Talk:Western Gulf coastal grasslands

Untitled

In the text, it is stated that Attwater's Prairie-Chicken was placed on the " 'endangered species list' in 1967". The link goes to the USA Endangered Species Act, which was not passed until 1973. I can't tell what the purpose is here, nor how to clear it up. Bluestem (talk) 03:51, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Removing gallery because of WP:IG

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  McFaddin National Wildlife Refuge, Jefferson County, Texas, USA (30 April 2010).
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  Marysee Prairie Preserve, County Road 2077, Liberty County, Texas, USA (22 May 2020).
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  Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge, Chambers County, Texas, USA (1 December 2018).
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  Texas bluebonnets (Lupinus texensis), Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge, Colorado County, Texas, USA (29 March 2019).
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  Texas bullnettle & plains coreopsis, Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge, Colorado Co., TX, USA (3 May 2018).
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  Crested caracara (Caracara plancus) Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge, Colorado County, Texas, USA (24 May 2014).
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  Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge, Colorado County, Texas, USA (11 November 2017).
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  Brazos Bend State Park, Fort Bend County, Texas, USA (8 December 2010).
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  Saltmarsh fleabane (Pluchea odorata), Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge, Brazoria County, Texas, USA (24 August 2013).
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  San Bernard National Wildlife Refuge, Brazoria County, Texas, USA (12 December 2016).
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  Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, Aransas County, Texas, USA (27 November 2011).
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  Padre Island National Seashore, Kleberg County, Texas, USA (26 November 2011).
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  Spanish Dagger (Yucca treculeana), Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, Cameron County, Texas, USA (12 April 2016).
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  Harris's Hawk (Parabuteo unicinctus) on the road to Mezquital, Municipality of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico (18 March 2009).
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  Grassland habitat on the road to Mezquital, Municipality of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico (18 March 2009).

I transwiki'ed the gallery to Commons, because of the image gallery guideline, which states Generally, a gallery or cluster of images should not be added so long as there is space for images to be effectively presented adjacent to text. and Gallery images must collectively add to the reader's understanding of the subject without causing unbalance to an article or section within an article while avoiding similar or repetitive images, unless a point of contrast or comparison is being made. The gallery did not follow the guideline, so I moved it to Commons. I will restore my edit, but happy to discuss further. — hike395 (talk) 06:14, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

The gallery does indeed follow the WP:IG guidelines if you read it in its entirety. Your interpretation seems to be based on two lines selected from eight paragraphs, and clearly not any consideration or understanding of the images in the gallery. The gallery is anything but an indiscriminate collection of images. It is carefully considered, well-crafted and avoids similar or repetitive images. Some subjects easily lend themselves to image-heavy articles for which image galleries are suitable, such as plants (e.g., Lily). If galleries are suitable one genus of plant (lilies), then a gallery is suitable for an entire ecoregion spanning hundreds of miles through two countries, temperate and subtropical areas, and supporting thousands of plant and animal species. I think the gallery would benefit with the addition of a few more images from Mexico and a Louisiana.

The 15 images illustrate nearly the full range of the ecoregion, arranged north to south, from the Texas/Louisiana border well into Mexico (ca. 500 mi.), two countries, two states, and 10 different counties and municipalities. Temporally, six months are represented, including all four seasons. Temperate and subtropical areas are shown. Ten different parks, preserves, and wildlife refuges illustrate a diversity of natural habitats, vegetation zones, and grasslands that cannot be easily or adequately described by text. A contrasting and wide variety of native grass species, plants, and wildflowers (some identified) can be seen in the images. Grasslands near the Gulf Coast and on barrier islands are shown, as are areas where the grasslands begin to transition into peripheral ecoregions like the pine forest to the north, the post-oak savannah in the west, and the Tamaulipan scrubland in the south are all represented. WiLaFa (talk) 02:52, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

What distinguishes useful galleries is that they support and are integrated with the text. For example, in Lilium, there are small image galleries for several of the divisions of the genus. Galleries are not the only way to accomplish this, for example, in Marmot and Callospermophilus, species are described in tables, where each species has a corresponding image. Again, the images support the text and visa versa.

In contrast, the gallery above is not integrated at all with the text, nor does it support the material. As the creator of the gallery and photographer of all of the images, the curation may be obvious to you, but it is not obvious to a typical reader. It appears to be a number of similar open grassy fields, several of which were taken from Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge. A couple of birds are shown. There is no context which relates the images back to the rest of the article: which sub-ecoregions are these taken from? What are they meant to show? The captions provide (IMO) too much detail about the individual photographs, and no context about the photographs. The two sentences I highlighted in the guideline are meant to describe the weakness of the gallery (as currently designed, with captions as currently written).

What other ecoregion articles often do is place individual images into subsections (following WP:IG), where the image illustrates a particular sub-ecoregion or ecosystem element. For example, Great Basin Desert has a number of photographs that each illustrate a biological community or subregion. Ecology of the Rocky Mountains shows images from biological communities, plus a number of examples of fauna from the Rocky Mountains (in the appropriate section, per MOS:SECTIONLOC). If you selected an image for each of the subregions, and place it into the corresponding article section, then the article would obey WP:IG and it would be very helpful to our readers. As it stands, the images don't help our readers. — hike395 (talk) 05:31, 15 May 2024 (UTC)