geophyte or not

Mary Sue Ittner msittner@mcn.org
Tue, 24 Feb 2015 14:30:24 PST

>  Now, if anyone is interested in donating about 50 hours of their 
> time to this project, please contact
>me. It is not a small undertaking every time we have to change the 
>structure of the wiki.

I think this is an underestimate about the time needed to move 
"marginal" genera to a place of their own. For one thing I don't know 
how you'd come to agreement about what is a marginal genera. Someone 
didn't want any of the genera in the Araceae family on the wiki. We 
have 20 genera in that family on the wiki, many often included in 
generic books about bulbs.  I expect there would be people in this 
group who would not consider them marginal. Other suggestions have 
the same problems.

I added some of the Australian genera that people are unhappy with 
after being given a book, "Tuberous, Cormous, and Bulbous Plants: 
Biology of an Adaptive Strategy in Western Australia"  by Will 
Ashburner, a frequent contributor on one of the old IBS lists. 
Western Australia has a Mediterranean climate and because it is 
bounded by ocean and desert some plants have adapted in unusual ways 
to deal with the long period without rain. I found that fascinating 
and I guess because I was enthralled with a lot of the Australian 
flora I wanted to share that information. Xanthorrhoea has species 
with root tubers described in that book for instance and I added some 
of the ones we saw in areas with long periods of time without 
rainfall. Does it belong on the wiki? Perhaps not, although a case 
could be made.

Then there was the suggestion that some species in the Iris family 
don't belong. To change that you would have to  study each page in 
that family (16) and deciding what to move and figure out how to 
explain what was in each location. And there would be people sorry to 
see some of those species moved.  There might not be enough 
information on the wiki page to be able to figure out which species 
needed to move.  We have removed species in the past that were 
annuals in genera with species that clearly belonged. But this 
requires the knowledge to know what those species are, or the time to 
research it.

  And what about the people who had given of their time to create 
those pages or add images that others wish were not there? When we 
removed questionable genera in the past, it made the people who added 
them very unhappy.  Volunteers are much more likely to continue to 
volunteer if what they do is appreciated.

Most people who search the Internet are looking for specific 
information. The average time spent looking at the wiki is very 
short.  We know from David Pilling's study of the statistics that the 
majority of people don't make it beyond one page. If we have provided 
information that they find useful, they will be happy. You can never 
make everyone happy. I expect that most people would never even look 
at the Xanthorrhoea wiki page unless they were interested in it. The 
people who were happy to have the information would probably outweigh 
those few who spent a lot of time examining the genera on the 
Photographs page and being unhappy that it was included.  The 
introduction to it explains the features that make it marginal. It 
doesn't make sense to ask the few people who are doing the work to 
spend their time taking off or relocating information that someone 
might find helpful, especially when it means that other potentially 
more important tasks wouldn't be done.

Over the years this has come up over and over again. I expect this 
won't be the last time as those people who are unhappy with what has 
been included continue to be unhappy and voice their continuing 
concerns. Hopefully their dissatisfaction won't discourage those few 
people who continue to maintain and add information to the wiki.

Mary Sue





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