Talk:Arthrorhabdus
Latest comment: 1 year ago by Edward-Woodrow in topic Merge rationale
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 | This article was nominated for merging on 4 May 2023. The result of the discussion was to not merge. |
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Merge rationale
edit- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
- Result: Nomination withdrawn; not merged. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 20:32, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
I think that the species details were covered perfectly adequately within the article- what we have now is a collection of stubs with next to no hope of expansion, and a few redlinks. There is no need to split out the species info when there is so little information at hand; the stubs are really just the species name, the authority, some locality info, and a bit of general information about centipede habitat. A more comprehensive article covering all the information is more useful than links to a bunch of stubs. In short: this was an unnecessary content split that could make navigation more difficult. I would suggest returning to section-level species information, like in this revision (the species accounts can be expanded slightly from that, but I'm talking more about the formatting and layout than the content). Edward-Woodrow (talk) 21:06, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
- This general discussion has taken place fairly recently at the TOL talk page, about content forking and bare bones low-rank taxon pages. I can reiterate some of the points that emerged from that discussion (hopefully not oversimplifying): (1) the wikidata links for the constituent species need to be in the genus article if the standalone species pages are eliminated. (2) a tabular list of species can work, but only if there are not too many empty "cells" in the table. There were some decent examples from some plant articles, I can probably track some of these down if needed. (3) the list/table sort of format isn't good if any of the constituent species articles has a significant amount of text, but that doesn't appear to be the case here. I personally don't have a problem with separate articles for every species, even if they're all stubs, but I'm a cataloguer and databaser, and it's not like Wikipedia has a space limitation. I would count myself as a "weak oppose" for merging, under most circumstances where the list of species is less than about 15, regardless, so take that for what it's worth. Once the list is bigger than that, then I'd be more strongly opposed to a merge resulting in a very cluttered article. Dyanega (talk) 20:58, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose. The two existing species articles have a sourced statement reading "The centipedes are solitary terrestrial predators that inhabit plant litter, soil and rotting wood." That doesn't really fit into a table, and would need a source for the other two species to be included as a statement about the genus as a whole. And the weird distribution (South Africa, North America, Australia) really suggests that the genus isn't monophyletic; the Australian species may well end up in another genus, and species redirects to the genus are likely to get overlooked if the species are reclassified. Plantdrew (talk) 16:28, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
I've withdrawn my merge proposal regarding A. paucispinus, as that article has been significantly expanded by Esculenta (talk · contribs). Regards, Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 20:23, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
- @Plantdrew: perhaps I'm misunderstanding your use of "table" but the proposal didn't entail a wikitable, merely subsections of prose.
- Regarding the statements regarding habitat- as I said in my rationale- the information is fairly generalistic and would apply to all or almost all taxa in the family Scolopendridae.[1]
- Regarding the possible polyphyly and associated taxonomic wrangling, planning for future possibilities doesn't really seem like good practice. Surely it's better to wait and see, rather than pre-emptively basing decisions on possibilities and speculation? And if the Australian species are reclassified, I'm not so sure their redirect pages will be "overlooked." Thanks, Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 20:47, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
- @Edward-Woodrow:, there's been some discussion about possibly merging sub-stubs for species into genus articles. Long standing practice has been to create articles for every species (except for fossil species, and species in monotypic genera). The sub-stubs that might get merged basically don't have any information that wouldn't fit into a table. Merging species articles into genus articles, with a substantial amount of prose covering each species hasn't really been part of the discussion, and is a very uncommon practice on Wikipedia (it's done for some fossil genera, and one FA about an acanthocephalan (Apororhynchus). Dyanega brought up tables earlier in this thread. While I'm not particularly eager to split out articles for Apororhynchus species, there are a number of reasons why I don't think covering species with a substantial amount of prose in a genus article is a good idea. When this merge discussion started, the two Arthrorhabdus species articles were basically sub-stubs, but had a little too much information to fit in a table, but not quite enough information for a substantial prose section like the Apororhynchus species have. Both the Arthrorhabdus have now been substantially expanded, and are now past the point where the would really fit into a genus article at all. Plantdrew (talk) 20:17, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
- I agree that the species accounts can no longer be handled at the genus article, as they have been substantially expanded since my nomination, proving wrong my claim that the species articles have
next to no hope of expansion
. I will thus withdraw my nomination. Regards, Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 20:25, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
- I agree that the species accounts can no longer be handled at the genus article, as they have been substantially expanded since my nomination, proving wrong my claim that the species articles have
- @Edward-Woodrow:, there's been some discussion about possibly merging sub-stubs for species into genus articles. Long standing practice has been to create articles for every species (except for fossil species, and species in monotypic genera). The sub-stubs that might get merged basically don't have any information that wouldn't fit into a table. Merging species articles into genus articles, with a substantial amount of prose covering each species hasn't really been part of the discussion, and is a very uncommon practice on Wikipedia (it's done for some fossil genera, and one FA about an acanthocephalan (Apororhynchus). Dyanega brought up tables earlier in this thread. While I'm not particularly eager to split out articles for Apororhynchus species, there are a number of reasons why I don't think covering species with a substantial amount of prose in a genus article is a good idea. When this merge discussion started, the two Arthrorhabdus species articles were basically sub-stubs, but had a little too much information to fit in a table, but not quite enough information for a substantial prose section like the Apororhynchus species have. Both the Arthrorhabdus have now been substantially expanded, and are now past the point where the would really fit into a genus article at all. Plantdrew (talk) 20:17, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose. I'm generally opposed to the idea of merging stub species articles; expanding seems like a better solution. Esculenta (talk) 21:06, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
References
- ^ "Scolopendrid Centipedes". The Australian Museum.
- Oppose. The stub articles also contain the taxon identifiers for those who want to follow up elsewhere. Maias (talk) 05:49, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
- Taxonbars can easily handle multiple Wikidata items, as has been done at Quercylurus, to cite just one of many examples. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 12:23, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.