User talk:Puffball/12.05-1.06

Welcome

Welcome!

Hello Puffball/12.05-1.06, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

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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 have any questions, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome!  - FrancisTyers 16:09, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Cassiobury Park

No problem :) images.google.com is your friend here, the important thing is to find images that are in the public domain (that is quite old, before 1900 is a safe bet). If you have images to contribute, consider uploading them to commons.wikimedia.org and releasing them under the GFDL, basically its a centralised repository of free media that can be used accross all wikimedia projects. e.g. If someone were to translate the article into french they wouldn't need to re-upload the image, they could just use it from there.

Its a pleasure to see such a well fleshed out article so quickly :) Most of the ones I happen accross tend to be stubs. A merry christmas to you too! :) The boilerplate welcome mentioned it above, but I'll reiterate it now, if you have any questions feel free to contact me on my talk page, even if its just for help with formatting etc. - FrancisTyers 16:38, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

I changed the link to River Colne, you just do: [[page to link to|link]]. No problem removing the national parks link, I was just trying to find a category for it and i wasn't sure :) Let me know if you have any more questions - FrancisTyers 20:11, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Just to give you a heads up, someone has asked a question on the talk page of the article, could you answer it as I'm not sure how. Thanks - FrancisTyers 15:29, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Hey, if you'd like me to upload the images I can do it, I just sent you an email with this with my address. If you don't have an email account set up you can email me with this. Thanks for answering the question on the talk page :) - FrancisTyers 16:39, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

DYK

Did you know? has been updated. A fact from the article Cassiobury Park, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

"I am a formidable pedant."

Brilliant! Wikipedia needs more of those, there is entirely too much tense disagreement, comma splicing, and so forth going on arnound here. Did you know there's a user box to signify your stance on the presence/absence of commas before ands? ++Lar 08:15, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Newton Valence

Hi, I've wikified the page a bit, splitting it up into sections. You might want to revise them as I'm not sure if a couple could perhaps be merged. Its looking good though :) Would be nice to perhaps get some photos/engravings? The manor in the back of this picture might make a good candidate. Give me a shout if you have any more questions :) - FrancisTyers 17:31, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Hey, yeah I did think twice about Trivia. I couldn't think of a better heading. Normally I use Popular culture or Trivia but, admittedly in this case it doesn't quite capture the content perfectly. I've been thinking, perhaps Related information might be better? I change it until we can think of something better :) - FrancisTyers 18:09, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Kind words

Many thanks for the kind words, I was so chuffed I showed my mum :) Regarding your definition of amenity area, I asked my dad (who has the misfortune of having to deal on occasion with the planning dept.) and he says that the definition you have is fine. He showed me a book of planning regulations and they have a specific long definition but it essentially says what you're saying :) - FrancisTyers 18:49, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

(: Puffball 07:54, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Chocolate truffles

We also had WAY too many chocoate truffles during Christmas and my waistline also looks like a puffball hehe. --Naha|^(talk) 20:58, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Luckily she had to go back to Tucson for a brief visit ... but I dread those bulging carrier-bags I'm bound to see in the arrivals hall :{ Puffball 21:04, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, we women like to shop and bring back all kinds of crap (cleverly disguised as souvenirs and gifts) from any trip or vaction. I am quite guilty of this. Speaking of puffballs, my sister's pomeranian just plopped down next to me on the sofa. --Naha|^(talk) 21:45, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Good Lord - disambiguation needed! For a moment there I thought you meant one of these: Pomeranians. Puffball 21:51, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

LOL, my link points to the dog ;) --Naha|^(talk) 21:53, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Binomial naming scheme

Just FYI, I'm in favour of your proposal; I'm rather certain, though, that it'll never get through. Welcome to Wikipedia, BTW! —Nightstallion (?) 12:12, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for that! On reflection I can see that it would require a zillion redirects; even so there are real advantages (e.g. where there are multiple colloquial names, and for Wikipedias in other languages). Puffball 15:12, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

The redirects wouldn't be that much of a problem, I'm just fairly sure that there won't be too many people agreeing with us on this, sad as it may be. ;) —Nightstallion (?) 15:35, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes. I'm sure. For the time being at least I wish to avoid any controversy or flaming! BTW if you look at the top of this talk page you'll see I have plagiarized yours. Hope you don't mind -- it's a splendid idea. Puffball 15:39, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

You should avoid always flaming. ;) Controversy is not a bad thing per se, if you remember WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA. Yes, I noticed, and of course I don't mind; feel free to peruse what you deem good from my userspace. If you've got any other questions, feel free to ask me; I'd be glad to be of assistance. Take care! —Nightstallion (?) 16:00, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! Puffball 16:57, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Re: Binomials and trinomials

Hi there. You're welcome to direct questions. I welcome all newcomers. As for the question, hmm. Personally, I agree with you...however, Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna) (the established guideline) is one of those that has been argued over at length. Right now, consensus is to use the more common name, with redirects from the latin. I guess if you want to propose change, that page's talk page would be the first place to look. Rob Church ^Talk 16:31, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Mh, I suppose that means that's at least three of us in favour. ;) —Nightstallion (?) 16:43, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your speedy reply, Rob. That is the very page I couldn't find. I'm too much of a newcomer to suggest such a radical change yet. As long as there's a policy ... Puffball 16:57, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I just came across your question on Rob's talk page. There is Wikispecies, where everything is listed by Linnean classification. I think we should be including links to it from all of our fauna articles. WAvegetarian ^(talk) (email) ^(contribs) 07:36, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your message -- I'm pretty much out of action with 'flu at the moment, but will certainly check this out as soon as I can. Puffball 10:02, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Re: History of the Earth (Part 1 :))

Thanks! I'd been meaning to write an article like that for a long time, but it is an ambitious task. I'm pretty surprised actually that it hadn't been written before. There's not even a history section in Earth! I'll be adding that at some point. My goal with History of Earth is to provide a brief overview of the history of the planet, like history of the world. I don't want the article to get too long, so I'm trying to be succinct in each section and I'm not sure how many sections are optimal. I wasn't planning on going into too much detail in later evolution, since I can't really do it justice and it'd probably be better if someone wrote about it in more detail in a sub-article. What do you think? It's hard writing about eras when not much is known or there are several competing theory. What I'm trying to do is summarize the leading theory if there is one, or briefly mention the competing ideas if no theory is dominant. I haven't entirely planned out the rest of the article, but I'm thinking that I'll write the following sections:

• Colonization of land, (bacteria, plants, animals), including dominance of reptiles/dinosaurs, emergence of angiosperms, divergence of birds and mammals, and of course extinction. Maybe I should mention some of the other extinction events as well. Then the dominance of mammals. I'm not sure if I should keep this all in one section
• Origin of humanity. Brief mention of primate evolution and then discussion of human evolution. I don't want to go into too much detail because it's controversial, and because I don't want the article to become too biased towards humans—I'd rather emphasize the vast period of history before humans arose. Perhaps only two sentences on human history, with a reference to History of the world for further information.
• Spaceflight. A bit of a conceit, considering how much I'm condensing human history, and there were plenty of other major advances in human history. But as a history of the planet Earth, I think it's relevant to discuss the major step of some of a planet's inhabitants launching objects, and eventually themselves, off the planet. Perhaps it would start with a quick mention of the improvements or planetary travel (horse, car, airplane).

Anyway, that's the plan for now. What do you think? Any suggestions? After the preliminary writing is done, it's going to need a lot of polishing, and I want to carefully reference some of the assertions at some point. I'd like it to be a featured article eventually, but that's a very long way away. Please continue to help fix it up; I'll definitely need help, and assistance from a biologist will be very welcome. Thanks! — Knowledge Seeker দ 03:53, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it needs to be kept within bounds, and that makes for some tough editing decisions, not to mention the composition of lots of sub-articles! If I may say so, your general plan seems excellent to me, though some might argue that arthropods are really the dominant phylum.

Darwin's theory is still contentious, though I for one am sold on it. One might say that the scientific community is generally sold on it too, with some technical exceptions. The nonsense of "Intelligent Design" probably needs to be addressed, otherwise you'll forever have loonies vandalizing the page.

Any discussion of evolution ought to take mass extinctions into account; and it would be good to emphasize just how serendipitous were the conditions which allowed life to get going at all – and how even more serendipitous are the conditions which allow it to continue. That would lead into the mess Homo sapiens is making. My personal view is that Earth will become uninhabitable for most of us within 25-30 years, but in WP such prognostications are frowned upon. Spaceflight is an important step in Earth's history, but so too is our manipulation of genes, either directly, in genetic engineering, or indirectly, in the social engineering and healthcare which have effectively ended Darwinian evolution of the hominid line.

Have you heard the theory that the predator/prey relationship might be the key to evolution? Right there in the primordial soup the pressure started to be a better predator and/or to develop better avoidance strategies. It's posited as being like the arms race, or even naked capitalism, providing an accelerant for change. I don't have any references for this at the moment, I'm afraid: I just heard a programme on BBC radio some while back. But it's an interesting idea, which extends even to the race for the Moon.

My biological science may be a bit rusty, but I'm your man for polishing text, as I have been a professional writer for the past 35 years, and will be very glad to do what I can. Puffball 08:11, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know about your reply. Have you considered leaving messages for users on their talk pages? I think it makes it easier to know when someone has something to say to them. Just a thought. But anyway, thanks for your insightful comments. I certainly do hope people (more knowledgeable than I) will split off subarticles from some or all of the sections. I am actually very surprised that there is no article or even section of an article on the formation of the Earth. That Earth includes neither a "History" section nor even a "Formation" section greatly surprised me, and is one of the reasons I wished to write this article. You're right about the arthropods, and anyway the bacteria are probably the dominant life forms on Earth anyway, depending how you define dominance. I'll rethink how I write that section. The recent sections I've written are going to need a lot of rewriting. In particular, History of Earth#Colonization of land has become quite long, and I haven't even finished it. Should I split it up? I'll probably have to, but I want to limit sections to major changes in Earth's history, not minor events like evolution of mammals or something. Maybe I'll finish writing the first draft of the article, then go back and work on these problematic sections.

Regarding nonscientific theories, in my opinion, the article should focus on scientific theories of Earth's history, similar to Origin of life (which is why, similar to that article, I specified in the introduction that this article discussed the leading scientific theories). Do you think that's all right? Even if we were to attempt to include religious explanations in the article, I'm not certain how it could be done. If one is to include specific religious events, it would get far too complicated to include all major religions, and it would become extremely complicated with conflicting stories being woven together. Even just focusing on Christianity (which I would disagree with), it's unclear how it could be incorporated. Could you maybe give an example of how this could be addressed?

I'll briefly mention some of the mass extinctions, and perhaps you could assist in writing more about them when I've made some more progress with the article. Do you really think that it was so serendipitous that life began? I used to think so, but the more I read the moreit seems more inevitable. That tends to be the flavor from what I have been reading, too. I think many scientists view the short time between Earth's formation and the origin of life (less than a billion years) as suggesting that life's beginning was not an unlikely event. The origin of complex life and intelligence may have been, though. Perhaps if our spaceflight technology ever advances that far, we will find many planets where simple life has evolved, but never find another intelligence. Mass extinctions, including the one driven by Homo sapiens, are quite destructive and wipe out many species, but don't really threaten life itself. Eukarya may be severely affected, but the Archae and Bacteria have survived quite hardily. I agree that humans are a threat to themselves and to a number of animal and plant species, but while we could easily make the planet uninhabitable for us, I doubt we could make it unhabitable for life. In fact, even if humans worked together, I wonder if we could wipe out all life on Earth. After we're gone, I'm sure prokaryotes will survive at least, and probably even animals like arthropods. This is all speculation, of course. You're right, genetic engineering should be mentioned as well. I'll figure out a way to work it in. I'll see what I can dig up on predator-prey as well.

I very much appreciate your assitance polishing the text. In fact, it's going to need more than a bit of polishing. As I said before, this is a very ambitious article for me—I usually write on very narrow topics. Overviews are tough, and I could easily write too much about something. I'll definitely need your help to remain concise and clear. It's going to need to go through several stages of improvement, but I intend to seek featured status for this article one day, no matter how much work it takes. I hope that some good subarticles will be written as well. Oh, by the way, if you have better suggestions for any of the pictures, please suggest them or change them. I'd like each section to have at least one picture but it's not always easy to find something appropriate. — Knowledge Seeker দ 08:38, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Nah, there's nothing to apologize about. I don't like fragmented conversations either. Some people leave a short notification message ("Replied on my [[User talk:Knowledge Seeker|talk page") kind of like you did, but I figure if you're going to do that you might as well just copy your whole reply. Anyway, everyone finds their own preferred style.

Water seems important, but I wonder if it's essential to life. Perhaps there are alternative biochemistries we haven't thought up yet. Really, all that's necessary is for some sort of self-replication to arise. Even if it were water based, even if ice sank, there are plenty of regions on Earth where water doesn't ever freeze. And I doubt the length of days or circadian rhythms are very important for many microscopic life forms. I do think these factors are important for Earth's large multicellular life, but not for life itself. Anyway, unless we find some more concrete information, I'll leave it out of the article for now. All right, I'll keep working on the land section, and we can trim/split it as necessary. Speaking of images, today's featured picture will be beautiful for the spaceflight section. Yeah, I'll try to recruit some people to help flesh out some of the details or write subarticles and such once I finish writing the skeleton—we'll definitely need help. I want to add something about the origin of sexual reproduction but I need to find more information, so I haven't written about it yet. I'm excited about the article too, and thanks to both of you for helping out! — Knowledge Seeker দ 23:55, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

edit summaries

I like how you reverse the conventional title/comment order of a section edit summary . I'm sure I read in some manual of style that it's supposed to go title then comment. However, your way looks like the way it was originally designed. --TheLimbicOne(talk) 20:45, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry about it, unless you're Zen and don't want to be the tall nail (since it does make your edits stand out). I was just amazed when I saw it, "comment -> section title," so logical. I wonder how or when the standard practice got reversed? Should we ask the help desk? --TheLimbicOne(talk) 20:59, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

"...zen..." Oh, I hope I got that reference right. "...pointless discussion...nitpicking..." LOL, agreed! "...blocked..." I doubt it, since you are a major contributer to Knowledge Seeker's pet project :-). --TheLimbicOne(talk) 21:25, 29 January 2006 (UTC)