Unblock request (User:Spinosaurus)

Spinosaurus wrote:

Kikimalou wrote:

...without even taking the time to read this topic which dated from June (Buddies was just complaining about not being able to access TAW and the problem was resolved), it seemed important to us to stop the machine and see if you were going to come and chat or not.

But I did read it. And the problem was not resolved. I know that you can access the wiki by going to a subpage, but that's a workaround if you ask me. People should not be forced to resort to workarounds just to access a website. I expected to be able to access the wiki by just typing toyanimal.info. And I'm sure most people do too. From a usability perspective, I reckon that having toyanimal.info actually take you to the wiki is more important than having fish as a group and putting Synapsida, Reptilia and Amphibia directly under Animalia instead of requiring you to go through Chordata and Sarcopterygii, which are unambiguously labelled so there is no confusion. It's not like people can't use the search bar.

And I am not a machine. I am a person. Blocking me is nothing like stopping a machine. It's just being rude. Didn't you know that unnecessarily blocking people from wikis is rude? Also, you need to understand that I was nervous about joining this forum. I am always nervous about creating an account on any website. Instead of blocking me, you should have maybe left a message on my talk page explaining what's wrong with my edits and encouraging me to create a post about taxonomic changes on the forum. I just don't understand why the approach taken was to block first, talk later.

I will briefly enter the taxonomy debate here with my viewpoint.

A change in taxonomy is acceptable to me if an average 12 year old toy owner will find it easier to look up their toy to find out more about it.  That is the reason the taxonomy tree exists. So if you have a lion and you don't know about who made it or what other toys it's related to, you can look up lion on the wiki and find a page holding as many lions as we have been able to gather together. There are a lot, lions are popular and toy makers like to sell toys. The 12 year old can look at all the lions and hopefully find theirs, with a link to a page that will tell them who made it and when, and more links to find out about related toys by the same maker.

If you want to change the name of a taxonomy page it should be to something easier for a child to understand. If you want to change the shape of the tree it should be to make it easier to navigate and find related animals. Scientific accuracy is irrelevant. Scientific organizational schemes don't matter in this setting. Common names are ideal. In some instances like prehistoric the average collector will be more scientifically based and more technical terminology is appropriate. Ease of use in the end is paramount.

On the question of the domain access I will be pursuing that again this weekend. The domain should be pointing correctly but obviously isn't. It's possible the host has moved our server again and the domain needs to be repointed. I will check on the settings and open a help ticket.

Spinosaurus wrote:

Kikimalou wrote:

I also had to remove all the dead links you had created. That's okay, but it's also a reason we've blocked you for now. Your initiatives give us too much work to either go back or finish what is started. Again, for now it's not a big deal but it would have been if you had changed hundreds of pages before chatting.

I did not create any dead links. When I moved pages, the old page redirected to the new one. That is not a dead link. I didn't consider it to be a high priority to fix these links. They take you to the right page. You on the other hand, deleted the Avemetatarsalia page. That resulted in a dead link on both the Dinosaur and Pterosaur pages, as they say "Get back to Pan-Aves". I had moved Pan-Aves to Avemetatarsalia. I think you were right to remove the Avemetatarsalia page, but you probably should have either redirected it Reptile or fixed the links.

And it's not a good reason to block me either. Especially since those pages needed to be moved. If you think I should have fixed the links, you should have said so. I can fix the links. Blocking me actually hinders the effort to make sure links link directly to the correct page. If I wasn't blocked, I would fix the links if you told me to.

Especially since those pages needed to be moved indeed, that's a good reason to block you. Who are you to decide for all of us that these pages need to be moved ?
How do you expect us to trust you if you think like that?

Kikimalou wrote:

Why not adding Axelrodichthys to Coelacanth ? Because Axelrodichthys aren't Coelacanth, they are Coelacanthiformes from the Mawsoniidae family. Coelacanths are Coelacanthiformes from the Latimeriidae family. It's not because someone on Wikipedia stupidely decided to rename the Coelacanthiformes page "Coelacanth" that we have to follow him on this silly path.

Coelacanths are not limited to the extant family Latimeriidae. In fact, extinct coelacanths were discovered before extant ones. The first coelacanth to be discovered was ''Coelacanthus granulatus''. If anything, it's the extinct family Coelacanthidae that are the true coelacanths. Many sources call all Coelacanthiformes (or Actinistia) "coelacanths".

Kikimalou wrote:

A few minutes later you decided to take the safari Ltd off the page on the pretext that it had placed it in its Prehistoric line and therefore it could not be a West Indian Ocean coelacanth. Really ? The West Indian Ocean coelacanths may not be extinct but they are animals that have been around since prehistoric times. There is no reason to think that Safari Ltd wanted to create an extinct Coelacanth and painted it blue because it was out of red paint. If Safari Ltd painted it blue with light blue dots it's because they want to sell toys and a West Indian Ocean coelacanth is more salable than a red coelacanth with green dots.

I'm not saying it couldn't be a West Indian Ocean coelacanth. It could be. We don't know. And while the West Indian Ocean coelacanth existed in prehistoric times, so did almost all extant species. But prehistoric animal series generally don't have extant species. Prehistoric animal species tend to only include species that went extinct in prehistoric times. What would a West Indian Ocean coelacanth be doing in a series with a lot of Mesozoic dinosaurs? The burden of proof is on the person who says it is a West Indian Ocean coelacanth, not the person who says it isn't necessarily one. If it is a West Indian Ocean coelacanth but it's put under coelacanth, that's not exactly incorrect. But it is most certainly incorrect for an extinct coelacanth to be put under West Indian Ocean coelacanth. How is being blue proof that it's a West Indian Ocean coelacanth? While the West Indian Ocean coelacanth is the only extant blue coelacanth, it's not the only blue coelacanth that ever existed. I don't know about any other blue coelacanths, but there must have been, considering that coelacanths have existed for 409 megayears.

And it's not redundant to include both coelacanth and West Indian Ocean coelacanth because a) Axelrodichthys is a coelacanth and b) there are unidentified coelacanths on the wiki. And even if it was redundant, it's West Indian Ocean coelacanth that should have a page, since it's a species.

And even if we follow your narrow definition of "coelacanths", not everyone does. The unidentified "coelacanths" may not fall within your definition of "coelacanth". Maybe they were labelled as "coelacanths" because they were Actinistia, not because they were Latimeriidae or Latimeria.

Spinosaurus wrote:

Kikimalou wrote:

And what are you doing ? You bring, on your own, solutions to problems that no one poses and therefore you create a mess without realizing it.

Well I bring up those issues. There is a problem with using non-monophyletic groups in a supposedly taxonomic system. Especially if the taxonomic system is supposed to mirror current scientific classification schemes. If we are going to use non-monophyletic groups, there needs to be a good justification for it. Too much non-monophyly and it goes from "roughly mirroring current scientific classification schemes" to "barely mirroring current scientific classification schemes".

Non-monophyletic groups are misleading.

This is a problem only for you because you don't understand what is TAW and you still don't understand our logic after explanations. Please read again what Tim wrote just above, it's crystal clear.

Spinosaurus wrote:

Kikimalou wrote:

If we blocked you, it's to prevent you from doing more damage before chatting with us, that's all. This is our way and you are the first to be ban or block or anything else, we didn't do it because you were on the wrong side of the law but just to avoid damage. We accepted that you join TAW, we did not accept that you disturb everything as you wish.

But I don't mean to do "damage". And I don't mean to disturb anything. I am trying to improve the wiki. You have acknowledged that I am not a vandal or a troll. Why treat me like one, then? Maybe add new rules about making major taxonomic changes or something. I will happily follow any rules that admins add to TAW.

I know you don't mean to do damage, your intentions are good but that's not the problem. If I thought you were doing it on purpose I wouldn't waste hours chatting with you and trying to make you understand what we're doing.
You don't want to do damage but you do. It's like you walk into a garage where some guys are building a car and you mess things up because that's not how one build a boat...

Spinosaurus wrote:

Kikimalou wrote:

...solutions to problems that no one poses

Kikimalou wrote:

...we didn't do it because you were on the wrong side of the law

That's not what "pose" and "law" mean. Wiki rules are not laws and bringing up or raising problems is not posing them. If someone was posing a problem, that would mean that they are causing the problem, not bringing it up (for discussion).

Spinosaurus wrote:

Kikimalou wrote:

...careful not to ask anyone how to behave on TAW

Surely you mean "not careful to ask anyone how to behave on TAW"? Of course I wasn't thinking, "I'd better not ask anyone how to behave". Rather, I was thinking, "if anyone disagrees with my changes, they can revert them and discuss them with me". I couldn't find any rules or guidelines against making major changes without asking other people. If there was, it would have to define "major change". You know, on Wikipedia, important pages are often protected or semi-protected. And most wikis use talk pages to discuss changes, not external forums. How was I supposed to know that changes were supposed to be discussed on STS forum?

We don't care about Wiki rules, we don't care how it is on Wikipedia. It's not our problem. Wikipedia is a big machine with truckloads of contributors who want to build a participatory encyclopedia about evrything on earth. So there are specialists, or so-called specialists, for lots of things.
TAW is a tool designed for the community of Animal toys collectors, it is not the same scale, we do not pursue the same goals and above all we are specialists in our field.
We want to be the most comprehensive encyclopedia made by collectors for collectors and with collectors.
If you don't agree with that, it's your right, but then don't come and upset everything in something that doesn't suit you.
We just want to check that you understand us and unfortunately I don't feel like it.

Spinosaurus wrote:

Kikimalou wrote:

...without even taking the time to read this topic which dated from June (Buddies was just complaining about not being able to access TAW and the problem was resolved), it seemed important to us to stop the machine and see if you were going to come and chat or not.

But I did read it. And the problem was not resolved. I know that you can access the wiki by going to a subpage, but that's a workaround if you ask me. People should not be forced to resort to workarounds just to access a website. I expected to be able to access the wiki by just typing toyanimal.info. And I'm sure most people do too. From a usability perspective, I reckon that having toyanimal.info actually take you to the wiki is more important than having fish as a group and putting Synapsida, Reptilia and Amphibia directly under Animalia instead of requiring you to go through Chordata and Sarcopterygii, which are unambiguously labelled so there is no confusion. It's not like people can't use the search bar.

This problem had nothing to do with the subject, that was my point. Our friends were talking about a technical problem and we are talking to you about our philosophy.

Kikimalou wrote:

Especially since those pages needed to be moved indeed, that's a good reason to block you. Who are you to decide for all of us that these pages need to be moved ?
How do you expect us to trust you if you think like that?

According to Guidelines_and_Templates#Figure_Pages:

Quote :

Note: We are doing an effort to use the same names for animal pages as those we can find on English Wikipedia.

I am not the one who decided for everyone that those pages needed to be moved. It was actually Roger. He's the one who wrote that guideline. I was just following it. I would have never moved those pages if he hadn't written that guideline. If you don't like me moving those pages, maybe you should remove that guideline.

And it's not a good reason to block me. If I said "I moved those pages as a prank. I did it to mess with you.", that would be a good reason to block me. But I said "those pages needed to be moved", suggesting that I have good intentions. That alone is enough reason to unblock me.

Kikimalou wrote:

We want to be the most comprehensive encyclopedia made by collectors for collectors and with collectors.
If you don't agree with that, it's your right, but then don't come and upset everything in something that doesn't suit you.
We just want to check that you understand us and unfortunately I don't feel like it.

I do agree with that. And I do understand you. You just don't put the same importance on correct taxonomy as I do. That's just a disagreement, not grounds for blocking.

Kikimalou wrote:

We don't care about Wiki rules, we don't care how it is on Wikipedia. It's not our problem. Wikipedia is a big machine with truckloads of contributors who want to build a participatory encyclopedia about evrything on earth. So there are specialists, or so-called specialists, for lots of things.
TAW is a tool designed for the community of Animal toys collectors, it is not the same scale, we do not pursue the same goals and above all we are specialists in our field.

Rules are important on any website, no matter how small. A site doesn't have to be as big as Wikipedia to need rules. If there are no rules, then the admins have no right to block anyone, since no one ever breaks any rules. It is draconian to block someone who hasn't broken any rules. You need to unblock me now, and create rules. The rules can only be enforced if they exist.

I should probably note that it never occurred to me that anyone would object to the pages being moved.

Kikimalou wrote:

So you opened the West Indian Ocean coelacanth page and let it full of dead links. Why ? because you pasted the wikipedia first lines without removing the note and links of Wikipedia. Obviously you didn't even take the time to look at the page thus created, otherwise you would have seen a dozen very red dead links which made the page awful. I wasted time correcting all this.

I actually did look at the page after creating it. In fact, I worked hard to make sure that ToyAnimalWiki would be able to display Wikipedia's references probably. Because you are amateurs, you couldn't be bothered to make ToyAnimalWiki support references. Instead, you oversimplify descriptions taken from Wikipedia. Why remove references? It sends a bad message. People should use references in their work. Wikipedia uses references. If you copy Wikipedia, copy its references.

And I don't agree that red links make a page awful. Many of those links point to pages that should be created. I actually think non-links are worse than red links.

Spinosaurus wrote:

Kikimalou wrote:

Why not adding Axelrodichthys to Coelacanth ? Because Axelrodichthys aren't Coelacanth, they are Coelacanthiformes from the Mawsoniidae family. Coelacanths are Coelacanthiformes from the Latimeriidae family. It's not because someone on Wikipedia stupidely decided to rename the Coelacanthiformes page "Coelacanth" that we have to follow him on this silly path.

Coelacanths are not limited to the extant family Latimeriidae. In fact, extinct coelacanths were discovered before extant ones. The first coelacanth to be discovered was ''Coelacanthus granulatus''. If anything, it's the extinct family Coelacanthidae that are the true coelacanths. Many sources call all Coelacanthiformes (or Actinistia) "coelacanths".

Kikimalou wrote:

A few minutes later you decided to take the safari Ltd off the page on the pretext that it had placed it in its Prehistoric line and therefore it could not be a West Indian Ocean coelacanth. Really ? The West Indian Ocean coelacanths may not be extinct but they are animals that have been around since prehistoric times. There is no reason to think that Safari Ltd wanted to create an extinct Coelacanth and painted it blue because it was out of red paint. If Safari Ltd painted it blue with light blue dots it's because they want to sell toys and a West Indian Ocean coelacanth is more salable than a red coelacanth with green dots.

I'm not saying it couldn't be a West Indian Ocean coelacanth. It could be. We don't know. And while the West Indian Ocean coelacanth existed in prehistoric times, so did almost all extant species. But prehistoric animal series generally don't have extant species. Prehistoric animal species tend to only include species that went extinct in prehistoric times. What would a West Indian Ocean coelacanth be doing in a series with a lot of Mesozoic dinosaurs? The burden of proof is on the person who says it is a West Indian Ocean coelacanth, not the person who says it isn't necessarily one. If it is a West Indian Ocean coelacanth but it's put under coelacanth, that's not exactly incorrect. But it is most certainly incorrect for an extinct coelacanth to be put under West Indian Ocean coelacanth. How is being blue proof that it's a West Indian Ocean coelacanth? While the West Indian Ocean coelacanth is the only extant blue coelacanth, it's not the only blue coelacanth that ever existed. I don't know about any other blue coelacanths, but there must have been, considering that coelacanths have existed for 409 megayears.

And it's not redundant to include both coelacanth and West Indian Ocean coelacanth because a) Axelrodichthys is a coelacanth and b) there are unidentified coelacanths on the wiki. And even if it was redundant, it's West Indian Ocean coelacanth that should have a page, since it's a species.

And even if we follow your narrow definition of "coelacanths", not everyone does. The unidentified "coelacanths" may not fall within your definition of "coelacanth". Maybe they were labelled as "coelacanths" because they were Actinistia, not because they were Latimeriidae or Latimeria.

Sincerely you don't understand anything about what we are talking and it's dangerous to let the key of the car to someone who don't know where we want to go and what we want to do with this car.

What Coelacanths are you talking about ? The only Coelacanths are the West Indian Ocean one and the Indonesian coelacanth. All others doesn't exists... IN THE TOY WORLD !
What would a West Indian Ocean coelacanth be doing in a series with a lot of Mesozoic dinosaurs? Easy, as I said Safari Ltd goal is to sale toys. The best way to sale a lot of Coelacanth toys is to put them on a Prehistoric line, because Prehistoric collectors are more aware about weird species and Wildlife lines are more "children oriented". This is a very wise reason. Safari Ltd is a toy seller, it chose what is the best for its business and it's good like that. Putting the Coelacanth in the Prehistoric line is oviously not because this company needs to follow Wikipedia or Science. There are other considerations.
If someone wants to produce an animal and say clearly, it is an extinct or prehistoric species different from the extant species, he must mark a difference, change at least a little the anatomy or the colors.
The problem is that it's not selling, paint a wolf green and explain that it's a Dire wolf, it's not sellable. buyers will think the manufacturer got the wrong paint. This is why few take the risk of making prehistoric animals whose morphology is too close to current species.
How to tell the difference between a lion and a smilodon toy? Easy, in the worst case we take a lion and we add giant canines.
On the other hand, to tell the difference between a lion and a cave lion? Big challenge! No interest for a mass sale.
Safari Ltd decides to produce a West India Coelacanth with all its characteristics and puts it on sale in the line where it is most likely to interest buyers and it is even more salable if it is simply called Coelacanth.

Again I'm sorry IN THE TOY WORLD if you find a giraffe with tan coat and brown spots, it is more than probably a giraffe. A Blue with lighter blue spots Coelacanth is identified as what it is: a West Indian Ocean coelacanth. Indeed, the burden of proof is on the person who says a giraffe with tan coat and brown spots is perhaps something else than a giraffe.

When we open a new species page STS collectors are not content to move only the animal labeled by the manufacturer or even only by a TAW editor. We think about each model, sometimes we make mistakes but we think about it.
Besides, this discussion only takes place because you thought it was important to open an additional species page when it was not necessary for the moment.
Our problem as collectors is that a giraffe that has all the characteristics of a giraffe must be showed with the other giraffes.
This is what is useful and necessary.

Even though I disagree with many of the taxonomic decisions (such as the inclusion of the non-monophyletic, non-taxa Fish and Ediacaran Biota) made by users on TAW, if I made/make a taxonomic change and it was/is reverted, I promise not to reinstate it without the approval of other people. Even if you don't create rules.

I will also try to avoid making the kind of changes that people have criticised/reverted (taxonomic changes, page moves, adding red links and adding references) without approval. But please understand that without rules, I do not know what is acceptable and what is not. It is not always common sense.

So first unblock me. Then create rules. All the reasons you gave for blocking me? Implement them as rules. But even if you add those reasons as rules, they do not justify my current block, as I "broke" those rules before they existed. I promise that when I am unblocked, I will read the rules and follow them.

@Kikimalou Since you insist that all the blue coelacanths on the wiki are West Indian Ocean coelacanths, I will not move any of them to the coelacanth page unless you or other people say that they aren't necessarily West Indian Ocean coelacanths.

Kikimalou wrote:

it's dangerous to let the key of the car to someone who don't know where we want to go and what we want to do with this car.

Then create rules! Also, wikis are not cars. You're taking this too seriously. I know you think that my taxonomic changes are confusing, but confusing taxonomy is not a matter of life or death. When it comes to matters of life or death, it is justified to ban people who want to do the right thing but don't understand. It is necessary to save lives. A wiki, especially one about toys, is not like that.

You don't take correct taxonomy seriously enough, you don't take the need for wiki rules seriously enough and you don't take the need for references seriously enough, but you compare the ability to edit TAW to the key of a car. I'll have you know that Tim created my account without expecting me to prove my competence or anything like that. So clearly he doesn't think that being able to edit TAW is like having the keys to a car.

I would like to chip in. But will refrain from the technical specifics of the editing topic for simplicity.

Spinosaurus, I think you are complety missing the point of TAW and the point of our moderators' discussion with you.  TAW is a project that members here CREATED THEMSELVES and CONTRIBUTED TO THEMSELVES to create a resource for ALL COLLECTORS. Our youngest collectors here are often as youthful as 12 years old, our oldest are in their early 70s. We range the gamut from actual PRACTICING SCIENTISTS AND RESEARCHERS  to COMMON LAYPEOPLE (grocery store clerks, farmers, librarians, highschool students...). The point of the wiki is NOT FOR SCIENTIFIC ACCURACY at all times (especialy beyind its constructive use), it is for the utility of any collecting member of this forum to use. That means accomodating for ANY education level and making things as logical and common-terminology as possible so that the 12 year old can find their toy dog there or the old cattle farmer can figure out where their lead cow came from. NOT just so that the people who know words like sarcopterygii etc. can find their sarcopterygiians. Further, we don't really operate with hard and fast RULES as you obnoxiously demand them, this is a much more casual project- YOU are the one taking this all far more seriously than needed.

We few have spent countless hours building this resource, and you knocked down the foundation building blocks it stood on "because it made more sense (TO YOU)".

I understand that you meant no harm and that you are offended by having been blocked. THAT can be EASILY remedied if you were to approach this discussion with a little more sensitivity to what ripple effect you caused with your edits. However, you are coming off in this topic as  flippant of your actions and the resulting issues it has caused, claiming victimization over an act that can easily be redacted (when your act is not), and frankly, rude to the moderators here who have kept this forum going for 10+ years despite the occassional member who causes disruption (similar to this topic in spirit, rather than events).  Arguing semantics isn't going to help either, realize that we have members around the globe who's first language is NOT english. Please show a little more deference to those of different backgrounds. Making demands of us doesn't make the best appearance either. Your arguments thus far don't convince me that your behavior was innocent. It shows more negligence to the project than anything else.

As far as calling us amateurs; WE ARE. How many times do we have to say we don't use talk pages? You using them to lodge a complaint doesn't help the communication issue here! We are a very welcoming and accepting forum, ANY member would tell you that. I hope you stick around and become a part of a fabric here. But think of how maybe if you CONTRIBUTED to the wiki and forum rather than altering the very structure it is based on would resolve this confrontation. Join the discussions here, let members profer their opinion and have a friendly discourse. I use the wiki to gather info on my 5,000 model collection for many reasons. I often have opinions that differ from the majority of members here (reflected in decisions made in the wiki). My Papo model #50130 is listed as a Guanaco, when it was marketed as a llama. I keep it with my llamas, and it is a Llama for my purpose. But for Blaine, it is a Guanaco, and serves his collection effort of being synoptic. Differing opinions but no spirited controversial argument. You can find the model under both terms.

Your enthusiasm and skill would obviously benefit the wiki and forum here. Just please use a little more civility in your communication- we are all equals here. Lets try to work towards an understanding with one another.

Spinosaurus wrote:

Kikimalou wrote:

Especially since those pages needed to be moved indeed, that's a good reason to block you. Who are you to decide for all of us that these pages need to be moved ?
How do you expect us to trust you if you think like that?

According to Guidelines_and_Templates#Figure_Pages:

Quote :

Note: We are doing an effort to use the same names for animal pages as those we can find on English Wikipedia.

I am not the one who decided for everyone that those pages needed to be moved. It was actually Roger. He's the one who wrote that guideline. I was just following it. I would have never moved those pages if he hadn't written that guideline. If you don't like me moving those pages, maybe you should remove that guideline.

And it's not a good reason to block me. If I said "I moved those pages as a prank. I did it to mess with you.", that would be a good reason to block me. But I said "those pages needed to be moved", suggesting that I have good intentions. That alone is enough reason to unblock me.

I've been talking to you for hours and you still don't understand.

Quote :

Note: We are doing an effort to use the same names for animal pages as those we can find on English Wikipedia.

Where did you read "pages needs to be moved to conform to Wikipedia" ? We are doing an effort... It's even not mandatory, because sometimes it's not the good idea. It doesn't mean we must blindly follow Wikipedia, Wikipedia has it's own life, it's own logic and we have ours.

We blocked you until now because we made a mistake, we opened the door to someone we didn't know. We even didn't know now if you are a collector, we don't know what you are collecting and we never saw your collection. I already asked you but obviuosly it isn't your problem.

Spinosaurus wrote:

Kikimalou wrote:

We want to be the most comprehensive encyclopedia made by collectors for collectors and with collectors.
If you don't agree with that, it's your right, but then don't come and upset everything in something that doesn't suit you.
We just want to check that you understand us and unfortunately I don't feel like it.

I do agree with that. And I do understand you. You just don't put the same importance on correct taxonomy as I do. That's just a disagreement, not grounds for blocking.

I'm not sure you undertstand, that's not a disagreement between you and me. You just don't put the same importance on what we are building for years on TAW. Some of us are professional scientists here, most of us aren't but both of us want a useful TAW. As Tim , the TAW founder told you, we are not building a scientific wiki, we are building a Toy Animal Wiki for collectors. It means taxonomy accuracy isn't our ultimate goal. This interests us of course but building a taxonomically rigorous Wiki is harmful for what we do, it would complicate the life of a lot of collectors.
Once again, when our way of manufacturing poses a problem, our friends tell us here and we do what is necessary to get everyone to agree. the discussion is collective, the compromise too.
Please read again Tiermann (Tim) post if you want to understand us.

Kikimalou wrote:

We don't care about Wiki rules, we don't care how it is on Wikipedia. It's not our problem. Wikipedia is a big machine with truckloads of contributors who want to build a participatory encyclopedia about evrything on earth. So there are specialists, or so-called specialists, for lots of things.
TAW is a tool designed for the community of Animal toys collectors, it is not the same scale, we do not pursue the same goals and above all we are specialists in our field.

Rules are important on any website, no matter how small. A site doesn't have to be as big as Wikipedia to need rules. If there are no rules, then the admins have no right to block anyone, since no one ever breaks any rules. It is draconian to block someone who hasn't broken any rules. You need to unblock me now, and create rules. The rules can only be enforced if they exist.
[/quote]

No, absolutely no. I have a family and I can assure you we haven't any constitution at home, no needs, we know each other. Until November 10, TAW editors didn't need rules. We are few in number, we known each other for years, no need for a regulation of several pages.
When Roger writes years ago "We are doing an effort to use the same names for animal pages as those we can find on English Wikipedia", everyone understands the nuance and in fact no one has read that for years.
To be more precise, in general it is Roger and I who take care of the changes on the structure. Why us ? We've been building TAW since day one with Tim and to tell you the truth I'm the one who set up the "Taxonomy" section years ago and I didn't build it that way out of ignorance but for all the reasons we mentioned above. I'm not rigid either, we made structural changes when necessary but always with the same logic.
You do not agree ? It's your right but if you think you can change a job done and thought for years in one day, you're wrong.

You told us you want to help us and what are you asking ? Spending time to create rules on TAW Do you think it is helpful ? Seriously ? it would be more helpgful to understand what we are saying for hours now.

Maybe you are right, we will have to make new rules. We will lost our free time for this but maybe it is important now.

I think one of our new rule will be: You want to be a TAW editor ? Easy, join the STS forum, share your collection and your passion with us for a few months and we will think about this.

Spinosaurus wrote:

I should probably note that it never occurred to me that anyone would object to the pages being moved.

Indeed, that's the question. You make big changes without thinking you are not alone.

Spinosaurus wrote:

Kikimalou wrote:

So you opened the West Indian Ocean coelacanth page and let it full of dead links. Why ? because you pasted the wikipedia first lines without removing the note and links of Wikipedia. Obviously you didn't even take the time to look at the page thus created, otherwise you would have seen a dozen very red dead links which made the page awful. I wasted time correcting all this.

I actually did look at the page after creating it. In fact, I worked hard to make sure that ToyAnimalWiki would be able to display Wikipedia's references probably. Because you are amateurs, you couldn't be bothered to make ToyAnimalWiki support references. Instead, you oversimplify descriptions taken from Wikipedia. Why remove references? It sends a bad message. People should use references in their work. Wikipedia uses references. If you copy Wikipedia, copy its references.

And I don't agree that red links make a page awful. Many of those links point to pages that should be created. I actually think non-links are worse than red links.

Have you opened a lot of TAW pages ? Have you seen how many links to wikipedia we are using ? Only one by "Taxonomic" pages, sometimes none. Do you think it is because we are lazy ? It needs some work to remove all the link, all the note. Do you think it is because we are stupid and thickheaded ?
You never thought we have a good reason to do that ?
Toy Animal Wiki use what we all wants from Wikipedia and don't want to be a Wikipedia follower? Actually we still put a link to Wikipedia because it si something like a tradition.
Wikipedia is not always trustable for collectors, I'm surprised you don't know that.
This is especially true for the more scientific among us.
For those who like to calculate the scale of their models, there is a rule that everyone here knows: If you want to know the exact dimensions of an animal, only use the values given by Wikipedia if you can find them on more serious sites or books.

So I understand you don't agree with us but again nobody asked you to make such things. We don't want ToyAnimalWiki to display Wikipedia's references more than we do now, it is obvious when you look at the other pages. It means we don't agre with what you are doing.

I've just spent seven hours for you Spinosaurus, trying to explain you what we are and what we want to build.

I'm a 58 years old collector and I collect animal toys seriously for 20 years now, I don't think I'm bragging by claiming that I'm known in the area that interests us. Obviously you don't know me and in any case I know you. If you ever want to be able to edit on TAW, you'll have to show us what collector you are. One of the rules you just unwittingly imposed on us is that we need to know who the people who want to edit TAW are and also that this work is only allowed to collectors.

It's ten o'clock in the morning so it's time for me to quit. If you still have time you can read again this topic, nevertheless the best thing you should do now is to share your collection with us.

I think that all blue coelacanths on TAW except three are West Indian Ocean coelacanths. This is because they are in extant animal series. I was confused by the Colorata Coelacanth, as it is in a line called "Fossil Fish", which supposedly also had other extant fish. But then I saw that the 2004 series was about endangered fish. So a West Indian Ocean coelacanth would make sense, and an extinct coelacanth wouldn't.

The three that aren't are:
* Kaiyodo Dinotales 1 Axelrodichthys
* Safari 285729 Coelacanth
* Safari Toob 677504 Coelacanth

The first one is an Axelrodichthys, obviously. The second is in a series of extinct animals. If it is a West Indian Ocean coelacanth, it is the only extant animal listed on the page for that series. I should probably note that the series includes woolly mammoths even though they didn't go extinct in prehistoric times, but later.

And the third one is in a series of cryptids. I think it's supposed to be an undiscovered extant coelacanth.

Even though these three coelacanths are blue, they are probably not West Indian Ocean coelacanths. They were probably based on the West Indian Ocean coelacanth, though. While extinct animal toys sometimes have bright, unrealistic colours, this is not always the case. Sometimes, they base them on extant animals. Basing an extinct coelacanth on the most well-known extant species doesn't seem all that unreasonable to me.

I am not a collector. And I don't understand why TAW has to be limited to collectors. Many non-collectors have toys too. Non-collectors should be welcome, as long as they follow the rules. Allowing only collectors would bias the wiki in favour of toys that collectors are interested in. A non-collector may not have many toys to add, but may have some toys. And there's no reason why they can't do things like fixing links.

Even if you add a rule that non-collectors are not allowed, you need to unblock me, per the grandfather clause. My account was created when non-collectors were allowed, so I cannot be blocked simply because non-collectors are no longer allowed.

Kikimalou wrote:

I'm not sure you undertstand, that's not a disagreement between you and me. You just don't put the same importance on what we are building for years on TAW. Some of us are professional scientists here, most of us aren't but both of us want a useful TAW. As Tim , the TAW founder told you, we are not building a scientific wiki, we are building a Toy Animal Wiki for collectors. It means taxonomy accuracy isn't our ultimate goal. This interests us of course but building a taxonomically rigorous Wiki is harmful for what we do, it would complicate the life of a lot of collectors.
Once again, when our way of manufacturing poses a problem, our friends tell us here and we do what is necessary to get everyone to agree. the discussion is collective, the compromise too.

Yes it is a disagreement between you and me. You think that taxonomic accuracy should be compromised to make the site easier to understand. I think that that approach creates more problems then it solves. I see no conflict between taxonomic accuracy and ease of understanding. I know that many people don't understand many scientific names, that is why we use English descriptions. As long as we have adequate English descriptions, an accurate taxonomy can be easy to navigate/understand. In fact, I think that taxonomic inaccuracy makes the site harder to understand.

And I do put the same importance on what you've been building as you do. Just like you, I think that this site should be accessible to people, regardless of their scientific knowledge. I just don't think that we need to sacrifice taxonomic accuracy to achieve this goal.

Saarlooswolfhound wrote:

Arguing semantics isn't going to help either, realize that we have members around the globe who's first language is NOT english. Please show a little more deference to those of different backgrounds.

There is a stigma against correcting people's English because people don't like to be told they are wrong. But people with bad English do need to be told they are wrong. It saves them from future embarrassment. Also, even though I understood the bad English, it actually changed the technical meanings of the sentences.

In fact, this error actually led to misunderstanding:

Kikimalou wrote:

banning someone is a legal gesture

I didn't understand why Kikimalou thought there was something legal about banning. TAW is not a country. It's not illegal to break TAW rules.

Kikimalou wrote:

Where did you read "pages needs to be moved to conform to Wikipedia" ? We are doing an effort... It's even not mandatory, because sometimes it's not the good idea. It doesn't mean we must blindly follow Wikipedia, Wikipedia has it's own life, it's own logic and we have ours.

And how am I supposed to know which pages should have Wikipedia titles and which ones shouldn't? If there is nuance, it should be included in the guideline. I interpret the guideline as meaning that pages should be moved to Wikipedia titles. You can't blame me for not seeing the non-existent nuance in that guideline. Maybe add that nuance to the guideline?

Saarlooswolfhound wrote:

we are all equals here

That wouldn't be true unless everyone was promoted to bureaucrat. It's especially not true since I'm blocked.

Spinosaurus wrote:

Allowing only collectors would bias the wiki in favour of toys that collectors are interested in

That's exactly how the Wiki should be biased. It's about toys, and for collectors. And of course there's going to be a bias toward the animals which are popular, and commonly made.
I mean, there's a LOT more wildlife collectors and farm collectors and prehistoric collectors who regularly use it as a reference to ID something they have, or use the pictures to make decisions on what to buy next, than there are people who are going to visit the site and think 'Oooh, fantastic, penis worms are getting equal attention on the main page, I'm going to learn a lot about those today.'

Spinosaurus wrote:

You think that taxonomic accuracy should be compromised to make the site easier to understand. I think that that approach creates more problems then it solves. I see no conflict between taxonomic accuracy and ease of understanding. I know that many people don't understand many scientific names, that is why we use English descriptions. As long as we have adequate English descriptions, an accurate taxonomy can be easy to navigate/understand. In fact, I think that taxonomic inaccuracy makes the site harder to understand.

And I do put the same importance on what you've been building as you do. Just like you, I think that this site should be accessible to people, regardless of their scientific knowledge. I just don't think that we need to sacrifice taxonomic accuracy to achieve this goal.

Would you feel any better about it if the 'By Taxonomy' link said 'By Species' instead, removing what you see as an essential need to follow all current taxonomy to the letter, and letting people have species grouped in ways which are already familiar and understood, but not always scientifically precise? As you've been told again and again but seem to ignore, the site's supposed to cater to the general public (of any intellectual level) and work for all users, from children up. Working, from our point of view, isn't educating people on animal classification, it's helping people who may have very little pre-existing knowledge on the subject, find their toy animal's identity. If having words like 'Mammal' and 'Reptile' on the front page helps, or grouping the more obscure and infrequently made species into a shared page, surely that's fine? It's not offensive, it's not misleading, it's just making it easy and obvious to navigate by putting the common toy species right where they can be seen clearly.

It seems to me as if you've come across a site which isn't what you think it should be, and want to change it, wilfully ignoring the fact that others don't share the same vision, and have their own long-established idea of what the site should focus on and how visitors should use it. Editing by the collecting community to help fill in the pages is one thing (and my thanks are forever with the team who dedicate so much time to doing this!), but editing to fit your own opinion on what the site should be - see above quote where you state it shouldn't be biased to toys collectors are interested in, when that's it's entire reason to exist - is starting to look like some sort of takeover bid or coup

I would love to reply to everything but it is impossible.

1. Why a project like Toy Animal Wiki was opened?
- It was opened to help collectors to find more information about animal figures, brands, series, etc.

2. Why was it happened as a wiki instead of being a regular website as many other toy animal figure themed guides?
- It is an "ambitious" project to list all animal figures ever released. It is actually impossible but at least we want to list as many as we can and it can never be a one person project. Thus, a wiki allowed to introduce other contributors/editors and consequently a more abrangent guide for collectors.

3. Why do we have a taxonomy section?
- Can you tell me how many toy animal collector websites allows a collector to find all figures of a certain species or breed? Probably none. We decided to offer it as an extra feature. A collectors guide doesn't need a section like this one to be a good online reference.
We assumed it and it could easily be just a list of animal names sorted alphabetically in a category. It would work and it was much but much easier. Considering how TAW is currently, it would look like this:
- Aardvark, an extant mammal
- Abaco Barb, a horse breed
- Abalone, the name used in gastronomy for moluscs of Haliotis genus
- Abelisaurus, a theropod dinosaur known from the Late Cretaceous
- Abyssinian cat, a breed of cat
- etc.
This salad of creatures would be helpful enough, easy for collectors, visitors and editors and we could list a unicorn, a Dickinsonia, an Apple tree or a rancher. All those have pages on TAW and obviously they're not all animals.
It would not be 100% corent too and surely it would not be interesting.
Thus, we decided to go for a bigger task, a more systematic thing were creatures with some afinities could be grouped in a coerent way and intuitive for collectors.
As the big core of this collecting hobby is about animal figures, we went for a taxonomy based layout. It does not intend to represent a complete taxonomic tree and taxonomic levels have been added as long as they are needed.
You easily can see in that short list that there's no aardwolf. It is just because a page for aardwolf is not needed because we don't know a mass produced figure of it or at least we haven't listed a single aardwolf figure yet.
As long as more figures have been added, more species or creatures needed pages and consequently we needed to find a place for them. We faced new challenges and sometimes a specific taxon was not the best solution. Ediacaran Biota is a good example, where to put those creatures when their classification is quite questionable and sometimes we are not even sure they're living creatures? As they are just a few and they are often featured in sets about the same subject, Ediacaran Biota seemed a good option.
Look at the Legendary Creatures. they're listed at the end of the Animal page. Does it make any scientific sense? Certainly not. What could we do? Open a direct link for them in the main page, giving to them an importance similar to the real living beings? I don't think so and we would need to do it to every exception.
Thus, a taxonomy section on TAW does not intend to reflect the most scientific accurate and complete approach and it needs to be adjusted according to the reality of the toy animal hobby.

4. Why using Wikipedia as a source?
It was effectively my personal idea to use Wikipedia as a source. Though, I haven't used my editor tools and started changing everything, I discussed it with the most active editors at the time and explained my reasons.
When you work collectively in a project like this one, it is important that we all use the same language and methods. It will facilitate the job of the other editors.
I've been monitoring other less experienced editors and it allowed me to perceive some aspects and difficulties.
A recurrent editor's doubt was, - how should we call this species? Using the most commonly accepted English name, using its scientific name, the American English version or British? How boring is it when you have to ask other editors which name to use for a species? ... a waste of time too.
So what ahppened constantly, some speciies pages were duplicated with different names and the figures of a certain species were divided in different pages. It is terribly confuse and a mistake, of course.
So, if we decide to use the same source to name these pages, we don't risk opening useless pages and we avoid these mistakes.
A traditional example is Cougar. Wikipedia uses Cougar, I have no idea why but if every editor knows Wikipedia is our source, every editor will use Cougar. So, nobody will open a page called puma, another called Mountain lion, etc. These pages now all redirect to cougar but it does not happen with every common name of every single species.
It has worked for many other sections and it's been incredibly successful and useful. The number of mistakes has reduced a lot in this regard.
You're right that not the whole Wiki is matching the names used on Wikipedia and they're really more important for species, genera, families and so. Some need to be changed but always carefully to avoid multiple redirects and unneeded broken links.
A good example is the Gray wofl, Canis lupus is now redirecting to a page called Wolf on Wikipedia and it needs to be changed on TAW if we want to match the Wikipedia entry. The Wikipedia page was renamed recently and that's maybe the only negative point of this system. Though, despite being a page with more than 100 figures, it is not a complex task but also not an emergency.
Another reason why we use Wikipedia, is to allow editors to find easily a short text about each species or taxon. It also serves to avoid using references, notes and other complex things which require a more advanced editing skills level or excessive talk page discussions. So, if someone wants to find those references or other informations, that person should use the link we always provide to the corresponding Wikipedia article when it exists. Collectors are not visiting TAW to find in which scientific book we've found the information about the average weight of a wild boar.
Interestingly, while the taxonomic section is increasing constantly on TAW, the layout of the pages have been gradually simplified what is a good decision in my opiinion and we are also replacing most of the scientific names by common names, something not consensual but more adjusted to the real purpose of this wiki.

5. Should our contributions on Wiki be devoted to our personal tastes or collecting interests?
When talking about structural or functional aspects, of course not. For example, as I told before, unicorns shouldn't be listed on TAW. Though, that's just a personal opinion. We were requested by other collectors to open a section for this kind of creatures and since a good number of collectors agreed, it was opened. It is not a prioritary section on TAW but fortunately a collector of this kind of figures offered to work specifically in that section and it avoided other editors from spending their precious time with a section out of the main interests.
On the other hand, we received suggestions and also editing help to open a section for plushes but the large majority did not agree and the project was abandoned.
I opened myself a section for pig breeds, is it relevant to me? No, I don't collect domestic pigs. Though, after a few discussions on forum and the fact the companies are releasing more and more different breeds instead of generic pink pigs, it turned into something unnavoidable.
It is not because we are devoted pig breeders but because it turned an interesting collecting subject to a certain group of collectors and also because the toy animal industry is changing and offering more diversity either in domestic or wild animal figures.
It is not the personal taste of a editor/collector what determines the way, it is the toy animal collecting hobby as a whole. If you don't understand the phenomenon, you'll never be a useful editor.
These examples are not so problematic because they represent other collecting areas. But when you or someone intends to change a structure whichh influences the entire Wiki, we can't start doing it and revert later. It needs to be discussed to see if the positive points make it worth against the negative points.
We don't discuss it on Wiki pages as it happens with Wikipedia because we are talking about two compltely distinct editor communities. Wikipedia has more than 30 millions of editors and we have less than 100 and often less than 10 edit regularly. So, the best place to discuss about a wiki dedicated to the toy animal hobby, is a forum related with the subject and preferrably when it is the forum where this project has been developed.
There's a good exception to the point 5. The figures we get, are surely about our personal collecting interests, if they are not on TAW, we surely should introduce them. Actually, this is the best way to a new editor start working on TAW.

Some great responses here from the community. This has definitely been a learning experience for all of us.

In the past I have been reluctant to make membership in STS forum a requirement since not everyone enjoys forum interaction and I didn't want to exclude anyone who is involved in other venues. This experience however has made it clear to me we need to be more diligent about requests to be editors so we have a better idea who people are and what interests they have before allowing access. All of this discussion could have happened prior to any changes having been made. Spinosaurus' unhappiness about the ban could also have been avoided had I been more diligent. We should seriously consider adding criteria and timeframe to editor requirements and making that explicit on the wiki.

The comment by George above makes me wonder if we should in fact change the name of the taxonomy section. Instead of By Taxonomy maybe it should be By Animal as the broadest generic name for the area. It might help avoid people getting the idea that the classification scheme must fit a particular profile, when in fact it is of our own devising.

Spinosaurus your ban was a generic indefinite one but with the open ended possibility of reinstatement. I placed it not knowing if you would simply disappear or choose to take part in discussion. I am glad you have opted to talk with us, and as mentioned we have learned things from this discussion. Your focus on having the ban removed is distracting from the discussion of other aspects of the situation. To clarify the ban situation I am going to set a minimum of March 1 2023 as the earliest possible date for ban removal. That will give plenty of time for us to get to know you, and for us to develop the necessary trust in your understanding of our purpose and goals to consider allowing you editing access again. The ban removal will not be automatic. It will require agreement from the senior editing staff at that time. I don't know how old you are, but those of us who have been on the internet since it's earliest days know that much of the internet doesn't have rules until you find a need for them, and then you make up the rules on the go. Highly developed areas with vast user bases like Wikipedia have lots of rules in place. We don't because we are in a small slowly developing backwater of the internet. Much like a physical world backwater such as a wetland, there is a lot of interesting diversity in places like this. It is a bit wild at times though, as we see in this discussion thread. There is no such thing as grandfathering in something when a new rule comes out. Any new rules will apply to everyone upon adoption.

Thanks everyone for your interest and involvement. It's always great to know our little wiki has purpose and support.