User:Somatochlora

Mostly interested in editing articles about plants and animals native to northeastern North America, and related species in other parts of the world. Also parks, conservation areas etc. in Ontario. Pictured are my favourite plant and animal genera, Somatochlora and Symphyotrichum).

Somatochlora franklini

Symphyotrichum oolentangiense

I love names and nomenclature and believe they are quite important. Anyone who is the position of being able to propose vernacular names that are likely to stick should take that seriously and come up with names that are evocative of the species and are interesting, poetic, cool etc.; the North American dragonflies are a brilliant example of where this was done deliberately.

There are a lot of places on Wikipedia that are non-WP:NPOV in regards to vernacular/common names of taxa. It is important to avoid linguistic prescription, certainly on Wikipedia (by policy) and IMO also in life overall. I hope people remember that:

• Certain common names are not more legitimate than others just because some organisation has decided that they are "officially" correct.
• Common names are not necessarily monophyletic (e.g. ape, dinosaur, reptile, and there is nothing wrong with that. Wikipedia articles can and usually should use names in specifically monophyletic ways, but this should be done explicitly and should not imply that other usages are incorrect.

Some articles I've substantially contributed to:

• List of Symphyotrichum species
• Rondeau Provincial Park
• Somatochlora
  • Useful stubs (at least) for every species of Somatochlora
• Somatochlora sahlbergi