User talk:Donlammers: Difference between revisions

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Thanks for making my edit and inline citation clearer. I try my best to source material. [[User:Sprinkler21|Sprinkler21]] ([[User talk:Sprinkler21|talk]]) 03:25, 27 June 2011 (UTC)Sprinkler21
Thanks for making my edit and inline citation clearer. I try my best to source material. [[User:Sprinkler21|Sprinkler21]] ([[User talk:Sprinkler21|talk]]) 03:25, 27 June 2011 (UTC)Sprinkler21

== A kitten for you! ==

[[File:Cute grey kitten.jpg|left|150px]]
I just wanted to test the new <3 button at the top of the page :) I considered you a perfect candidate :)

[[User:ZooPro|<font color="#004730" face="Papyrus">'''Zoo'''</font>]][[User talk:ZooPro|<font color="#FFD200" face="Papyrus">'''Pro'''</font>]] 01:57, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
<br style="clear: both"/>

Revision as of 01:57, 1 July 2011

Philadelphia Aquarium & Adventure Aquarium

Why should these aquariums point to each other in the See also section? One closed in 1962 and the other did not open until 1992. One is in PA and one is on NJ (granted, "just across the river" from each other) But they are about 3 miles and 30 years apart if my measurements and math are correct. If they have something in common warranting an entry in the See Also section, SHouldn't this be reflected in the text somehow (and cited)? Donlammers (talk) 23:47, 24 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Donlammers,
These are the two aquariums (I don't like "aquaria") that both serve greater Philly so I thought readers of one would be likely to be interested in the other. I suppose I could create a city-based category like was done with Category:Aquaria in Paris but I didn't want to create a two-article cat with no room for growth, like was done with Category:Aquaria in Paris. If you feel strongly about it--I don't--feel free to remove the links. RevelationDirect (talk) 00:14, 25 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I guess the Brandywine Zoo could technically bring a city metro cat to 3 articles based on location but it's not drawing people from King of Prussia and Cherry hill. They're lucky if people drive across Wilmington and I say that as a member.RevelationDirect (talk) 00:22, 25 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well, 30 years is a bit of a gap, but I won't argue the point. I've never been to the area, but on the map it DOES seem to be one big city, and the navboxes don't cover the overlap. We might want to think about a "Greater philly zoos and Aquariums" navbox (please don't hold me to the name -- someone local to the area would probably do a lot better). Donlammers (talk) 01:57, 25 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

File:Lahore Zoo logo.png listed for deletion

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Lahore Zoo logo.png, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Farjad0322(talk|sign|contribs) 17:45, 1 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Moonlit Sanctuary Wildlife Conservation Park

And from where did you get this information? I'm sure it was probably a Web site somewhere and you could have just included the URL with yhour post. If I don't see this information in a day or two I am going to remove the information. You don't needs to know how to do proper citations. Just put a URL (or probably two), and I will turn it into a proper citation. Information like this should be from the site of the awarding institution, not the zoo site. Thank you. Donlammers (talk) 13:21, 1 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You are a proper little wikilawyer aren't you. The reason I stopped editing this site after many thousands of edits. Just can't be bothered with this type of aggressive attitude and arrogant nonsense. The organisations web site is quite adequate as a source for this type of information, as it is reasonable to presume that a responsible organisation would not lie about this type of thing. If you want to verify the ecotourism award go to http://www.victoriantourismawards.com.au/2010-award-winners/2010-award-winners.html#cat5. The Keep Australia Beautiful site no longer lists winners pre 2010 but as you can see a picture of the award being held by the zoos director on their website I think we can take that as reasonable verification. And while I am not a newcomer, you had no way of knowing that, so you should review Wikipedia:DBTN. And while we are at it the proper course for information you want sourced is not to threaten the anon who put it up with removing it within 24 hours, but rather to tag it and leave it for the community to find appropriate sources. --121.216.63.116 (talk) 22:56, 1 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well, speaking of wikilawyers... I will try to be less forceful in the future and just ask for the information, which presumably the poster (whether a newbie or not) has at their disposal. I apologize for my tone. Donlammers (talk) 23:51, 1 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Probably a good idea, and thank you for the apology. --121.216.63.116 (talk) 11:06, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, Donlammers!
At this wonderful time of year, I would like to give season’s greetings to all the fellow Wikipedians I have interacted with in the past! May you have a wonderful holiday season! The ArbiterTalk 02:29, 13 December 2010 (UTC)
[reply]

Templates/IOC othergames/doc listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Templates/IOC othergames/doc. Since you had some involvement with the Templates/IOC othergames/doc redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). Mhiji (talk) 22:07, 13 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Announcement

Hello! I'm The Arbiter, one of the coordinators for WikiProject Zoo. I am proud to announce the launch of a new portal: Portal:Zoos and Aquariums! ZooPro, ZooFari, and I worked hard to create a new portal for information on zoos, aquariums, and the associated projects and articles on Wikipedia. If you could head on over, take a look at our work, and maybe learn some more about zoos and Wikiproject Zoo, it would be great! Cheers and Happy Editing!

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of The Arbiter (talk) at 03:40, 14 December 2010 (UTC).[reply]

Wikiproject Zoo

Hello Donlammers, thank you very much for your message. While I'm very pleased to be a member of such a great project, time issues will probably take me away from Wiki in the next months. The list will be very useful and as you can see, there is still much to do regarding Philippine zoos. I hope to get the cooperation of many of my countrymen. I'm also planning a trip to the Manila Zoo (Manila Zoological and Botanical Garden) and I hope I will be able to take many photos. Thanks again and more power to the project! -- Joaquin008 (talk) 18:15, 18 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

1000 Zoo Articles

The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
For your contributions to WikiProject Zoo and helping to reach the milestone of 1000 articles. ZooPro 05:56, 28 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Billabong koala park

My apologies, I forget that no one outside Australia knows what a Billabong is :) one of those moments I am afraid. Cheers for fixing that one up ZooPro 14:29, 29 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We are learning. Yesterday I was at the zoo with my almost 9 son, and said "there's the serval's mate." He corrected me, saying that we didn't know it was a "mate" because we don't know if they are male and female (still true, as we didn't find anyone to ask yesterday). I got out of it by saying "I meant in the Australian sense," at which point he said "Oh yeah, that's..." and proceeded with a much better Australian version of "mate" than I can manage. Donlammers (talk) 14:46, 29 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Happy New Year

Haven't said hello in a long time so I just wanted to send you and yours best wishes for the New Year. Can you believe that we waited until yesterday for it to finally look like the holiday season? Hope you are staying warm. Have fun editing in 2011 and cheers. MarnetteD | Talk 23:22, 31 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Even so, we barely got the 6" needed for the snowplow guy to show up -- first time this year. Happy new year and good editing to you as well. Donlammers (talk) 23:51, 31 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

User:ZooPro has suggested that I request your feedback and/or modifications to this proposal. If you think that it has worth, I would like to post an RfC, notify relevant groups, then announce it at Wikipedia:WikiProject Manual of Style. If this is unlikely to be helpful or achieve anything, please be frank. I won't be offended.

Quick links:

This message has been sent to:

  1. User:Anthony Appleyard
  2. User:Donlammers
  3. User:Innotata
  4. User:Intelligentsium
  5. User:Materialscientist
  6. User:Mokele
  7. User:Rlendog
  8. User:Ucucha
  9. User:UtherSRG
  10. User:Visionholder
  11. User:ZooPro

Many thanks. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 05:54, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

the green connection

dear Don Lammers

thanks for your edits to the wikipedia page of the green connection. You must dedicate a lot of time and effort to making these aquaria pages better.

thanks a lot

did you create the facebook page the green connection which simply quotes the wikipedia page? an organisation page http://www.facebook.com/?sk=inbox#!/pages/The-Green-Connection/194385310572512

or the blank page with 2 friends - a company page http://www.facebook.com/?sk=inbox#!/pages/The-Green-Connection/114826635226764

We have an active facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/?sk=inbox#!/thegreenconnection this is a product/service

it is confusing having three pages with the same name and I don't know how to delete or link them.

if you are the owner/creator of either of the two unused pages, please contact me and we can merge them in some way

email for contact prof.mauri@rocketmail.com

Prof Steve Oakley Technical director The green Connection —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.50.169.123 (talk) 02:58, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium

Hey, Donlammers,

I saw your post in the Discussion area for the Pittsburgh Zoo. You said that the sections that describe the areas of the zoo need actual descriptions, instead of being just lists of animals. Also, you said that the article needs more citations.

I agree entirely. I added a citation for the animal lists (they came from the Pittsburgh Zoo website). I've also been planning to write descriptions for those areas for quite a while now, and I think I'm just about ready to do so. However, I can't find any sources that describe the areas. Even the Pittsburgh Zoo website isn't of any help, because the descriptions are biased, and contain such phrases as "visit the wonderful world of the jungle" (ugh...).

I could go to the zoo myself (I don't live very far from it), and write neutral descriptions of the areas based on my observations, but that wouldn't be considered a reliable source.

Do you have any suggestions on where to find sources for the zoo areas' descriptions?

Thanks for the help,

--Voz7

I usually use the zoo site for basic descriptions -- just rewrite using the same facts but not such flowery language. Often this results in only a couple of paragraphs from a whole page of a website. First, I basically don't believe in big long lists of animals. They tend to dominate the article, are virtually impossible to keep up to date, and the article should be about the zoo, not about a list of animals (I don't remove lists if someone else put them there, but I won't create them). Not everyone agrees to this approach, of course. For instance, I would just do the following for the bear exhibit:
"The bear exhibit is the oldest exhibit at the zoo, having been built in the 1930s under the Works Progress Administration. It is home to Kodiak bears, North American black bears, and spectacled bears."
The animal names can be linked to the article on the animal, and anyone who really wants the scientific name can get it there. The zoo page at http://www.pittsburghzoo.com/animallist.aspx?c=4 supports this. Some of the other descriptions are not quite as helpful. I usually Google the zoo and see what I can find. city-data usually has a neutral description, though usually only about a page long. For instance, here I find that the elephants roam in their own 16-acre enclosure (among other things). You can also often deduce quite a bit from the zoo map. After this, you will probably need to piece things together from various news articles, unless someone wrote a book on your particular zoo and you can get your hands on it.
One approach I've used to condense the animal lists rather than deleting them is to make them expandable. They don't dominate the article then, and anyone who wants to see them can do so. Donlammers (talk) 19:29, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Just took a very quick look at your edits, and you seem to be doing just fine (Rainforest, Children's Zoo) before reading my advice ;-) Donlammers (talk) 19:33, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the help. The article is looking a lot better now. If you have any other suggestions, please let me know.

--Voz7 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Voz7 (talkcontribs) 21:32, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it's looking much better. It needs a going over to eliminate redirects in wikilinks. The easy way to do this is to enable Navigation popups (in My Preferences > Gadgets). Then do a preview so you have the page on top and the edit window below. Hover over each blue link. If it pops up with two headings, that's a redirect. Copy the second title and use that as the "hidden" link so that your visible text doesn't change, but the actual link target does.
Citations also need to be expanded and consolidated. For instance, you have 5 or 6 instances of the history link, and it really should only show up in the footnotes once. And right now only the URL shows up. Go ahead and finish up what you plan to do for now, and I can go in and do this work so you can see what I mean (it's easier to show and tell than try explaining this).
Finally, I think the History section fundamentally OK, but still sounds a bit ad-like -- lots of superlatives. So it needs a copy edit. I can help with this too if you want, though probably not until later this week. Donlammers (talk) 22:41, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Zoos of Nova Scotia has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. ~~EBE123~~(talk) 20:07, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Assessments

Hi Don. I'm a participant of WPCHINA. I was helping assess articles which have missing assessments. I just came across some articles with WPZOO tags and thought I was doing a good thing with tagging importance. Obviously, every project is different and in this case (WPZOO) I wasn't aware the importance is not required. I'll remember next time and leave it alone.

Tags using {{WPCHINA}} or {{WikiProject China}} are acceptable if you read the project website Wikipedia:WikiProject_China. The reason I'm using it WPCHINA is it saves time because it is shorter. Have you talked to anyone in WPCHINA or you just implemented a bot that goes round doing WPCHINA tags just for the sake of it? --Visik (talk) 00:54, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I do notice a bot going rounds tagging. I'm happy for the bot to re-tag but quite often they do not complete the assessment as its still a human job to assess the quality of the article. If the bot is more sophisticated, I would not need to re-tag alot of the articles. --Visik (talk) 00:58, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I did not create the bot -- only observed what it was doing (but you may have already figured that out). I think the template project folks are doing it so that the template doesn't need to redirect (the page probably loads fractionally faster), so I've been expanding it whenever I see the short form. There is a bot going around and assessing by amount of text or something to stub or start (I guess just to have more articles at least assessed at some level), and another one that goes around and updates all entries to the highest assessment, but they don't seem to be catching anywhere near all the articles I work on, so I've been "helping" them along. Donlammers (talk) 11:31, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Don, what is the name of the bot? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:06, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't seen it for a while, so I don't really remember. It may have been a semi-automated edit and not a bot. A bunch of WPZOO were changed to WikiProject Zoo. After looking at what was being done, I concluded that the edit eliminated template redirect, which made sense to me, so I've been sort of following that lead. Donlammers (talk) 20:54, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Greetings

Hi Don, I pleased to encounter someone with an interest similar to mine (Protected areas of Tamil Nadu) who consistently maintains focus on his special interest rather than bouncing around Wikipedia editing various subjects of interest only at the moment. This approach generally upgrades the whole category and improves the world's perception of the broad subject. Keep up the good work.-Marcus334 (Talk) 17:59, 5 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In my case, Zoos (which frequently overlap with protected areas), and lately I've mostly been trying to improve stubs and keep assessments up to date. I have other specific article interests, but I generally find I prefer sticking to a subject. Sorry I seem to have stomped on your editing at one point this morning. You hadn't saved in a while and I thought you were done for now. Thanks for the good work on Arignar Anna ZP. Donlammers (talk) 18:48, 5 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks!

The Barnstar of Diligence
Awarded for your hard work cleaning up the San Diego Zoo article! MelanieN (talk) 15:06, 27 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the vote of confidence. I did a comparison and found a number of other issues that were introduced along with the animal list. I haven't really finished going through those yet, and may not get to it until the weekend at the rate I'm going. Donlammers (talk) 00:50, 28 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks

Hi Don, thanks for helping clean up the Hattiesburg Zoo article. I gave it a shot, but did not have your expertise. Woodlot (talk) 11:58, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

An article that you have been involved in editing, The Parks at Chehaw (Albany, Georgia) , has been proposed for a merge with another article. If you are interested in the merge discussion, please participate by going here, and adding your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Talk to you later, Presidentman (talk) Random Picture of the Day (Talkback) 12:45, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A tag has been placed on Flying High Bird Sanctuary by User:OlYeller21 requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section A7 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the article appears to be about an organization or company, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is important or significant: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, such articles may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable. If you think the article should be kept, you are welcome to contest the deletion. Snowman (talk) 07:29, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like it has been saved for the moment; nevertheless, referenced additions to the article will be welcome. Snowman (talk) 08:14, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your help/input/wiki knowledge with UnderWater World Guam!

Thanks for making my edit and inline citation clearer. I try my best to source material. Sprinkler21 (talk) 03:25, 27 June 2011 (UTC)Sprinkler21[reply]

A kitten for you!

I just wanted to test the new <3 button at the top of the page :) I considered you a perfect candidate :)

ZooPro 01:57, 1 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]