Talk:Northern Flicker

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Northern Flicker is part of WikiProject Birds, an attempt at creating a standardized, informative and easy-to-use ornithological resource. If you would like to participate, visit the project page. Please do not substitute this template.
Start This article has been rated as start-Class on the quality scale.
Low This article has been rated as low-importance on the importance scale.
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[edit] Assessment

I definetly wouldn't give it more than a Start-Class. it has good information, but it needs to be lengthened and it has a lot of good stuff in the introduction that needs to be put elsewhere. But this has a lot of interesting stuff in it. - Cynops 14:29, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New pics and range map

I think the new pics are pretty good, but the range map could be labeled (I think the colors are supposed to be different subspecies but I'm not sure). I also don't really like having the photo gallery at the end is a really good idea. Cynops 02:13, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

With the range map I followed the color guidelines specified in WikiProject: Birds, so basically yellow is summer, blue is winter, and green is year-round. When I first started making those I tried putting a legend on each range map to specify what the colors mean, but the legend was too small to read in the thumbnail, and too big on the expanded version of the image. So I settled for putting the info on the map's description page, which isn't a perfect solution but is the best I've come up with so far.
As far as the photos go, the last version of the page had 4 images, but none of them showed what I'd consider to be the bird's most important identifying physical characteristics - yellow or red wing bars, and the red bar on the back of the head. I think people are using the bird articles on Wikipedia the way we once would have used a paperbound Field Guide - first to identify a bird they saw, and then to learn a little more about it. So I think it's important to have a good range map and good quality images that can help with identification.
I threw the photo gallery in there because I thought each of those images were relevant to the article, and I wasn't comfortable tossing them, but I didn't think they needed to be taking up a bunch of page space. A gallery makes them easily accessible without really breaking the flow of the article.
But those are just my thoughts on the subject. I'm still pretty new at this, so if someone would prefer it done another way it wouldn't bother me at all. 'Card 02:35, 17 March 2007 (UTC)