Insects Project‑class

This page is within the scope of WikiProject Insects, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of insects on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.InsectsWikipedia:WikiProject InsectsTemplate:WikiProject InsectsInsects Project This page does not require a rating on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.

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@Agelaia: studies social insects and teaches a course on behavioral ecology. Students in the course created/expanded articles on social insects under Wikipedia:WikiProject Vespidae last year, and will be working on Apidae this year (with a recently created page Wikipedia:WikiProject Apidae). I welcome contributions on social insects, and hope to support Agelaia's course, but it seems to me that taskforces under WikiProjects Insects would be more appropriate than largely independent subprojects. As far as hymenoptera go, ants are covered as a task force rather than a subproject.

Should hymenoptera families be covered as subprojects, or as taskforces? I don't have the template editing privileges to make new task forces for WikiProject Insects, but I'd be happy to do some of the rote assessment work if Vespidae and Apidae are enabled as task forces. Plantdrew (talk) 03:58, 2 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm in favor of task forces over sub-projects, since the editor pool of almost any group of insects is likely to be nearly the same as that of WikiProject Insects, unlike say, the editor pool and relevant interests of Mammals or Bird projects. As WP:TASKFORCE concludes, "If the scope is too closely related to an existing project, then having separate projects is usually inefficient and counterproductive, because you wind up dividing the few interested editors across multiple projects." Perhaps Jonkerz, who set up the Ant task force, could offer some guidance or suggestions. --Animalparty! (talk) 04:27, 2 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'd also highly prefer task forces over sub projects for the reasons you mentioned. Seperate projects can get unwieldy with separate talk page banners, splitting up editors, etc. this could especially be the case of this project is really mainly for a class that's going to be done at the end of the semester. Probably better to make sure they are using the appropriate course pages instead while starting a task force here. Kingofaces43 (talk) 13:12, 2 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

+1 for course pages and +1 for task forces. Echoing what's already been said: setting up a task force subpage under WP:INSECTS is reversible, dirt cheap and doesn't split editors as long as the talk page is redirected here. A list of external resources, a todo list and a few guidelines goes a long way. About task force tagging: we waited more than a year before setting this up for the ant task force, mostly because there have been far too many projects that set up tagging in low-activity topic areas and then nothing happened. At the time, the task force had four "signed up members"; this was very much a border-line case, and I'm not sure how useful this has been so far (but that will most definitely improve with time). jonkerz ♠talk 16:38, 13 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Just came across this CC-licensed article- could be useful in improving Ant and subfamily articles: Boudinot, Brendon E. (2015). "Contributions to the knowledge of Formicidae (Hymenoptera, Aculeata): a new diagnosis of the family, the first global male-based key to subfamilies, and a treatment of early branching lineages". European Journal of Taxonomy (120). doi:10.5852/ejt.2015.120. Pinging some editors off the top of my head. @Kevmin: @Burklemore1: @Jonkerz: enjoy! --Animalparty! (talk) 07:07, 3 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Cheers, I'll go read it now. I see that plenty of new and useful information is available, so I'll see what I can incorporate from the source. The images and diagrams will be beneficial too! Burklemore1 (talk) 07:40, 3 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That's the kind of source I like to see. Seems like ants are always a group needing more taxonomic commentary for how often some naming is changing. Kingofaces43 (talk) 00:02, 4 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Great find, Animalparty! Our subfamily articles are in dire need of expansion. jonkerz ♠talk 16:43, 13 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Is this Pantala hymenaea as author claimed or a Tramea calverti, female? It is from Galápagos, Ecuador. I don't expect a Pantala perch this way. Long anal appendages also favours ''Tramea. Jee 01:18, 3 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

After a recent request, I added WikiProject Insects/ant task force to the list of projects to compile monthly pageview stats for. The data is the same used by http://stats.grok.se/en/ but the program is different, and includes the aggregate views from all redirects to each page. The stats are at Wikipedia:WikiProject Insects/ant task force/Popular pages.

The page will be updated monthly with new data. The edits aren't marked as bot edits, so they will show up in watchlists. You can view more results, request a new project be added to the list, or request a configuration change for this project using the Tool Labs tool. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know. Thanks! Mr.Z-man 23:39, 10 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Mr.Z-man! jonkerz ♠talk 19:40, 16 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Could some editors with background in this kind of thing join us here? We're discussing whether or not a particular butterfly species which is the subject of an article actually exists or has been misidentified. Thanks. Gamaliel (talk) 16:40, 15 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Just a heads up that from this conversation [1] awhile back, I'm going through and automatically adding Insect tags to articles currently listed at Wikiproject Beetles. I originally started just going through articles listed at Wikiproject Beetles, but I found a better way to focus just an articles that were affected by the user in the previous discussion. This might potentially blow up some watchlists, so I just wanted to let people know. Kingofaces43 (talk) 03:34, 17 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Please hop over to this talk page, and quickly if you can. Thank you. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 09:09, 23 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, I made a side by side comparison with the pic and images of specimens from the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle. (They also have articles on the species: Aiolopus strepens - [2], Dociostaurus maroccanus - [3]). They look identical to my untrained eye though. LOL.-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 08:35, 25 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]