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]