User talk:William Harris/Archive 7

This is an archive of past discussions with User:William Harris. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

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Archive 5

All Apologies

Hey Will, thanks for the constructive criticism of my edit. I was pretty tired when I wrote it. I'll keep your comments in mind for the future. Rock on! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Billy Maize (talk • contribs) 00:30, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Second look

Just an FYI - Diff - see the full description in the File history section of the upload because the description is incorrect. There's also Crib and Rosa - two well known Old English Bulldogs. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 22:13, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

As always, citation required. Which expert WP:RELIABLE source has stated this? The cited source in the upload makes a clear distinction between the Bulldog and the Old English Bulldog - Crib and Rosa are stated as being (early model) Bulldogs. William Harristalk 09:23, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

The entire topic area is a mess, in big part, the result of common names being misinterpreted which is what we’re dealing with now. According to the Bulldog history published by both KC and AKC, the modern Bulldog (as well as a few other modern breeds) were developed from that type but for Pete’s sake, centuries old ancestry in today’s modern breeds may or may not be verifiable by DNA going back that far (as you have already demonstrated). The original English-bred bulldog (now extinct) is exemplified by the artwork of Crib and Rosa, as it is in other artwork depicting similar bull-baiting types. In an effort to avoid confusion, the history section and image captions should differentiate and provide a bit more clarity but the current caption for the Crib and Rosa image does not. We cannot depend on readers to click on the image, then click More Details, then scroll down to the File History and read the uploader’s description which states: Information . I don’t know if National Pure Bred Dog Day can be considered a RS in this instance because they obtained the image from WP:Commons, and that is probably where they saw Crib and Rosa described as Old English Bulldogs. That same image is used throughout the pedia in different languages, and associated with Old English Bulldog, as if it was a recognized breed of an extinct dog type. KC offers prints and they refer to it as the “Bulldog of the time”. I also believe the image captions/descriptions at Commons need updating. I am relatively active there, but our Dog Project needs a task force working together there as we have been of late in en.WP in an effort to clean-up the mess. BTW - thank you for your excellent contributions and for taking another shot at helping to achieve accuracy in the topic area. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 15:45, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

That would be the same AKC that describes today's Irish Wolfhound as a "once fearless big-game hunters capable of dispatching a wolf in single combat", and the same KC that advises that the breed was revived using "the few Irish Wolfhounds which had survived"? I have no faith in kennel club nor breed club myths and legends - these are not the solution, these are part of the problem. To me, these are WP:UNRELIABLE sources. You may amend it as you see fit; I have had enough of bully-type dogs on Wikipedia. William Harristalk 09:43, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

I hope your decision isn’t based on something I said, but if so, it wasn’t intentional. I was under the impression that we were collaborating well. If you have RS that dispute what the official breed registries have published, then by all means, add the material. I am open to doing whatever it takes to achieve accuracy. I telephoned AKC a few months back in an attempt to corroborate some of the history published on their website, and they explained that their information comes directly from the recognized breed clubs and their historically documented records. Again, I am open to any and all suggestions to make the project more efficient and our articles accurate. At the same time, I understand your frustration - the articles are a mess - and your input will be missed. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 13:31, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

No, it was nothing that you said. Due to dealing with sociopaths that find ways around Wikipedia's regulatory structure through using multiple IPs and VPNs, I decided some time ago to narrow my strategic interest down to just the "Origin of the domestic dog" and those Pleistocene wolves that may have given rise to her. Nobody has issues with those. Recently I have been asked to help bring the article "Wolf" up to FAC (section above), so I am committed to that even though it is outside my interest. When you left your message, I was in conflict on the Dog Fighting article where I sort to validate some of the stuff in Staffie (I should have stayed out of it), discovered that the entire bully-dog origins/dog-fighting is a complete mess based on unreliable sources or no sources at all, and had another visit from our anonymous east asian editor once again trying to convince everyone that the dog arose in China (and who is now blocked). I need to stay away from trying to improve the dog articles. It causes conflict and I invariably upset people. However, I now have a watch on WikiProject Dogs - something that I have not done in years - and will assist in voting on the removal sub-standard articles where I can. Keep up the good work. William Harristalk 22:17, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

Thank you, William. I can relate and fully understand what you are saying. When FunkMonk first sought your input, my past experiences with him told me that you must be a valuable contributor to the pedia. You not only lived up to my expectations, you surpassed them. I also want to mention my affinity for Corinne, an editor who apparently has positively touched both our lives. Tears make things blurry whenever I think of not being able to collaborate with her again - she was as perfect an editor as can possibly exist. And I have digressed, so back on point. My goal is to help strengthen WikiProject Dogs, hopefully by modeling after some of the positive qualities of WikiProject Medicine. I do so admire the professionalism and orderliness of their project pages, and the high level of accuracy throughout that topic area. Granted, dogs are not on the same level but there is no reason we cannot/should not create an environment within our project that is somewhat similar. I am pleased to know that you will remain part of it, even if your time there is limited - a little is better than nothing. Happy editing! ^Atsme _Talk 📧 00:56, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

The Wolf article

Hello, out of curiosity did you ever think of bringing Wolf to FA? LittleJerry (talk) 01:06, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

Hello LittleJerry, good work on the Plains zebra. The thought has crossed my mind a number of times, also with the Dog article. I have decided against the Dog article because it attracts the flotsam and jetsam of the internet, and at any point in time some sociopath can come along and change it as they like, and there is little to be done about it as they can simply change their IP addresses and continue on. I was in the process of bringing Dingo up to GA at the start of the year when exactly this happened! I just walked away from that article.

The (gray) Wolf is different - there is a group of committed and reasonable people with a long association there that form what I refer to as the "Wikipedia wolf pack", and they will staunchly defend that article against unreasonable edits. Some of them can also work together as a pack, demonstrated in early 2016 - Talk:Wolf/Archive 6#Article is extremely convoluted and too long. You would never get anyone over at Dog to work together similar to this. However, the task would be huge and I have formed the opinion that the best approached would be a "mini-project of interested people. The job would be too massive for one person, and there would be disagreements as to what should be included should an individual take it on.

There is still an unresolved issue from 2016 - should there be a Canis lupus article. It would appear that the extant grey wolf is a mutation that forms a monophyletic clade, it came out of Beringia less than 30k years ago, and it replaced all of the other lupus across Eurasia and North America except for the older-lineage Tibetan wolf and the Indian plains wolf both sheltered by the Tibetan plateau. The "Wolf article" is about that wolf. It does not cover Canis lupus, which would also include the Dog and Dingo, and the extinct "Pleistocene wolf" (which may yet prove to be the dog and dingo's direct ancestor, and may not yet be extinct!). William Harristalk 08:10, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

You should go for it. You put a lot of work into these articles and that should be recognised. Jts1882 | talk 15:27, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the vote of confidence, JTS. Recognition is not necessary - several years from now my contribution here will be long forgotten, lost in time, similar to my much-beloved ice age wolves. Another approach might be to validate and develop different sections of (grey) Wolf over a couple of years, then propose WP:FAC. It was LittleJerry that got the article recovered to GA back in 2011, and it has not moved since then. Maybe a couple more years in re-development would not hurt it. We have a template for its structure - Golden jackal being the only extant wild Canis at FA. I am unsure though, it would be a massive commitment of time and effort. William Harristalk 08:39, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

I rewrote and brought Elephant to FA status in a little over four months by myself. If you had two other editors joining you, it may not take as long as you think. LittleJerry (talk) 19:04, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

You are a prolific FA developer, as demonstrated by your many contributions. That would bring the approach back towards a mini-project. William Harristalk 21:57, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

By "mini-project" you mean collaboration? I've done those for all my FAs after elephant. LittleJerry (talk) 00:43, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Not just collaboration but also to plan what would need to be done, seek who would like to work on what for each stage, and then execute the stages, one by one. In this manner, if the process were to cease due to getting bogged down at some stage for some unpredictable reason, the article would at least have been given some improvement. William Harristalk 03:56, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Okay then. I personally think the article is pretty close to FA but the main issue would be spotchecking. By the way, I reverted your last edit, WP:NOTDIC refers to the entire article being about a word. Many animals have an etymology section. I hope that's alright. LittleJerry (talk) 14:08, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Butting in here, sounds like an exciting endeavor, I'd be happy to offer a pre-FAC peer review if this gets off the ground. FunkMonk (talk) 16:54, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

The revert - you know more about policy than I do, however regardless of policy I still believe that the link to Wikipedia's sister project Wiktionary does exactly the same job but more efficiently. I got rid of the Etymology section with Golden Jackal FA because it added nothing to that article - it is about humans and their words, not jackals - and because people were obsessing about its origins and meanings. It was simply axed, and nobody cared. Someone recently did the same over at Dog, nobody cared.

Hi Funkmonk, thanks for your support. I wondered when you would "materialise" - have you got the battle-"staffies" sorted out yet? (I still think that you are some sort of disembodied entity that inhabits the internet; you always turn up in the right place at the right time!)

I am not so sure that the article would pass GA in its current form, and the first stage might be to get it up to clearly that level. There are some things that would be done in a "GA revalidation" exercise that would also be required for FAC. As you are aware, our contributors read something of interest on a topic and simply add it to the article, whether it is in context or not. Addionally, there are those who have their "pet interests" - you can tell these as as there are sections from contributing articles that are way too big on Wolf, and take up an undue amount of real estate. The net result is that what you got over the line in 2011 may not get over it in 2019. It depends on the reviewer - if I were invited to conduct a GA Review of Wolf in its current state, I would not pass it.

There is a WP:GAR process, but I think we could gain the same through WP:peer review, just without the risk of demotion. And I'm not so much a disembodied entity as just someone who has your talk page watchlisted following prior communications, hehe. And since I've worked with both of you on complicated articles before, I'm sure you'd be the right people for this article. FunkMonk (talk) 03:27, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

I believe that LittleJerry and I have the experience to get the article to GA standard without an external process, and it mitigates the risk of failure. I am sure that once you get through with it at peer-review, it will be superb. It is good to have a neutral third party to advise us, for when Jerry and I reach our first disagreement........... :-) William Harristalk 03:36, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

For an example of a pretty horrible GA I and LittleJerry got to FAC, see the original (GA promoted in 2006) version of Ankylosaurus:[1] The dodo GA was also pretty bad before I took t to FA:[2] I'd say wolf is in pretty good shape by comparison... FunkMonk (talk) 03:43, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps, but Wolf deserves the best we can offer her and her readers. Plus, the work done now saves on the work needed to be done later, which will be a time of greater pressure. I'd rather tackle issues at a leisurely GA than at a frantic FA. William Harristalk 08:32, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, FAC is the last step of course; with dodo, it took several months of work from the GA version before I took it to FAC. Until actual nomination, there of course is no real time pressure. FunkMonk (talk) 11:38, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Apart from the time pressure I place on myself to address the issues raised by our dear friends at peer review! I am happy with the current strategy - build up to GA and steady as she goes. Let us see what hold-ups we get from the wolf-page dwellers; someone is bound to be disgruntled. Sometimes it is best to sit back, say nothing, and let the pack fight among themselves for a while. William Harristalk 12:19, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Yes, that is the approach I have taken at the Mandate for Palestine GAN, which is why it is still ongoing several months later. And regardless of how contentious canids topics are, at least they don't seem to attract as violent, zealous disputes as the Israel/Palestine conflict (I hope). FunkMonk (talk) 12:58, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

I doubt anything can match that situation. William Harristalk 20:58, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

GA revalidation

On that note, some initial thoughts:

Structure: it would take little effort to replicate the structure of Golden jackal (at FA). Else, we could take a well respected reference on Wolves (say Dave Mech, or Mech & Boitani) and replicate the structure of that book, which may reveal some gaps in what needs to be included in a thorough wolf coverage, and what is currently included that might not.
Size: Wolf is way WP:TOOBIG at 172kb. "Too wordy" was one of the criticisms summarised at its loss of FA status. I would be happier with it being towards 120k - that would allow 80k for the article's content plus 40k for references, which would bring it down to around the same size as Golden Jackal (with both being a little larger than Dire wolf and Beringian wolf). The highly important - and growing in the public interest - section on Conservation is 34k by itself and warrants a WP:SPINOFF into its own article. One of the other editors may have an interest in then combining it with List of gray wolf population by countries to make a very fine article, as they are both on the same theme.
Size part 2: Back in 2016, I reduced Dog in size noticeably by moving material back to its various contributing articles, and later as a group we had limited success with Wolf because it does not have as many other contributing articles to relocate back to. One we do have is Hybridisation with other Canis - we have 7.3kb on a topic that is not about the wolf but the hybrid offspring that no longer bear its name. A section is warranted, but not this undue amount. There are other sections under Relationships with humans where much content could be moved back to the contributing article, as they are detracting from the main topic - the wolf. At 20k, Relationships with humans might be WP:SPINOFF, and along with Conservation would deliver a size reduction of 55k, then we would need to add back some kb with two short sections that introduce these topics in the main article.
Graphics: All need to be revalidated for legality, before NikkiMara goes to work on them at FAC. Some may not be illustrating the topic and need replacement or removal.
Copy violations and broken links to articles - a scan by the two relevant pieces of software will do the trick.
Lack of "Sourcing", and use of "more journal refs" - two points of the criticisms summarised at its loss of FA status. That would be the "spotchecking" you mentioned above, to be conducted after moving text back to the contributing articles.

My thoughts are that once these GA-level issues are addressed, we could then consider the next stage. If we proceed, then it would be wise to let the other editors at Wolf know that we are undertaking a "GA revalidation". We may even attract some volunteers (.....he naively wrote in hopefulness.....). William Harristalk 22:24, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Okay, If you're up for it. I would be able to fix up sources and images. I was also referring to accurate representation of the sources. LittleJerry (talk) 03:14, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

I would not mind receiving $1 for every reference that I have checked only to find that the author said no such thing! Image check would be excellent, thanks. I am most happy for you to commence on validation - a huge undertaking. We might attract some reliable helpers and I suspect that some may even have copies of the texts that have been referred to.

Do you have any additions for inclusion in this first stage? I shall shortly put up a section in Wolf to outline what we are about to do for the "GA revalidation" - we don't want to startle the wolf-pack into a fight-or-flight response. William Harristalk 03:29, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Oh sorry for the confused wording. I would format the sources but I'm afraid I can't actually check the sources. I'm assuming the "wolf pack" can do that. I would also include changes to the "Diet" section so that it starts with discussion of more common prey (ungulates) and then the rest. LittleJerry (talk) 04:18, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

I thought you were being a bit ambitious too early but I did not want to restrain you! Yes, validation can be done at a later stage - it will be an FA requirement, and it certainly needs to be done before those pirates in "peer-review" get hold of it. Hopefully we will get some helpers for that. Also wording, grammar, syntax - a later stage. Let's get it into some basic shape first. William Harristalk 05:06, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Notice has been put up on Wolf. Now we wait for the weekend over in North America to pass, people to return to their normal routines, and the first few yaps of approval and growlings of disapproval...............welcome to the world of the wolf, LittleJerry. William Harristalk 10:21, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

LittleJerry, when the work begins post-weekend I would like to remove the two notes from the article. Note (b) has been around for a while and corrects an old idea not recognizing that the pack structure formed in zoos does not reflect the pack structure formed in the wild, and any explanation should be in the article's text or the note simply removed. As for note (a), this article relates to the taxon in nomenclature - Canis lupus - rather than the taxonomic classification assigned by Wozencraft that includes the dog and dingo. These two dogs are mentioned under taxonomy, which should suffice. (The issue is that a number of editors here in the past have confused taxonomy with nomenclature.) William Harristalk 21:46, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Well LittleJerry, it is 3:30am in beautiful Seattle, the North American weekend has passed, and so none of my North American cousins can claim that we "bush-wacked" them by making changes while they were out hiking, camping etc. It is time to start. William Harristalk 10:43, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

I think the conservation section could still be expanded. It should be atleast as big as the one in golden jackal. LittleJerry (talk) 17:44, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

I hope you don't mind the couple restructuring I did. I know you're modeling it after golden jackal but it is the standard that distribution be separate from things like behavior and reproduction. I don't mind keeping the rest the way it is. LittleJerry (talk) 18:04, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

There are a number of sections that need expansion. Conservation was not really addressed in the article as it stood, apart from mentioning some of the legislation, and undefined statements such as "protected in Greece" without stating to what degree or under what legislation. And yes, it should be more like jackal. Similarly, the section that I had originally labelled foraging. They scavenge on carcasses they find, not mentioned. They eat some plant matter, and have 2 copy numbers of the amylase B gene for processing plant starch, the same number as Huskies and other arctic breeds, not mentioned. These actions are foraging, and where I intended to take that section. What we have is a Hemmingway-esque big game hunt, because that is all some editors wanted to contribute here. This article needs a bit more work than you first anticipated to bring it up to what I would regard as FA.

Restructure - I am not concerned with what other genus GA and FA articles do, see also the structure of Dire wolf and Beringian wolf. The habitat dictates the prey. The prey available (and the prey's behaviour) dictates the predator, as does the cooperators and the competitors - why are there no grey wolves in Africa? Both habitat and prey impact on the behaviour of the predator in that habitat. These topics are certainly linked, and no, I disagree with your restructure. Perhaps before you change my edits you might like to chat to me about it here first, rather than after. William Harristalk 21:54, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Okay. I apologize. I changed it back and will leave structure to you from now on. LittleJerry (talk) 22:28, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

I believe that some of our differences are based on you dealing with the article as it stands today, whereas I am dealing with how it will be in the final form in the future. I have had a rethink about how I will put up the "foraging" text, and have decided that it would better sit under the section on "Diet", thus also minimising changes. Please feel free to change the section name "Foraging" back to "Hunting" as you had it - that section fully covers one of the main reasons why visitors probably come to this article. William Harristalk 22:55, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

I will do another round of looking though the sources and making the formatting more consistent tommorrow or this weekend. I feel like the sources are a good mixture of peer reviewed papers and professionally written books. Don't forget that the article has changed alot since its FA removal. LittleJerry (talk) 21:32, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. The article has changed, however I believe the standard for what is acceptable at FA has also risen since then. My concern is that it may not be a thorough treatment of the topic. We will certainly find that out at both peer review, then FAC. William Harristalk 22:05, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Do you know if there's a bot that arranges cites so that they all have the author's name first than year, etc? I think that's all we need to do for source formatting. LittleJerry (talk) 22:34, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

No, I haven't heard that this technology exists on Wikipedia.

You have just moved all of my references out of the Reference section and scattered them throughout the body of the text. (1) it added no value to the article (2) they were all of my references, therefore they did not need to be validated (3) once validation commences, those references that are validated I move into the Reference section as I go, that is my process (4) they were nicely laid out for the FAC reviewer who focuses on references. Fortunately, I will be able to recognise them by name alone. As you have discovered with my friend and patroller Dger, you will need an edit summary at all times for this article. My further advice, should it occur; on no account get into a scrap with Mario - there are only 2 "Late Pleistocene wolves" who prowl this article. Currently he is showing his flag of support for our efforts. William Harristalk 22:43, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, but I moved the sources into the article to make them consistent with the rest. I tried to do the opposite but there were a lot more journal/articles cites scattered in the article body than on the list. The list had 31 cites and the rest of the (non-bibliography) cites were in the article, around 130. I felt it was easier to remove the list. LittleJerry (talk) 23:46, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

No apologies necessary; this is my personal preference which worked well in the past, and you were not aware of it. I will rebuild it as I progress with the review - ultimately all of the references will reside in the Reference section. Now for the good news on the references. I already know what I contributed, which is reliable. Everything by Heptner will have been provided by Mario, which is reliable. Everything by Mech, or Boitani & Mech, appears to be contributed in a semi-academic manner, so that is worth taking a risk on as being reliable. Some text will be moved back to other articles, and some new text added. My focus will then be the other 50% of the references, which brings the amount of work required in the next stage down considerably. William Harristalk 08:39, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

I think we're done with source formatting for now. Need anything else? LittleJerry (talk) 21:09, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Good work Jerry. That will do for now, thanks. I have been side-tracked on the Red wolf article, and now I need to sort out the Wolf article's "Hybridisation" (of which I was the largest contributer) and move the article down towards 120 kb. I am considering a spin-off of "Wolf communication" to match "Dog communication", reducing Wolf by 10 kb. Jackal does not have a communication section as it all fitted under "Social behaviour", but it is also not as well studied as Wolf on that subject. Do you have any thoughts on this proposed spinoff, please? William Harristalk 08:48, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me. So have one communication section with three paragraphs (visual, auditory, olfactory)? I was also thinking that the predator competition subsection should be reduced, I'll do a sandbox and get your approval. LittleJerry (talk) 19:52, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for that. The spinoff should allow some cross-referencing with the Dog communication article - these are the same species. Even with the spinoff, there will still be room for more subtle reductions because there is also more material yet to be included. William Harristalk 21:14, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Towards peer review

I feel like the current lead image looks artificial with the fencing in the background. How about File:Scandinavian grey wolf Canis lupus (cropped).jpg? LittleJerry (talk) 22:47, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

The Scandinavian type specimen originally classified by Linnaeus - smart thinking! Please progress; I also use that image over at Evolution of the wolf#Pleistocene wolves. William Harristalk 03:03, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Hello Mario, thanks for your edits and support on the Wolf article (I was aware that you were probably shadowing us from its commencement). We now move on to the next stage. I note that there are a number of entries in that article from Heptner, could you advise me if those were yours, please? William Harristalk 03:12, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Hi, I was certainly the one who added the Heptner citations back in 2011-2012. Mariomassone (talk) 07:45, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

P.S., I think the cooperation section could use a paragraph on ravens. I don't know how romanticised the relationship between these birds and wolves are, but it is frequently mentioned in literature. Mariomassone (talk) 07:49, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

P.P.S. I don't think the statement that Mowat's book is the first positive portrayal of wolves in popular literature is entirely accurate, as The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling did so sixty years before. As to the latter's impact on wolf portrayals, here's an interesting article coauthored by Mech: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324439691_Territoriality_and_Inter-Pack_Aggression_in_Gray_Wolves_Shaping_a_Social_Carnivore's_Life_History_Rudyard_Kipling's_Law_of_the_Jungle_Meets_Yellowstone's_Law_of_the_Mountainsi Mariomassone (talk) 07:57, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Mario, this means that I do not need to check the Heptner references. I did some research on ravens before I created the "Cooperation" section because I was hoping to find that they provided long-range aerial reconnaissance for the pack, but no. It would appear this is a one-way benefit - wolves kill game and eat their fill, crows follow them for the remains, wolves come back the next day for another course only to find a skeleton! Regarding Mowat, despite 3 citations appearing at the end of that section, it was only the author Steve Grooms who claims this statement on the wolf.org website - hardly a WP:RELIABLE source. I would be happy for you to delete those 2 sentences, and even happier for you to include the The Jungle Book along with the classic "For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack", and perhaps with a link to Law of the jungle. The Mech reference highlights something that has been missed in this article - a wolf pack's biggest competitor is a neighbouring wolf pack! You might like to drop that into the first sentence under "Competition" with the Mech reference in support. Now is a good time to raise all of your grievances with this article.

There are a number of references to the 2 books in the "Bibliography" section by Mech 1981, and Mech & Boitani 2003. Could you advise me if those are yours as well, please? William Harristalk 09:20, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

The two Mech references are mine, yes. I'll see what I can do with Mowat/Kipling. Mariomassone (talk) 12:35, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

I thought that was you by your grammatical style (Oxford Grammar); that is more that I do not need to validate. Thanks for your work on the Jungle Book; it also gives the article's watchers a break from the tidal wave of edits from either LittleJerry or William Harris. There is much dubious or unreferenced material in the article, which may take some time to sort out before peer review is due. I intend on being brutal - non-validation will lead to removal. William Harristalk 22:15, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Mariomassone, LittleJerry - editor Mongo has raised an important point on Talk:Wolf. In what "language" should we badge the article? Mario uses fine British English, and you Michigan boys will probably opt for good old US of A. I'm a South Australian, we have a foot in both camps and both spellings are becoming accepted here, so I am ambivalent. The article as it stands is a hybrid. One discussion we had at the golden jackal FA was the suggestion that an old world species should have the old world version of English. I did not go down that track at that time because I had assumed, based on population alone, that US readers would probably dominate. Now I realise that British English is spoken across much of the Commonwealth of Nations, which easily has the biggest population. However, I do not believe that the extant grey wolf is an old world species, Beringia (I am waiting on the publishing of a persuasive article that has sat in peer review for over one year!) spanned both continents, so it is not clear. Your thoughts, please? William Harristalk 09:09, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

I would argue that it should be American or Canadian English since those are the only majority English(first language)-speaking countries were wolves are extant. I wouldn't mind doing Canadian, which is sort of a mixture of US and UK spellings. Isn't there a bot that would take care of this? LittleJerry (talk) 14:57, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

That is a very good point. Canadian English looks exactly like our variant. I do not know of any bots that might spell-check in "Canadese", and we might have to copy the article into Word and spell-check for that. (One of the FA reviewers is Canadian and we might approach her to assist with that.) William Harristalk 04:58, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

All for Canadese, though I'm not overly familiar with it. Feel free to correct my edits if they're too UK. Mariomassone (talk) 16:36, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Just out of interest, the person who created the article back in 2001 was a South African. No wolves in SA at all! William Harristalk 21:33, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Hello Mariomassone and LittleJerry. Thanks for amending my work to date; I am too close to it to notice minor grammatical errors etc. After badging the article with Canadian English yesterday I was expecting some sort of resistance from our American cousins - them channeling the "Spirit of 1776" with drums beating, banners waving, and muskets at the ready! What I got was a thank-you from editor Mongo. I will not initiate a large-scale language review through our Canadian friend until I have finished reviewing the article and have moved all of the references safely out of the text area so that just the text area can be converted – we do not want to change the names of the references from what they are into Canadese by an automatic Find-Replace command in a text editor. The refs that have been moved safely under the refs section to date total 20kb in size already, so their final size will be large.

You will have noticed that I am converting gray/grey wolf to simply "wolf" as I go, to be in accord with the article’s name and to remove any future “uninformed edits”. Despite the move to Canadese, I am not sure what to do with "known as the gray/grey wolf" in the first sentence. Perhaps we leave that for Peer Review/FA Review direction, remove it altogether, or seek Funkmonk's advice shortly - your thoughts please? William Harristalk 22:17, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

I don't "Cooperation" is notable enough to have a subsection to itself. I think you should trim it and merge with Competition which could be renamed something like "Interpredatory relations". LittleJerry (talk) 14:57, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

It is quite small, although fascinating. From the TOC, I am not sure 90% of our readers would understand what the term "Interpredatory relations" was referring to. Perhaps me might leave it until peer review and see what those guys think? (I can hear Funkmonk "te-he"-ing in the background already)...............William Harristalk 00:54, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

For foraging, I think you should add some information on other hunting strategies with non-ungulates. For example, this article documents wolves ambushing beavers. There most also be a way they catch fish. LittleJerry (talk) 04:55, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

I entirely agree. As interesting as the "big game hunt" is, my sandbox is drawing more from Heptner and Mech, and I will be looking wider to try to match foraging strategies with the foods that we have stated earlier that they eat. Any other sources that are given in the references of your article I will follow up on. William Harristalk 09:25, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Southeastern China: Hello Jts1882, thanks for your support on the Wolf page. Back in 2017, I cited there that wolves existed across mainland China, using A Guide to the Mammals of China, the later review by Wang 2016, and also Larson 2017 who put his career on the line by speaking out in a paper on his own in support of Wang. I got no response, nobody wanted to talk about it, nobody recognised it. It was similar to those scholars in the West who were reluctant to accept the work of Chinese scholars and who Larson had spoken against, and in particular that wolves existed in southeastern China. Let us see if together we can get some traction this time. William Harristalk 13:16, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Addressed. William Harristalk 1par:23, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

Back to foraging. I think it should be renamed "hunting" or "hunting strategies". Foraging seems more appropriate for herbivores or insect eaters not an ultimate predator. Maybe we can also make it a sub-subsection of diet as well. LittleJerry (talk) 00:35, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

I have just dealt with some dog-related activities and am now back to editing Wolf. I partially agree with you. Let me first search to see if enough coverage exists on non-huntdown activies. It would be peculiar to talk about "hunting" a fish, and impossible to "hunt" berries and other fruits. However, there may be no significant coverage of these activities to warrant entry into an encyclopedia. William Harristalk 00:45, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Okay, could you also add a one of your wolf cladograms to the taxonomy section? I also think the evolution subsection said briefly mention where dogs came from. Just a few sentences. LittleJerry (talk) 21:10, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Will do. I have had this in mind for a while, but will leave it to the last minute as I am waiting on a research consortium to publish a certain paper. Interestingly also, a new mDNA study places the dog as being an older lineage than the extant wolf! I did a little research on the specimen of dog they used - mDNA haplogroup F, only found in Japan, therefore a dog and extinct Japanese wolf hybrid from back in the past. Given that the Japanese wolf was a descendant of a Pleistocene wolf that predates our modern lupus, I assume that is how they got this result. They knew this before they started - their purpose for doing this is not clear. (Nonetheless, there is a small Shiba Inu girl dog trotting around the isle of Honshu with a maternal DNA lineage that clearly states "I am a Japanese wolf!" The amazing world of evolutionary biology..................)

The hunting section which I am now focusing on will require the most research effort in this article, given that the process of hunting currently given is synthesis. Someone, somewhere, will have this process explicitly stated. William Harristalk 09:40, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

My diligence has paid dividends - Mech, David L.; Smith, Douglas W.; MacNulty, Daniel R. (2015). Wolves on the Hunt: The Behavior of Wolves Hunting Wild Prey. William Harristalk 12:54, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Hows it coming? LittleJerry (talk) 19:20, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

Slowly. Apart from a life and commitments outside of Wikipedia, I get pinged from the dog project to assist with some issues. Additionally, Mech indicates that the wolf uses different strategies for different game, calling into question the entire synthesis that is the "Hunting/Foraging" section on the Wolf page. A full review of that section is in order, and I anticipate that this will be the most difficult section of the preparation. I note that you have been very active in the sections following "Hunting", which is most helpful. I would be pleased if you could tackle the lede of the article so that it reflects what is now the content. If you are then eager to press on further, you might nominate it for peer review and deal with the editor's comments - I will continue development in the background. No rule says that we cannot do both at the same time. Post the peer review, we can convert the text into "Canadese" and invite the Guild of Copy Editors (the "Spacing Guild"!) to go over it. Then it will be ready for FAC. William Harristalk 09:42, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

I'll look at Competition and Conservation first. I still think that "Cooperation" still be shortened and merged with Competition. Maybe rename the subsection something like "Predator interactions". LittleJerry (talk) 17:00, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

On this we differ. Perhaps the way forward is to get the article ready just before FAC, and if peer review has not led to any change then I shall seek an independent opinion on this matter from a knowledgeable friend of ours - I will be happy with his decision. William Harristalk 21:36, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Do you mind if I ask FunkMonk for a third opinion on the subsection? LittleJerry (talk) 22:30, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

Please do, Jerry, I think that it would be now timely. He appears to have sneaked in a quick edit on Wolf before retiring for the night. William Harristalk 23:23, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

I hope you don't mind but I moved the sentence on the Custer wolf/coyotes to the part about wolves and coyotes and merged cooperation and competition of striped hyenas and wolves. I did not remove any information for either though. LittleJerry (talk) 17:09, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

When you convinced me to start down this Wolf FA path, I had a vision for how the final article would look. Regardless of what I foresaw, I must be cognizant of how its co-nominator views it. I have no concerns, thanks. William Harristalk 20:56, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Regarding the text that had formed Cooperation, the two coyotes probably better reflect their "cooperation" with the wolf for food, and yet the wolf did not drive them off which shows his intent in using them as his tools. The hyena observation seems dubious, and yet odd things happen with mammals. I once adopted a year-old feral pup that was living for at least 4 months in the bushland near our home. He had reverted into something wild and primitive, he operated only at night, did not trust humans but somehow slowly built trust with me. Being a black Labrador/Ridgeback, he would eventually grow into 45 kg of athletic muscle with lightning fast running speed. Earlier, on walks through the bushland, I soon realised that while out there he had bonded with an orphaned kangaroo joey with whom he would walk past without disturbing, but all of the other 'roos the joey now hung out with would flee. They had been two young ones on their own, a joey and a wolf-derivative pup. They remained "friends" into adulthood - I did not believe what my eyes were seeing. I think a similar thing may have happened between a wolf and a hyena when they were young and orphaned - they had bonded, and later when the wolf mated and produced a pack included his long-time friend. Life is strange. William Harristalk 23:56, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Peer Review

I think we should just remove the bite force chart. It takes up too much room and is unnecessary. Also the new "dentition" subsection has information on how the wolf holds its head. I think restoring it to what it was before but without the chart is simpler. LittleJerry (talk) 17:51, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

Please refer to the Peer Review page. The head was about to be relocated elsewhere, only I was too tired last night to progress any further, given that I had addressed most of the reviewers outstanding comments in only a few hours, which included rewriting sections of other articles as a base for them. William Harristalk 22:01, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

To answer your unasked question, because the "wolf phenotype" has existed since the Etruscan wolf nearly 2 million years ago. What we are dealing with in the modern (gray) wolf is that recent cranio-dental plasticity mentioned in the "Population structure" section. The Etruscan wolf cannot match that; he was not adapted to bring down a bison. William Harristalk 03:52, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

Hello FunkMonk and LittleJerry and Jts1882. Whilst we are experiencing the joys of peer review, I would like to raise an issue and seek your opinions. This is a big one, first raised a number of years ago when a project team formed to improve the Wolf article, but this issue went no further. Basically:

the Wolf article is about the wild subspecies - it has a species taxabox, which instead of listing those subspecies it provides a link to Subspecies of Canis lupus where all subspecies are listed
the Subspecies of Canis lupus also has a species taxabox - its scope includes both the wild and domesticated
the Dog article is about the domesticated subspecies familiaris - it has a subspecies taxabox
Canis lupus dingo is about that subspecies - it has a subspecies taxabox
New Guinea singing dog has a breed box with a breed standard, and links to Canis lupus dingo
(The Australian) Dingo has a subspecies box, although it should be set up as per the New Guinea singing dog pointing to Canis lupus dingo, as it too has an Australian breed standard and it is not a subspecies

Our attention is with the wolf side of things. I am of the opinion:

Subspecies of Canis lupus should be moved under the current redirect to Wolf that is titled Canis lupus
The only species taxobox should reside under Canis lupus because it is about the species
the Wolf article should have a subspecies taxabox with links to Canis lupus

Your thoughts please? William Harristalk 09:24, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

the Wolf article should have a subspecies taxabox with lists all of the extant wild subspecies only The subspeciesbox can't handle multiple subspecies. It has to have |subspecies=. I think the species taxobox still accurately reflects the classification of the wolf, even though the article doesn't cover the dog, which is stated clearly at the top of the article. An alternative would be to use the {{paraphyletic group}} template using Canis lupus and then list the included and excluded subspecies. A subheading could be added to the taxobox header to explain that the wolf refers to extant wild forms of Canis lupus.

The only species taxobox should reside under Canis lupus ... I don't think the name of the template matters, its just a means of providing an infobox including reelvant taxonomic information. The wild wolf is still Canis lupus whether we consider the wolf to be inclusive or exclusive of dogs and dingos.

Subspecies of Canis lupus should be moved under the current redirect to Wolf ... I'm not so sure about this. I agree with your suggestion from a logical perspective, but I think we should ask what is the expectation of someone typing "Canis lupus" in the search box. I think most people would be expecting an article on the "wolf", although you could counter wouldn't they just type "wolf" if that was the intent. Jts1882 | talk 09:52, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks JTS, I am impressed with the application of Template:Paraphyletic group/testcases - see the second example lower down on that page. William Harristalk 10:19, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure what the proposal is, to have a separate Canis lupus article from wolf? FunkMonk (talk) 11:17, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Yes, because the Wolf article only covers the wild subspecies - dog, dingo and New Guinea singing dog are not included. Before someone mentions that these have their own separate articles, so do all of the wild subspecies. William Harristalk 11:46, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

But how do the scopes differ between the two terms (wolf and Canis lupus)? Because the term wolf exudes the domesticated forms? Personally I'm more of a mergist, I think it is better for the readers if such very intertwined info is kept in one place. FunkMonk (talk) 11:49, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

I don't agree. I don't think you can compare dog and dingo to wild wolf subspecies as the former topics are notable enough have have their own articles beyond just being subspecies of wolf, as is the case with Asiatic lion (no longer considered a unique subspecies). In addition, the current wolf/lupus article being heavily weighed towards wild subspecies isn't a problem. Dinosaur focuses mainly on non-avian dinosaurs since that's what the average readers expects, but it does discusses birds were appropriate. LittleJerry (talk) 18:03, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

"...what the average readers expects..." - you raise a valid point. Coming to the Wolf page, would the average reader expect to see it as the representative of Canis lupus? I am leaning now more towards that it is, because the average reader is who this article is for. What sparked this thought-experiment off was that I took a look at the wolf's skull dimensions - they are completely meaningless in terms of the dog, which exhibits the most variable skull size in all of the Order Carnivora. William Harristalk 09:36, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

I again disagree. When the average person thinks "wolf" and Canis lupus, its the wild form. For most of recorded history, people were not aware that dogs were wolves and "dog" and "wolf" were separate in their minds. Linnaeus first classified Canis lupus as the wild wolf and the dog separate as Canis familiaris. Dogs weren't found to be descended from wolves until relatively recently. I don't think we should force a taxonomic view which doesn't correspond to common usage. LittleJerry (talk) 20:31, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Err, please read my comment again - we are in agreement on this point.William Harristalk 08:57, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Since you're working on it. I found this article with updated information on wolves in the Middle East. LittleJerry (talk) 20:41, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

I'm going to focus on other things for now. Let me know when you need help or are going to nominate the article. LittleJerry (talk) 01:36, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Jerry. The Status section, Eurasia: all of the references are dated, yet from my investigation these appear to be the best we have, so we will run with them. Similarly the range map in the taxobox - there is nothing that is both current AND authoritative, apart from the IUNC and I will be raising this on Talk:Wolf shortly. I shall review the Humans section, then have a final read over the entire article to get the grammar and syntax looking towards as if one person had written it. Then it will be co-nomination time; I estimate late November. It will sit in FAC over the festive season/holiday period, but that should not concern us - it was going to sit in FAC for a couple of months anyhow. William Harristalk 06:00, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

One more thing. Shouldn't it be noted that wolves try to single out an individual from the herd? LittleJerry (talk) 00:42, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

It is a topic I am deliberately avoiding. The previous text in the Hunting section was based on the earlier works of Mech, who based it on the reports of others plus his own. Mech 2015 p6 sent surveys out to 19 wolf biologists. The results were that although individual biologists described incidents of what they thought was a wolf strategy, across all of the surveys there were no common discernible strategies found, with most returns describing chases that were simple and straightforward - if the herd runs, attack the nearest one from behind. I am of the opinion that this is a controversial finding, and suggest it be left until other writers have had time to concur or challenge it. William Harristalk 11:29, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

We got new comments. LittleJerry (talk) 12:53, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

I personally think they're right in regards to the section "Adaptation". Its too nebulous a term. After all wouldn't the wolf's description and anatomy be an "adaption". Ecology and behavior sections are more specific but I wouldn't make such a major change without your thoughts. LittleJerry (talk) 21:06, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Hello Jerry, I did see them come in but thought that I would enjoy the weekend before commencing work on the next tranche. I recall assisting with Coyote Evolution when D brought Coyote up to GA standard - he has done a number of mammal-related FAs and a swag of GAs, so we must recognise his experience. On the other hand, some of his recommendations/comments border on OR as the sources did not state that - we must not generalise just to make something read a little simpler. I do not concur with your latest edits. If Dave Mech et al - after 40 years of field research - tells us that the most of the wolf's prey does not fear it, we should recognise that regardless of the wolf stereo-type portrayed in the media is. We then appear to shift from a wolf chase into a wolf attack - that is not what the source states.

I shall put my case about Adaptation on the project page and if there is no agreement then we shall do away with Adaptation. My focus is to get this co-nominated at least some time before Xmas! William Harristalk 09:03, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

As far as "fear". Academic writers may use creative language that would not be appropriate for a wiki article. LittleJerry (talk) 13:35, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

The 3 respected writers were not being creative, they stated the facts as they see it. Are you insinuating that David L. Mech has "got it wrong"? William Harristalk 08:08, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Withdrawing

I have just read the reviewer's latest comments. In my opinion, the article is about to be cast in that person's personal view of wolves regardless of the research and will attribute to the expert secondary sources things that they did not say in a bid to dumb the article down - changes have already been made to do just that. If people want a dumbed down version of Grey wolf they can already see one at https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf where at least they got the name correct. I can no longer contribute to this and will leave you to move the article to FAC because from here on I fear that I would only be a impediment to the direction now being moved in. We have come a long way together you and I and it has been quite an enjoyable ride, but I never had a watch on this article and Wolf is not where I belong. All the best, Jerry. William Harristalk 08:47, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

I wish you would reconsider. I have gone though the same frustrations in the past, but you have to compromise sometimes when doing FAC projects. I agree some of the comments are picky but there are others that would probably be pointed out in a FAC review. LittleJerry (talk) 15:28, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Hi, note that it is only a peer review, they are rather informal, and there is no "passing" or promotion, so nominators are much more in control of what they want to act on. I'd just take it to FAC and see what happens. Even there, it is fine to dismiss points brought up by reviewers if you can argue why. FunkMonk (talk) 15:43, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Dunkleosteus77 withdraw their comments from the PR and I archived it. LittleJerry (talk) 16:46, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

Canis lupus dingo

Maybe you should fix the error you re-introduced: "Cite error: A list-defined reference named "Jackson2019" is not used in the content (see the help page)." Bob Webster (talk) 13:49, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

You are correct and I had left an error, thanks for the alert. William Harristalk 23:22, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

The delisting of the Dingo is going to be unpopular in some cricles. While it makes sense in that the dingo is either a type of wolf or dog, it is a unique animal that deserved protection. Hopefully this doesn't lead to more hunting and killing of them. Jts1882 | talk 15:49, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

I entirely agree. In MSW3, Wozencraft recognised under lupus the subspecies familiaris [domestic dog] and dingo [domestic dog], because he believed that both were from domesticated lines but different enough to warrant separation into 2 subspecies. Additionally, DNA analysis shows the dingo and familiaris split from their common ancestor a very long time ago, which in my opinion warrants separate treatment. William Harristalk 19:37, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

The evidence seems clear that the modern wolf and domestic dog are seperate clades, unlike the domestic cat, which is embedded within the African wild cat. Bizarrely, the cat people recognise the domestic cat as a species (following some IUCZ guideline), while the dog is considered a wolf in dog circles. Even if the dog gets recognised as a species (which is surely a matter of time), the dingo has an awkward status. It would be a protected population within the 700+ million domestic dogs. Logic says a feral dog is not that important, but that could comdemn the dingo. Jts1882 | talk 20:28, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Jackson argues that similar to the cat, under ICZN rules the dog cannot be a subspecies of the wolf. There is a growing body of evidence showing that the dog is a descendant of the extinct Pleistocene wolf, not the modern Holarctic wolf that some refer to as the Holocene wolf. The genetic similarity to the modern wolf is due to admixture. If C. familiaris is re-recognised as its own species, then similar to Blumenbach 1799 we would have the two subspecies C. f. dingo and C. f. familiaris - nice if that were to happen. William Harristalk 21:54, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

My personal rant - over the next 50 years the planet will move towards plant-based food systems, like it or not. The pig, sheep, and cattle industries will collapse as uneconomical - the pig industry is on its way out already. Then, without a grazing industry nobody will care about suppressing dingoes and wolves, so they will multiply within their ranges. Without a grazing industry encroaching on natural habitat - even the reverse - a number of species currently headed towards extinction will not be doing so. William Harristalk 22:04, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

It’s that time of year!

Christmas tree worm, (Spirobranchus gigantic) ^{^Atsme _Talk 📧 16:34, 13 December 2019 (UTC)}
	Time To Spread A Little Happy Holiday Cheer!!
	I decorated a special kind of Christmas tree in the spirit of the season. What's especially nice about this digitized version: it doesn't need water won't catch fire *and batteries aren't required.
	Have a very Merry Christmas – Happy Hanukkah‼️ and a prosperous New Year!! 🍸🎁 🎉

Suggestion

	Suggestion
	I have an article in need of expansion the articles name is Anthropornis and I was wondering if you would assist in expanding it? Neomorph Xenomorph 08:25, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

Sorry my friend, I only deal in wolves/dogs and the natural forces that shaped them. William Harristalk 09:04, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!

~~~ Merry Christmas! ~~~
Joyeux Noël! ~ Buon Natale! ~ Vrolijk Kerstfeest! ~ Frohe Weihnachten!
¡Feliz Navidad! ~ Feliz Natal! ~ Καλά Χριστούγεννα! ~ Hyvää Joulua!
God Jul! ~ Glædelig Jul! ~ Linksmų Kalėdų! ~ Priecīgus Ziemassvētkus!
Häid Jõule! ~ Wesołych Świąt! ~ Boldog Karácsonyt! ~ Veselé Vánoce!
Veselé Vianoce! ~ Crăciun Fericit! ~ Sretan Božić! ~ С Рождеством!
圣诞节快乐！~ メリークリスマス！~ 메리 크리스마스!
สุขสันต์วันคริสต์มาส! ~ Selamat Hari Natal! ~ Giáng sinh an lành!

Hello, William Harris! Thank you for your work to maintain and improve Wikipedia! Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 22:52, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

Spread the WikiLove and leave other users this message by adding {{subst:Multi-language Season's Greetings}}

Merry Christmas

	Merry Christmas William Harris
	Hi William Harris, I wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas and a very happy and prosperous New Year, Thanks for all your contributions to the 'pedia this past year, –Davey2010^talk 01:07, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

Time calibrated cladogram

I've being working on a new feature to show time calibrated cladograms. I've used the cladogram in wolf as a test case. I think the branch lengths now match the times of divisions.

Gray wolf

110 mya

1.32 mya

1.62 mya

1.92 mya

2.74 mya

3.06 mya

2.62 mya

3.5mya

3.0mya

2.5mya

2.0mya

1.5mya

1.0mya

0.5mya

Present

There is also a new |image= parameter, which allows more control of where the image appears, to the right of the wrapped text and, in this example, aligned to the right. Mariomassone might be interested in this.

Anyway, I'll pass on seasonal greetings for a New Year of happy editing. Jts1882 | talk 20:35, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Absolutely brilliant, Jts1882! I will shortly be doing cladogram updates across the Canis related articles with this technology - don't forget about using Mya as per MOS:ERA. All the best for the coming New Year. William Harristalk 22:12, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Jts1882, your phylotree has been amended and appears at Evolution of the wolf#Wolf-like canids. William Harristalk 10:17, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

The times are no longer calibrated as the lengths are not correct. I'll look at updating it later. Do you mind if I invert the cladogram and place wolf and dog at the bottom rather than the top? Apparently the cladogram is rendered differently using the Safari browser on Apple devices and its really messed up with inner clades are at the top. Jts1882 | talk 11:28, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, an inversion is not a problem. William Harristalk 11:33, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

The cladogram at Wolf_update is the best I can do. They should be aligned except for the Pleistocene wolf whose line ends marginally earlier. The problem is the more recent divisions are too close together so there is no room for labels giving times. I suppose some sort of log scale could be possible or just use a different time interval for the last 100k years.

Note that I've added the numbers in |label= parameter (above the line) to aid calculating the lengths. If you add all the lengths along a lineage they should add up to 350 (for 350Mya). The "x" labels mean take the number of the branch above. Obviously these need removing but its tricky gettting the numbers right. Jts1882 | talk 14:30, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Time-calibrated cladogram update

3.5 mya

3.0 mya

2.5 mya

2.0 mya

1.5 mya

1.0 mya

0.5 mya

Present

2.62 mya

Himalayan wolf
/Tibetan wolf

Indian
plains wolf

†Late Pleistocene
wolf

Modern gray wolf

Dog

30 kya

80 kya

120 kya

240 kya

380 kya

600 kya

960 kya

2.0 mya

2.5 mya

3.0 mya

3.5 mya

Here is an update, which I think is the best possible given how the HTML tables are rendered. There is a slight misalignment for the inner clades where the tables are all scrunched up. One possiblilty might be to show the last million years on a different scale.

Good work JTS. I for one like the crunch at the end, it illustrates that something major in Canis evolution is happening over the last 240,000 years. This is now being relocated to "Evolution of the wolf". Many thanks! William Harristalk 21:06, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Happy New Year!

William Harris,
Thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia, and a Happy New Year to you and yours! CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 01:09, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

– Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year}} to user talk pages.

The countdown

William, thank you for the work you do, and for all you’ve done over the years in an effort to build a quality encyclopedia! It has been a pleasure collaborating with you as a member of WP:WikiProject Dogs

2020!!

Out with the old, in with the new!! I'll remember 2019 like it was yesterday!
Remember, a New Year's resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other.
Definition of a hangover: Wrath of Grapes.
What kind of doctor fixes broken websites?

A URLologist.

🎉🥂🍾🎊 ^Atsme _Talk 📧 13:46, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Happy New Year, William Harris!

Happy New Year!

William Harris,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.
–Davey2010^Talk 00:15, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.

Cleaning up Wikipedia

Hello User:WilyD, thanks for taking a look at the attempted speedy deletion of Draft:Tazy, and I understand the requirement. Do you have any advice for me as to how I can get meaningless redirects like this one deleted, please? William Harristalk 00:48, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

In principle, WP:MFD can be used to discuss deleting anything that doesn't have a dedicated discussion board. In practice, it might be worth asking whether it's worthwhile (as it stands, I think it's very likely it's redirecting anyone who goes there to what they're looking for). Of course, it's a bit of a weird case, and you might ask User:JJMC89 why they redirected it in the first place - usually, a draft like that would get G14 deleted after six months. Wily D 06:02, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
The correct venue would be WP:RFD. I redirected it because it was a duplicate to an existing page. There are many redirects from the draft namespace to mainspace. For those that are from moves, WP:RDRAFT says that they should not be deleted. (I am not watching this page, so please ping me if you want my attention.) — JJMC89 (T·C) 06:18, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for both your advices, and the deletion. William Harristalk 19:55, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

Template:Dog opentask

Hello User:Primefac, some people got together and recently WikiProject Dogs transitioned from semi-active to active once again. Regarding Template:Dog opentask, how does one go about updating the list of open tasks, please? The stubs Huntaway and Tyrolean hound are now at Start class, there is a call for a picture of the Chiribaya Dog that went extinct 700 years ago (which may prove difficult), and the project will be looking at new priorities shortly. William Harristalk 10:56, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

If you have an editor with TPE permissions, they can just edit the template directly. If not, and there is someone who is willing to take responsibility for maintaining the template, I can drop the protection down to semiprot so that any confirmed editor can edit. Primefac (talk) 11:53, 9 January 2020 (UTC) (please ping on reply)

User:Primefac, I would take that responsibility, but we do have one template editor available in the project, which is a more elegant - and risk-adverse - solution. Many thanks. William Harristalk 12:09, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello Mac, can we call on your services to amend Template:Dog opentask by removing the Stubs: Huntaway and Tyrolean hound, and the call for a pix of the Chiribaya Dog, please. Further changes can be referred to the project Talk page for discussion and prioritisation once the holiday period comes to a close. William Harristalk 12:17, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Done I've removed the three items. Please check the changes are correct. Jts1882 | talk 12:59, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

While Jts1882 beat me to the update, I would actually suggest taking it down to semi-protected. WP:CUE has a big ol' to-do list of this sort, and its never been vandalized, but it it has been maintained by multiple editors. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 17:02, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Jts and Mac, and here I was thinking that Jts has way too many things to do with the huge number of Tree-of-life associated phylo-templates that are in development.

Given that:

very few know how to find the template (it took me a while, and I half-know what I am doing here on W in the Dogs project pages)
the 3 of us to watch over it
the template is part of the Dogs project, which is now gearing up once again and will get busy

I will request that User:Primefac consider making it semi-protected, and we will see how it goes. William Harristalk 20:33, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Done. Primefac (talk) 15:09, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Many thanks; my Watch is in place. William Harristalk 22:00, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Dog Opentask back in operation

Atsme, Cavalryman, Justlettersandnumbers - we now have Template:Dog opentask available for amendment. At present I have no thoughts on who or how it might be managed but it certainly is in need of an update. I expect that it will tie in with the Importance Scale topic that I placed on the Dogs project Talk page and which I shall call for comment commencing Monday, 20th January when the "holiday-makers" should have all returned. If you look under Wikipedia:WikiProject Dogs/Assessment, the table to the right, all of those items now sitting under the NA column were tidied up by myself recently - before that we had many redirects, categories, and disimbags classified at importance= high, mid, or low rather than at NA.

I suggest that requesting "articles for creation" is something that is left over from the days when the Dogs project was young and this aspect may no longer be necessary. We have nearly 4,000 items now under this project. William Harristalk 21:44, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Just checking in. I'll spend some quiet time there and see if there's anything I can contribute without creating more work for others. Thank you, William - ^Atsme _Talk 📧 21:37, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

We need a strategy of identifying what we believe to be the "priority" articles - which I think I have in train on the Dogs project Talk page based on importance. We also need a means of identifying those Stub and Start class articles which are popular enough that any helpful visitors might be interested in contributing to. William Harristalk 00:04, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

Bravo for starting this conversation, I have noticed the open tasks for years. Yes I agree a we need to look at prioritisation, a cursory glance at Wikipedia:WikiProject Dogs/Requested articles reveals in my opinion little worth expending our little resources working on. Cavalryman (talk) 07:58, 13 January 2020 (UTC).

Agreed. We have several dedicated members, some other members who will help where they can, but I have faith in the torrent of people who I assume visit the project page each day but who cannot find something to contribute to that takes their fancy. We can remedy that. William Harristalk 08:05, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Canidae

Hello Jts1882, by now you will have witnessed the predation that I have wrought over at Canidae. I now seek your opinion. It would appear from the references under its Taxonomy section:

In the history of the carnivores, the family Canidae is represented by the two extinct subfamilies designated as Hesperocyoninae and Borophaginae, and the extant subfamily Caninae.
— This is reflected in both Tedford and Miklosi, so there are no errors...

This implies that the taxobox should not only be showing the Family Canidae, but also including the sub-family Caninae - the extant taxa are all members of Caninae. (Don't base this on the phylotree structures - everybody has had input into that and who knows on what basis!)

If so, the automatic taxobox should be amended to this: taxon = Caninae

Then we get to refer to them as "canines".William Harristalk 10:06, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

The article is on the whole family, albeit with a heavy emphasis on extant forms in Caninae. So the taxobox correctly is based on the family. The subfamilies should be included in the subdivision section, with of without the genera. What about the change I have just made? The genera could be listed vertically but that makes the taxobox bigger. Perhaps the extant genera are redundant as most are listed in the image caption.

Overall, the content of the Canidae and Caninae articles seems unbalanced, but I think most readers coming to Canidae will be expecting information on the living canids so moving most of the material to Caninae would be confusing.

Incidentally, last time I checked the cladogram follows the references given, Lindblad-Toh et al. (2005) for the overall structure, with additions for particular genera as indicted (e.g. the African golden wolf). Jts1882 | talk 10:59, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Jts1882 - I like what you have done with the taxobox, that was all that is needed. (I knew there was a reason I keep calling upon your many talents.....)

What I meant by the structure of the phylotree was not where the genii sat, but the names given to the branches leading to them. What is missing from the root Canidae branch is the extinct subfamilies Hesperocyoninae † and Borophaginae †, along with a Caninae branch leading to our extant genii. Currently, the Caninae-labelled branch is incorrectly excluding the genus Urocyon, which I have just done some work on and which has led to my recent work on Canidae. I would be pleased if you could do the honours.

If we were to move Caninae to the common name of "Canine", it would not be so confusing. (To your average man in his tree, Canidae sounds similar to some form of medical infection best avoided!). Additionally, Canidae should be moved to "Canid", its common name. These moves would be in accordance with Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna) and Wikipedia:WikiProject_Tree_of_Life#Article_titles

I will do some initial word-play in Canidae and agree that there is need for a rebalance.

These two articles are important; due to other work I am undertaking for WikiProject Dogs, if things progress the way in which I envisage then these two will be among the key articles for that project. William Harristalk 22:39, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

The cladogram is based on molecular evidence, following sources. There is already an issue of whether it is synthesis to add the additional branches not in the original source. I'd argue no, but to add the other subfamilies would have to be using completely different sources and types of evidence. There might be a case for two cladograms, one for the whole family (limited two genera or tribes) based on morphological data and one for extant (and recently extinct) species based on molecular data. I'll have look at the former possibility. Do you know any suitable studies.

A simplified version of the phylogeny in Wang et al (2004) chapter in The Biology and Conservation of Wild Canids might be suitable (Figure 2.1). There is a phylogeny in the appendix 2 of the 2008 book Dogs: Their Fossil Relatives and Evolutionary History, but I can't access that. I was thinking something relatively simple like this one posted on twitter, but again I can't access the original source. Jts1882 | talk 09:55, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Biological families are mostly at their scientific names. I don't think canid is a common name in the wikipedia sense, its just a shorthand for members of the family Canidae and is not something used in common speech. I think moving Caninae to canine would be very confusing, as many (most?) people would be expecting something on the tooth (where the infobox has a marvellous example of a canine canine). Jts1882 | talk 08:52, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

We have "synthesis" already - my copy of Lindblad-Toh 2005 shows no named branches, however the phylotree on Canidae does. DNA does not recognise sub-families, palaeontology does. WP:CITE tells us that "Wikipedia's verifiability policy requires inline citations for any material challenged or likely to be challenged." That there are 3 subfamilies is already covered in the text with citation. It is not WP:SYNTH because we have not taken two sources and drawn our own conclusion. I encourage you to include the two subfamilies, you could label it as "The phylogeny of the Caninae below is based on Lindblad-Toh et al. (2005).....", then you have been specific and accurate.

I have developed a rudimentary phylotree on Caninae which I am thinking of including in Canidae with a short re-write to help underscore the Caninae - please adjust with your magic as necessary. I also cannot access Wang, Figure 2.1 of The Biology and Conservation of Wild Canids is not downloading for me, but the twitter pix can be found here: http://digitallibrary.amnh.org/bitstream/handle/2246/6514/NH117n06.pdf?sequence=6&isAllowed=y A rudimentary subfamily diagram can be found within this: http://hdl.handle.net/2246/5999

I shall give further thought to the common-name discussion, thanks for sharing your opinion, Jts1882. William Harristalk 02:15, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Canidae

Hesperocyoninae

Borophaginae

stem genera (Archaeocyon, Oxetocyon, Otarocyon, Rhizocyon)

	Phlaocyonini

	Borophagini

Caninae

Leptocyon

Vulpini (foxes)

	Cerdocyonina (South American foxes)

	Canina (jackals and wolves)

Where is your rudimentary tree? I was thinking something simple like the tree to the right (following Fig 65 in Tedford et al, 2009), but with some divisions of the extinct subfamilies (now added for Borophaginae). Unfortunately they don't seem to have a straightforward division. Jts1882 | talk 10:58, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

The simple tree is at Caninae#Taxonomy and lineage. I concur with your Tedford phylotree - this is the phylotree that should appear under Canidae, rather than the massive phylotree of canines that currently resides there. I have taken the liberty of dropping that massive phylotree into Caninae, as that is where it rightfully belongs. Most of what is currently on Canidae should be moved to Caninae, and the Canidae article further developed generally covering just the 3 sub-families in an overview.

Be aware that DNA does not distinguish the subfamilies Caninae and Vulpes, and further Canini etc, but palaeontologists do based on phenotype evolution - largely the skull and teeth. It would appear that the divisions are not clear, Hesperocyoninae begat Borophaginae, and early Borophaginae begat early Caninae such that both appear to be sister clades which then went on to evolve in their own directions. H & B went extinct, leaving only the Caninae (the canines) to represent the family Canidae today. William Harristalk 11:00, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Here is an interesting fact, since I placed the statement in the first paragraph of Canidae mentioning Borophaginae, Hesperocyoninae, Caninae, visitor numbers to these have more than doubled. William Harristalk 20:51, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

This might just be page watchers checking the page. Jts1882 | talk 15:30, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

I am sure this is the case, but at least these are going there for a look. William Harristalk 20:49, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

I shall look at a number of other secondary sources before I include this in Canidae. William Harristalk 08:40, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

I've being trying to find out more about the Hesperocyoninae and there seems very little since Wang (1994) The later articles by Wang and/or Tedford seem to be just summarising the older work. One issue is the status of Prohesperocyon. Wang creates the genus for P. wilsoni (moving it from Hesperocyon) and places it incertae sedis in Canidae, outside Hesperocyoninae, and refers to it as a basal canid. This suggests the canid tree should be Prohesperocyon plus the three subfamilies, but I haven't seen that tree presented. Jts1882 | talk 15:30, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

I shall look for other expert secondary sources and see what they have to say - Sotnikova may have done some work around this. William Harristalk 20:49, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

"Consolidation looks really bad"

You left a message on 107.242.121.24, regarding Caninae that goes: “Your "consolidation" of Wang and Tedford makes the article look really bad. There was nothing wrong with how it was - please put W&T back as it was. William HarrisCanis lupis track.svgtalkCanis lupis track.svg 01:46, 23 January 2020 (UTC)”

Could you be more specific about it? Do you want in-text article references like "Wang & Tedford (2008)" to appear in the text? I can certainly put those in. Do you want a numbered list of the four phylogenetic divisions, instead of a bulleted list? (I removed them, because there's no numbering inherant in the four clades, and no individual references to them in the text, by numbers. I thought the bullets were a distraction.) Do you want more than 6 authors in multi-author citations? (The number 6 is from the A.P.A. Manual of Style. If there's a different, better limit to number of authors for Zoological articles, I'm fine with it. If you can come up with a very convincingly authoritative source, I'd even go in and set all of the authors to show, but really: 29 authors in a reference only eats up column space. All of the names are still there: nothing's been removed, there's just a "|display-authors=6|" key in the "cite journal" template.

I'm quite willing to revert some of the changes. Others that I fixed are outright errors in the citations, and I would not be agreeable to un-fixing those mistakes, however, I think you might no even have noticed. For the stuff that could / should go back, I need more than "looks awful" – obviously, I didn't see that anything looked awful, or I wouldn't have left it that way. I need some direction here.107.242.121.24 (talk) 04:07, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello, thanks for dropping in. My apologies as I should have been more specific. I concur with all of your improvements apart from this one: the replacement of {{sfn|Wang|Tedford|2008}} - that makes a call to the text in the bibliography that you have decided to delete - with this arrangement <ref name=WangTedford2008/>{{rp|182}} with page numbers against the cite. It does not have an encyclopedic look in my opinion. To be fair, what you are doing is exactly what I once did a number of years ago, until I started presenting articles for WP:FAC and was instructed otherwise. For your consideration. William Harristalk 04:23, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Okay: So what you don't like is the page-number citation style that looks like this:^[8]:99–103 with the superscript-colon-pagerange. I agree that it doesn't look great: I don't like it either. Unfortunately, it's the official wikipedia way to avoid noxious proliferation of references for different pages in the same article; someone even cooked up the official wikipedia {{rp|...}} template, and explains its use in the page Template:Rp/doc, where they also don't like it.

I noticed that there's a different format that uses parentheses instead of colons, that I didn't know about. I tried it on Caninae; give it a check. Multi-different-page citations now look like this:^{[8](pp99–103)} Approve? Disapprove? Content?

107.242.121.24 (talk) 04:43, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Someone has created an {{tl|rp}} template but you will never find it used in a Featured Article - they get removed as part of that process.

I would be grateful if you were to graciously reinstate the bibliography, and the Wang 2008 citations running off that as I had it. I started some work on Caninae on the 13th when it was 6kb in size, it is now 20kb in size and I plan for it to be very much bigger. Most of the text will be from Wang 2008 or Tedford 2009. The cites will be coming off the bibliography, with no proliferation of references and no {{tl|rp}} calls at all. Similarly Canini and Vulpini were redirects until last week until I fired them up. Yes, the article was in a mess and in need of a clean-up. As you can see from the section above on this Talk page, there are bigger fish to fry in this space. It will unfold over time - I am in no rush. William Harristalk 08:29, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

A few comments:

The {{tl|rp}} template is used in over 34,000 articles including many featured articles. I see no criteria in the feature article description that prohibits them, although some reviewers may have personal preferences. The main criteria is to use a consistent style of citations in the article, but Wikipedia imposes no specific house style. So I think the {{tl|rp}} template should only be removed when using short form citations as the article citation style. The use of {{tl|rp}} prevents mixing of short form and long form references in an article using long form citations, such as Caninae. While not ideal, I think it preferable to converting the whole article to short form citations, which are used more in social science writing than in modern natural science writing.
On the multi-author citations, I see no reason to restrict the number in the reference list. Space is not an issue in an online work. What was strange was the previous citation which only listed 30 of the 46/47 authors and showed 29 of them. The full citation can be retrieved with the DOI Wikipedia reference generator, although without the genome group as an author.
The phylogenetics section divides the canines into four groups based on Wayne (1993). Where he provided the numbered list the first three are clades and the fourth is the remaining monotypic genera (listed as other canids in table 1). The three monotypic genera form a basal polytomy with the two subfamilies. This section should make clear that they are not four clades or be rewritten to reflect later work with appropriate citations.

I also edited the above comments with the unclosed templates. Apologies if I changed the meaning in any way, although I don't think I did. Jts1882 | talk 11:45, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Do you actually sleep, JTS? I tend not to complete the templates in written discussion but these ones do no harm (others do harm). If the RP is used in FAs, then these have crept in post-FA, my experience is that the reviewers want them removed (and there are at present about 4 people coordinating the FA process, these are listed, and 2 of them are Australians). With the multi-author list, I believe Citation Bot comes around every now and then changing parameters and how many are included as authors. I am not clear on what you refer to as "long form" and "short form" references, please clarify. I will be doing some research in reconciling Wang 2008 and Tedford 2009 with Wayne 1993 as there are some areas these both agree on. Tedford refers to Wayne, but focuses on what the fossil phenotypes tell him. (I can almost hear the ghost of the Curator Emeritus in the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology of the American Museum of Natural History cursing the evolutionary biologists and their "godless gene spicers".) This is the reason that I have come to a halt on Caninae, with no further work until this is looked into. William Harristalk 11:59, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Surprisingly, the {{tl|rp}} is used at a higher frequency in featured articles (about 1 in 30) than in all articles (1 in 200). This doesn't suggest a prohibition in feature articles and I can't find anything saying they are. The instructions for citing multiple pages of the same source (WP:IBID) gives {{tl|rp}} as one of the acceptable options.

Sorry, I agree that my use of short and long form citations is not clear at all. What I was trying to get at is that you can use short footnotes (e.g. {{tl|sfn}}) for inline citations (my short form citation), with the full citations defined at the end of the article in the reference section, or you can provide the full citation inline (my long form citation), with the definition at the first use (using {{tl|cite journal}} etc). My understanding is that the mixing of full citation definitions inline and with others at the end that is discouraged. Mixing of short footnotes with long footnotes as in the Wolf article is acceptable when all the citations are defined at the end in the reference section. I find the single reference list preferable to the separate notes and references lists, which seem more common in biographical type works and older scientific works. Jts1882 | talk 13:56, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Regarding {rp} although it is in the policy it was frowned on in 2017 is all that I can add, that was one of a number of things I learned at that time - policy is not always what an FA reflects. As in Golden Jackal, all of my references are listed in the Reference section in long form <ref name= as but I use the short form {sfn} for books that I draw on more than once with these placed in the Bibliography section e.g. Heptner & Naumov 1998. I find this the most efficient way of doing it. William Harristalk 20:44, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Mr. Harris: I am the citation tweaker formerly under ID 107.242.121.24 (now 107.242.121.32), checking back for what you will tolerate vs. your druthers. The main issue for me is there must be one and only one format for citations in any one article. I changed the Caninae article so it's citations are that way now. So I'm ready to be done with it, but feel obliged to make any not egregious changes that would make you happier.

I ditched the citation forms you had put in, since only two sources [Wang & Tedford (2008) was one] were in "Harvard style" (what you get from {{sfn|Wang|Tedford|2008|pp=182}}), and all the rest were in "APA style", I converted the two outliers to APA (superscripted numbers, in brackets, what you get from <ref ...>{{cite ...}}</ref> embedded in text).

If you want to have the article be all-harvard, with the references appearing as "(Wang , Tedford, 2008, p182)" instead of superscripts, I can convert everything to that, but it's a style that I don't like, except when explicitly discussing a source in the text, rather than merely citing the source. The issue for good / not good articles is inconsistent, confusing formatting. (Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, and that's my department.) In my case I find searching for a full reference in the short-form / full form mix a damn nuisance, but can put up with doing it, if you absolutely cannot live with citing with <ref name="WangTedford2008"/>{{rp|page=182}} format.

I'm still waiting a verdict on the format now in place, that shows citations as this:^[8](p182) 107.242.121.32 (talk) 01:02, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello "Tweek", I am OK with this for now, and thanks for your consideration. William Harristalk 07:35, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for the feedback, and for your tolerance! As a substantial contributor to the article, you definitely deserve first-say about what the citation format should be. As for me, I consider myself set free:

Beneith a cowslip’s bell I lie ...
— CiteTweak 107.242.121.32 (talk) 22:47, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

The night discharged of all care,

Where wine the wit may not oppress....
Content thyself with thine estate,
Neither wish death, nor fear his might.

—Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

William Harristalk 03:27, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Lessons learned from Corinne †

Lessons I have learned from User:Corinne, Assistant Coorinator, Guild of Copy Editors.

Be aware of the differences between American English and British English. There are very few differences in grammar; there are more differences in spelling and vocabulary. See MOS:ENGVAR, Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Spelling, and Comparison of American and British English.
As much as possible, try to write so that each statement flows logically from what precedes it; try to make the connection clear and don't leave it up to the reader to guess.
Focus on the clarity of the sentence – is it saying what it is meant to say?
After writing, go through and re-read. Remove all extra, unnecessary, or repetitive words.
The word "however" is overused. Often, the word "but" works fine, and sometimes no word is necessary. See User:Rothorpe for pointers on good writing.
Provide an explanatory phrase when needed.
Except for the first few words of a line, use the no-break-space template {{nbsp}} between a single letter or one- or two-digit number and what follows it. (However, within a template that uses curly brackets such as the quote template or the cite ref template, use the HTML   instead.)
Use present tense when something is current or on-going; use present tense for scientific truths or to describe a process. The present tense can also be used to discuss events/action in a work of fiction, and can sometimes be used to discuss historical events/action, in which case it is called "the historical present (tense)".
Use present perfect tense (have or has + past participle – have researched, has begun, has been documented) for very recent events or events that have not clearly ended, i.e., that may continue).
Focus on when to use "which" and when to use "that". "That" is used to introduce a restrictive, or limiting, adjective clause – information that is necessary to identify, or limit, the noun it is modifying, i.e., following . "Which" is used to introduce a non-restrictive adjective clause – extra information, information that is not necessary to identify the noun it is modifying. See English relative clause.
Be careful when using the pronouns "it", "they", and "them". Be sure it is clear to what or to whom they refer. If it is not clear, use a name or noun instead.
Be careful when using the demonstrative pronouns "this", "that", "these", and "those". Be sure it is clear to what or to whom they refer. It it is not clear, add a noun after them. For example, instead of writing "That was a turning point", write "That battle was a turning point." (When any of these words are followed by noun, they are called demonstrative adjectives.)
Keep the use of the present participle of be, "being", to a minimum. If possible, try to re-word the sentence to avoid using it. "Being" can be used in the right place, but use it sparingly.
When referring to something with different words in the same sentence (such as on boh sides of the verb be – am, is, are, was, were, will be, have/has/had been) or nearby sentences, make sure to match a singular noun with singular noun and a plural noun with a plural noun. Precede a singular countable noun with "a" or "an".
Use adverbs to modify action verbs – eventually finished, generally agreed, always won, often traveled/travelled – or adjectives – very difficult, really important, rather good, somewhat reserved. See MOS:HYPHEN about when to hyphenate and when not to hyphenate adverbs.
Vary the verbs; try not to use the same word over and over. For example, instead of "indicated", use "showed", "yielded evidence of", "pointed to", "suggested", "implied". The dictionary entry of a word in an on-line dictionary such as Merriam-Webster often includes a list of synonyms. The thesaurus entry for the same word will often supply more words with similar meaning.
Don't forget to use &nbsp