User talk:Ngravagna

Thank you for contributing to the Bloom Clock Project. Below more info about Wikiversity, Erkan Yilmaz uses the Wikiversity:Chat (try) 17:07, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Welcome
Hello Ngravagna, and welcome to Wikiversity! If you need help, feel free to visit my talk page, or contact us and ask questions. After you leave a comment on a talk page, remember to sign and date; it helps everyone follow the threads of the discussion. The signature icon in the edit window makes it simple. To get started, you may
 * Take a guided tour and learn to edit;
 * Explore our learning projects;
 * Browse our portals, schools, and research activities;
 * Read and help develop our community policies；or
 * Chat with other Wikiversitans on #wikiversity-en.

And don't forget to explore Wikiversity with the links to your left. Be bold, and see you around Wikiversity! Erkan Yilmaz uses the Wikiversity:Chat (try) 17:07, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Welcome to the Bloom Clock!
Hello,, and thanks for signing up as a contributor to the Bloom Clock!

To get started, all that you need to do is keep your eyes open for flowers on plants growing outdoors. Then, depending on how well you know plants, you can either try to find the plant using the global keys, or just check the master list where plants are listed by their scientific names.

Assuming you find a log page for the plant you saw, all that you need to do is click [edit] above the list of signatures, and add *~ on a new line below the last signature and above the line that begins with, which will make your signature appear on the profile page.

If you don't find a log page, just add an entry for the plant to the Master List using. Someone can then show you how to create a profile and log page for the plant.

If you don't know the name of the plant you saw, try asking on Bloom Clock/Unknown Plants using the template there. Photographs are very helpful, but if you don't have a digital camera, just give the best description you can and hopefully someone can identify it for you.

After you've logged 10 or more plants as flowering for your location, another bloom clock contributor will help you set up the categories and templates used to construct a key for your region, and try to match up your region to the global keys.

If you have any questions, ideas, or need something explained, please feel free to leave a message on my talk page, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can!--SB_Johnny | talk 17:07, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Erysimum nivale
Hi the USDA Database has Erysimum nivale listed as a synonym of a form of E. capitatum. I was going to set up a log page for it, so any thoughts on what to name it? We do have a couple images of Erysimum capitatum available on commons, but none for the subspecies. --SB_Johnny | talk 08:59, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Your region (bloom clock stuff)
You've logged the "requisite" 10 plants, so I'd like to help set up a local flora for you, but I'm not at all familiar with Colorado's geography (and it looks like there are several hardiness zones in the state, suggesting markedly different bloom times). Is there a good description for your region? For example. I log (mostly) from "Southeastern Pennsylvania", which is the part of the state south and east of the Appalachian front (spring and fall bloom times are markedly different in the middle and west of the state). --SB_Johnny | talk 13:37, 19 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Hi again. I have the templates set up, so you can "register" a plant as blooming there in May using bcpm/aurco/5 (for June, you'll use bcpm/aurco/6, etc.).
 * On older profiles (for now), you would add this template to "New Region 5 = " (see this diff for an example). New Profiles won't show "New Region 5", but will list "Aurora, Colorado = " instead. A bot will be coming through in the next few days to make that change on all the old profiles. --SB_Johnny | talk 11:24, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

New Template Version
You might have noticed that new profiles created using bcp3 now have a number of changes in the bottom template (changed on Monday, then I haven't had much time since then to get a note out). The main changes involve the fields which previously required the use of additional templates (such as bcp/white for white flowering plants). These "embedded" templates have caused a great deal of confusion among some of the new contributors.

On the new template, each of the colors has it's own field. To mark a plant as possible blooming in that color, simply put a "y" or "yes" after the equal sign (similarly for marking plants as herbaceous, etc.). Similarly for all the new fields

For the moment, "forb" should be used for any plant that has no woody parts above ground and is not a vine (e.g., BCP/Hemerocallis has a "y" for both "herbaceous =" and "forb =", while BCP/Ipomoea hederacea has a "y" for both "herbaceous = " and "vine = "). Note that annuals, grasses, sedges, etc. should also be classified as forbs or the time being.

Mike's bot will come through and update the older pages hopefully sometime in the next few days. The old fields will still work for now... several categories will allow us to keep track of which profiles use the older versions (I couldn't figure out an easy way to get the bot to redo the data, so we'll have to do that manually).

Note that the log pages are a bit different now as well, using an (updatable) template instead of text, and using headers differently to allow grouping by year. These can easily be updated by adding to the top of the page, then deleting the old text and moving the logs.--SB_Johnny | talk 09:40, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

re: few things
Heya Ngravagna. As far as Erysimum nivale goes, I suspect you'd know better than me (I know nearly nothing about your local flora). If someone moves it later, it should (in theory) appear on your watchlist anyway, or in any case will be in the category and key (see below).

As far as "New Region 5" goes, actually it's just "Aurora, Colorado" now (templates were bot-updated a week or so ago). So to add category and links now, just add bcpm/aurco/5 (or bcpm/aurco/6 in June). Here's a diff showing where I added one for you (BTW, are you sure you didn't see C. montana? I thought C. cyanus was more of a summer-through-fall plant). What that does is add a category (Category:BCP/AURCO/5), as well as a link to the local flora page for that month (Bloom Clock/Keys/Aurora, Colorado/May).

One other thing: I moved BCP/Cottoneaster microphyllus and the log page to BCP/Cotoneaster microphyllus, but didn't add the may template there because you hadn't logged yet :-). --SB_Johnny | talk 10:27, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Almost :)
You want to use bcpm/aurco/6 :-). (You had used a southeast Pennsylvania template on one of them in the | Aurora, Colorado = field). Takes a bit of getting used to, but the templates are designed to have a small "keystroke footprint" (only 16 or so).

In case you're wondering what that does (besides make a link next to Aurora, Colorado area:, it also:
 * 1) Populates the Category for your region during that month
 * 2) That category is in turn analyzed by a "DPL script" (still working on instructions for that, but here's what it looks like
 * 3) The DPL list is then in turn used to generate a key
 * 4) Finally, the categories of different regions are compared to see how they tie into the global temperate keys (the goal is to eventually have "bloom time zones" similar to the USDA's Hardiness zones).

We've been tring to get it as "user friendly" as possible, but we're limited in that we need to use wikicoding and templates to achieve it all. All in all it's probably not much worse than editing other kinds of databases :). --SB_Johnny | talk 14:05, 10 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Oh one other (important!) thing: when adding the momthly templates, you should add only one for each month (i.e., not "bcpm/aurco/6 through bcpm/aurco/10"), and add those templates only for plants you have actually logged during the corresponding month. Don't forget that this is a research project, not a flora, so we need to be honest reporters and only use the data we've collectd with the ol' eyeballs :). Memory sometimes fails us, and I've found several cases over the past 2 years where the published stuff is actually wrong (we have a local flora book in Pennsylvania that was published in 2000, and even that recent publication has some errors!).
 * Fair warning: the one major risk to learning the templates, categories, etc. is that it can be severely addictive. See User:Jomegat for details :). --SB_Johnny | talk 14:53, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Keys available, more or less
Hi again. Oddly enough, your data seems to mesh almost exactly to Southeastern PA, so if you see a flower you're unfamiliar with, you should be able to use either the SEPA keys, or better yet the global-temperate keys. June in your region seems to correspond to Late Spring, July will probably correspond to Early Summer, etc. --SB_Johnny | talk 16:58, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

fixed
Not sure how that happened! BCP/Delosperma cooperi. --SB_Johnny | talk 08:35, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Delphinium
I had entered Delphinium a while back and began to log entries. I never included a species name because I didn't know it. I figured out that I have Delphinium geyeri and went to change it on the master list. I now know this is the wrong thing to do because I disconnected the log page from the master list page by changing the name. Sorry! Is there a good way to log things that aren't totally identified, or should I just stick with a pen and paper until I know what I've got?

Thanks, Ngravagna


 * Best thing to do when you identify from a genus to a species (or variety) is just to start a new profile for the lower taxa, and move the signatures over. During the winter updating, all logs for the species in a genus will be used to base the bloom season of the genus as well. --SB_Johnny | talk 09:44, 21 July 2008 (UTC)