies. For a start, I have the following in mind, in no particular order:

• Add "Talk" as second entry to the horizontal project bar, leading to here. Reason: Newbies have difficulty to find that little Talk Page tab, which is inconspicuous above the horizontal project bar. Yet, it is arguably the most important page a newbie needs to know. Well-organized WikiProjects I looked at do this too.

• Create an page called "Inactive pages", listing everything that is not currently in use (which is a lot: dinosaur collaboration, various taskforces, etc. Link that page somewhere. Then, remove all these inactive pages from the project pages. This way we could declutter, so that newbies actually find the useful pages.

• Create a new page "Resources", which contains the template stuff (which is currently cluttering our sidebar on the right) and the "How to find papers" instructions. The latter need to be rewritten. I would reduce them to just the essentials that everyone should know (Google, Google Scholar, Google Books, Internet Archive, Biodiversity library, Paleobiological Database, Wikipedia Library, our internal ref request, Wikipedia Ref request). All of these with helpful explanation. I would also add Openverse [11] as an option to find freely licensed images. A "resources" page is common in other WikiProjects.

• Create a page "Recognised Content", updated by bot, listing all FAs, GAs, and DYKs. On our mainpage we currently list the DYKs but not the FAs and GAs, and the DYKs have not been updated since 2014 (!)

• Create a page "Guidelines" for the guidelines that are currently listed on the main page in a rather unorganised way. Probably those need to be updated, have to discuss them separately at some point.

• Create a entirely new page "Article guide", just with tips on how to write paleo articles.

• Remove things that we don't really need. Do we really need the section Vandal fighting, which is not specific to our WikiProject and way too simplistic to be of any use? The entire "Review" section is redundant now, too.

• Redo the "Tasks" section. This is very useful to point newbies to, to give them inspiration what to work on. It does not need to list a lot of examples, but it has to be diverse (e.g., expand stubs; update articles; create new articles where needed; review articles, copy edit, find/correct errors, review at paleoart review, article assessment, welcome new users, important articles that are in poor shape, etc.)

• Have the Discord link somewhere more prominently, and with better explanation

• Update everything, in general (e.g., in the participants list, move users to the "inactive" section that haven't been active for a year, and I would also remove that section of "Banned members" which seems strange.

Thoughts on these? Any other suggestions? If you agree that something should be done, I would be happy to work on it – after we have reached a consensus on what needs to be done. Jens Lallensack (talk) 01:10, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think all of these ideas make sense. It's been some time since the Dino wikiproject was revamped and this one is even older. Perhaps some of these things (recognized content, tasks, article guide) can be lifted from the other project with modifications since similar scope, to make it a bit less new work overall. All these suggestions seem justifiable and good to me. IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 05:00, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Problem with the Dino Wikiproject is, in my opinion, that it is mostly redundant nowadays: We have a number of dinosaur people, but they seem to be integrated in the Palaeontology Wikiproject, while the Dinosaur Wikiproject does not seem to have a separate community anymore. Consequently, the Dinosaur project pages become increasingly neglected, and nothing is happening on the talk except for some cross-postings from the Palaeo project. My worry is that some newbies will get stranded there, loose interest because of apparent inactivity, and never make it here. We somehow need to make it clear that the dinosaur project is just a spin-off, and the palaeo project is the place to go. But I'm not sure how to do that. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 09:50, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Could the Dinosaur project be classed as a taskforce of the Paleontology project instead? That would make WP:PALEO the clear stop for discussion and information. The Morrison Man (talk) 13:33, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would support that. Need to see if we can get a consensus for such a drastic change though. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 14:11, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My kneejerk reaction is to oppose demoting it from WikiProject status, but I admit that's probably more emotional attachment than anything sensible. LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions) 17:40, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We probably should first try to update the Dino Project, remove the redundant parts, and place prominent links to the most relevant Palaeo Project pages. Maybe also a "See also" at the talk page to point to the Palaeo talkpage. That could solve it already. But let's do the Palaeo project first. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 19:56, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think what you're proposing is sensible. The project pages desperately need an update. I might go ahead and update the members list soon, so that that is up to date at least. If the Discord gets a more prominent place on the pages of the project, I'll also go ahead with some maintenance and updates that I've been putting off there. The Morrison Man (talk) 13:37, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It would be fantastic if you could take care of the members list! And regarding Discord, I was also thinking about placing it directly on the new welcome template that I plan to make, as it might lower the bar for some folks to start contributing. Looking at the Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine, they even have, uggh, Facebook and Twitter links there, so I see no issue with advertising the Discord server a bit more. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 14:11, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The members list has been updated, although I don't think all active editors are on there either. The Morrison Man (talk) 16:45, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am not on there, I guess … Will add myself now. And thanks! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 19:56, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Looks good, only thing I'll add is that while the paleoproject was originally a spin-off of the dinosaur project, it does seem to have become the main place for discussion, with basically the same users and policies anyway. So while I think I and most others objected last time a merger was proposed (can't find the discussion), it currently seems more feasible. Most of the guidelines, sections and sub-pages are duplicates anyway (and slapped together over years and years), so a more focused redo makes sense. FunkMonk (talk) 20:24, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  This would also be a prime opportunity to revise and update those guidelines if and where necessary, in my opinion. The Morrison Man (talk) 20:31, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I still think it makes sense to keep the dinosaur and regular paleoart review pages separate because of the sheer amount of submissions each get these days, but perhaps they should be linked from the same place instead of from two different pages. FunkMonk (talk) 01:29, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Do we possibly want to add a "Goals" subpage (see WP:DRWHO/G for example) to lay out some pipe dreams of Good and Featured Topics? I'm willing to fill out some GT boxes at request. SilverTiger12 (talk) 02:37, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Some subtopics within Human evolution are probably close if not there already. CMD (talk) 12:02, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think that goals could be a good idea in general. But particular good/featured topics are a quite narrow goals, and will only make sense if there are dedicated editors who want to work on precisely those, right? Genera of Spinosauridae are pretty close to good or featured topic status, but at the moment we do not have a spinosaur specialist to finish the job. Because our scope here is much broader than that of WP:DRWHO, maybe those would be more fitting for a task force? The Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine has some more broader, project-wide goals (e.g., improve all Top-importance articles at B-class or above; reduce the number of stubs to xx%). Maybe goals like these would be better because everybody in the project could participate? --Jens Lallensack (talk) 12:24, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It would probably be better to base our goals off those of WikiProjects with similar, broader scopes like WikiProject Medicine and WikiProject Military History, which has most of its project organisation in excellent shape. Like you suggest, getting a specific number or percentage of articles above a certain quality would probably be a good way to go about this. Checking through the list under quality content on the project page, our current buildup solely including articles (not lists, templates, categories, etc.) is as follows:

All articles: 22803 (100%)

Featured Articles: 123 (0,54%)

Good Articles: 257 (1,13%)

B-class Articles: 678 (2,97%)

C-class Articles: 1803 (7,91%)

Start-class Articles: 5421 (23,77%)

Stub-class Articles: 14521 (63,68%)

Currently we have 123 FA, 257 GA and 678 B-class articles. If I had to set a goal based off that, it would be a nice ambition to (roughly) double these numbers, so perhaps a goal of 250, 500 and 1000 could be good? Adding more high-quality content and improving low-quality content go hand in hand, so reduction of stubs (and starts, to a lesser extent) is also a good goal to set. For reducing the number of stubs, keeping that under 20% sounds like a nice goal to me, even though they currently make up nearly 65% of paleo articles. Reducing this to 20% in its current state would require work on some 10000 articles, however, so that might be a touch idealistic. Perhaps bringing it down to 50% first? (that would require work on ~3000 articles). The Morrison Man (talk) 13:26, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We could try working on a priority list, if people are interested (and invested) enough. There is also a lot of paleontology articles that have not been quality reviewed since their first few edits. A lot of the stubs are in reality start-class, and a lot of the start-class could be C or B-class without much work. Larrayal (talk) 14:11, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like there is considerable interest in setting up project goals. Unless someone else wants to take it over, I could compile a preliminary list of goals as a starting point that we can then discuss and improve? We could maybe try to have a set of diverse goals to get everyone on board here and give some inspiration, including stubs, creation of missing articles, images (maybe even "include more 3D models"), revision and approval of old FAs promoted before 2013, and, why not, reaching a particular number of good/featured topics (we seem to have four at the moment)? And yes, the goals should be realistic and doable (we can always define new ones once we reached a goal). And, as Larrayal pointed out, proper rating of all articles could be a goal for itself, too. Not all of these are easy to monitor, though. Alternatively, we could stick to goals that relate to article levels (improving stubs, getting more GAs, etc.). What do you think? --Jens Lallensack (talk) 14:31, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We already have the Open Tasks page btw (Wikipedia:WikiProject Palaeontology/Tasks), which already kind of has a diverse set of goals. I see two options: 1) If we are going to have a diverse set of many goals, we could replace that page. 2) If we just want very few, article-level focused goals that are easy to monitor/track, we can define them in addition to the "Open Tasks" on the main page, with nice progress bars, such as in Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history for example. Maybe I prefer that second option now. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 14:41, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My idea was aimed more at getting sets of articles improved rather than abstract numbers- a discrete goal where progress can be easily seen. Something that could give focus to editors who might otherwise have choice paralysis. Therefore, I would make boxes for 1 or 2 clades of the following: fish, amphibians, reptiles, (non-avian) dinosaurs, avians, mammals, [indeterminate number of invertebrates, etc] as well as (based on Hemiauchenia's suggestion on Discord) three boxes for the time periods of the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic. SilverTiger12 (talk) 15:13, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, I'm not fully convinced here – how many editors with choice paralysis do we actually have? Our past attempts (e.g., the dinosaur collaboration) have shown that editors are unlikely to work on articles that someone else selected. The choice of boxes would also be arbitrary, or on what would you base your selection on? --Jens Lallensack (talk) 15:49, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]