Our first collaboration article for 2009 is Cockatoo—a well-known Australasian family of parrots. The article is already in reasonable shape, thanks to early efforts by a number of contributors, and with a little more work, we should be able to get it to GA/FA status. Can we get our first "group star" for the year on this one?
On a related note, be sure to vote for April's collaboration article, which will be chosen on March 31. If none of the existing nominations interest you, consider adding a new one!
Please be sure to mark any featured lists as FL-class rather than FA-class. All of our current featured lists have been moved into this new(ish) category.
Beginning in April, we'll be removing from our "active participants" list the name of any editor who hasn't edited on Wikipedia for 6 months or more, putting them instead into a "retired editors" section. (Please note that will be easy to move yourself back into the active category if you start editing again after an extended absence.) This should help us to better evaluate our project's editor retention and make for more efficient newsletter delivery.
Videos
We all know the old adage "A picture is worth a thousand words." And if that's true, videos are probably worth 10,000! They're a great way to add information to articles—for instance by showing behaviours that are hard to explain with text or static pictures. They can also include audio, adding a dimension unavailable in a photo. If you don't have your own video camera, you can still help the project by finding and requesting videos from others who have already taken them (checking, for example, at Flickr, YouTube or The Internet Bird Collection). If you have questions about how to upload videos, several project members, including Richard001 (talk·contribs) or Aviceda (talk·contribs), may be able to help.
Newsletter challenge
Shyamal (talk·contribs) took up the last newsletter's challenge, and started our article about distraction displays—behaviors used by birds to lure or drive potential predators away from nests or young. This month, we're looking for someone to start an article about acoustical luring, which is a method used by some predatory birds to lure potential prey into reach. The person who creates this article and gets it beyond a mere stub level will be mentioned in the next newsletter.
Got a suggestion? A correction? Something you'd like to see included in a future issue? Drop a note at the Tip Line with your ideas!
