Talk:Noisy miner

An email has asked me to simplify the language, which I have attempted to do.

However the potential reader of a reference to Australian birds is most probably going to be some Australian kid in the 10 - 16 age bracket, not someone from another country. I have therefore left in some words that young bird-watchers would either understand, or wish to know -- such as the Latin name, and words like "coterie" which is widely used in bird-watching circles.

Please advise me by email if you think this is still too complex. I would like to get it right because I am encouraging a small group of other older bird watchers to generate material for the Simple version of Wikipedia -- and they need a lot of handholding.

Also, can you advise why the audio link here doesn't work. It was copied from the Noisy miner reference in the main en:wikipedia.org

Note that the "Noisy miner" is very widely known in Australia as the "Native miner" and also as the "Native myna" which gets confusing. Is there a simple way of reflecting these two alternate names to this site ? Or do we just rely on the secondary heading I created, and/or on the term being in the body copy? — This unsigned comment was added by Stewart fist (talk • changes) at 23:00, 8 December 2015 (UTC).

Stewart fist, I didn't email you. Possibly someone else did, or possibly you are set up to get automatic emails in certain situations. In any case, I'm the person who looked at this article earlier today.

1. Please sign comments/questions on talk pages with "StevenJ81 (talk) 23:08, 8 December 2015 (UTC)" at the end of your posts. Thanks!
2. Audio link works for me.
3. As for the rest, I'll say that you've made substantial progress. As to details, though, I actually have to leave my computer now. (I'm on the US East Coast, and have a dinner engagement tonight.) I'll try to answer in more detail either late tonight or early tomorrow my time. StevenJ81 (talk) 23:08, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Signatures

OK Steven, Understood. I should have used four tilde marks to sign off. Is that so ?
The instructions are rather ambiguous and not a little bit confusing. Someone needs to rewrite them.
Stewart fist (talk) 23:14, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

I'll look at the instructions. Four tilde marks is automatically converted into a signature like you see in the line above. It gives links to your user page and your user talk page, as well as adding a date/time stamp. Three tildes is the name only, and five is the timestamp only, as you'll see below:

~~~ = StevenJ81 (talk)

~~~~ = StevenJ81 (talk) 16:29, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

~~~~~ = 16:29, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Simplification

I'm glad you're bringing in friends to help. We can always use more help here. And this wiki has a wide following in Australia, as it happens. You may wish to be in touch with User:Peterdownunder, an experienced and respected contributor here from Australia.

Part of simplification is about vocabulary, and part is about grammar and usage. So, for example, as a general principle we try to avoid sentences with two clauses, and instead keep sentences short. Sometimes that makes an exposition longer overall, but it makes it easier for non-native speakers to follow. And even if many (most?) readers of this page are Australian youth, we need to allow for the possibility that non-native speakers are here, too. I strongly suggest having a look at Wikipedia:How to write Simple English pages, which discusses both vocabulary and grammar issues. And I'm certainly ready to help with specific questions.

When in doubt, when a less simple word is still the best choice, add a link to another page so that people can get clarification. When possible, that page should be here on SE Wikipedia, but sometimes it is appropriate to link to SE Wiktionary. Notice how I added links especially to the words genus and species in the first paragraph (using Wikipedia) and colonies in the fourth paragraph (using Wiktionary, because I thought it was better than the Wikipedia offering for this purpose). Once you have a link (such as for grevilleas) you don't need to simplify further, as the assumption is that the link provides the explanation.

I'm going to let you practice with simplification and not do more myself, with one exception: I'm going to create a Wiktionary entry for coterie. You did fine with the explanation there (conceptually—I might simplify some vocabulary). But as a rule, a term like that ought to have some entry somewhere, either Wikipedia or Wiktionary, so that it doesn't need to be redefined each time. Unless you or one of your friends wants to tackle writing a Wikipedia article on Coterie (and en:Coterie is no help whatsoever), what we should do is to start with a Wiktionary definition. And with due respect, I think you have enough to learn for the moment without starting to navigate the rules of Wiktionary, too.

• Please write down here on this talk page what you think a good, general birding definition of coterie would be. The current definitions in English, Simple English and French Wiktionaries all lack bird-related definitions of the word. I'll copy what you give me into those Wiktionaries. StevenJ81 (talk) 17:40, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Definition of coterie

[There is no bird-related definition, other than that normally used] A small group of close friends or associates. Your own 'set' or 'clique'. Stewart fist (talk) 01:58, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

OK, Stewart. I'll get on that. (Your username has space between "Stewart" and "fist", so if you're going to manually type out your username you should still do it that way.) StevenJ81 (talk) 15:19, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Multiple names: Redirects

We handle multiple names by use of redirects. These are essentially shortcuts to the main article, and allow a reader to look up or link the article by any reasonable name and still have her/him land at the right place. At this point, if you click on any of these:

Native miner • Native myna • Native mynah

you will see that you are redirected to Noisy miner. (Note the small legend just under the title of the page.) It's quite easy to make these. Click on this link to see what a redirect actually looks like. There are rules as to when one may and may not create redirects, but certainly whenever a species has more than one non-trivial common name, redirects are entirely appropriate. See Help:Redirect. StevenJ81 (talk) 17:49, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Contact

More appropriate to the user's talk page, and moved there. StevenJ81 (talk) 15:23, 11 December 2015 (UTC)