Talk:Animal trapping methods

Comment on Deletion Proposal

The article was tagged for deletion on 11 February 2011. I removed the tag for the following reasons:

• Although I agree that the article is currently in a very rough form, I found it informative when I read it.
• The article explains methods of trapping for various types of animals in appropriate detail, but would be too large as a section in the more general article on Animal trapping; that article describes various traps that are used, but does not relate them to specific species of animals as this article does.
• I do not find this article to be detailed enough to be used as a "guide", as it was described in the reason for the Deletion Proposal.
• Just because a reader finds the subject of an article offensive does not mean it should be deleted. That would be POV censorship.
• Because I agree it is in rough form, I volunteer to do a thorough copyedit sometime in the near future. I will also see if I can find references and add relevant images to improve the quality of the article. Boneyard90 (talk) 15:25, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Not Delete, but Replace

Even after many subsequent additions, it's only longer and more complex but not necessarily better than the Feb 11, 2011 version, and the problems (essay-like, instructions, lack of sourcing) are still present. A good idea would be to replace most of this article with the Traps section of Animal trapping, which although not perfect is better-sourced, written in a more appropriate tone, and has substantial overlap. Thus, there would be one article devoted to the history, industry, and ethics of trapping, and another solely to the techniques. As is, this article needs revision for clarity and focus, in addition to much more attribution (a single source for so much text is suspect: seeWP:PLAGFORMS). The physical description of each animal type is unnecessary information. The article should be focused on methods (it's in the title after all), rather than subtle details of animal type, because a single type like "conibear trap" can apply to several similar taxa (see Animal trapping:Body gripping & conibear traps, which does a better job of describing the method), and because there is the risk of runaway list expansion- one could conceivably find a unique trap or technique for every animal species. Finally, statements saying what the reader should do (e.g. "Animals should be skinned within two days of being caught.") are guide-like and unencyclopedic. Remember, Wikipedia is Not a manual. Additional expansions should cover other groups (e.g. reptiles, fish), for applicability to trapping in fields beyond the hunting industry (e.g. research, live-trapping, etc.) --Animalparty-- (talk) 20:09, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

This is the nearest thing I've seen to a discussion of the merge proposal indicated by the template that I just removed. Someone attempted a merge and it resulted in a very long and unfocussed animal trapping article. I think this topic should remain separate. If you want to merge, convert it into something mergable first and don't encourage wholesale dropping of this text into the other article. --Tony Wills (talk) 10:02, 6 June 2014 (UTC)