Talk:Decline in wild mammal populations

Way forward?

Hi User:InformationToKnowledge, I don't know what your plan is with this article now that it has been declined. It's disappointing when that happens and I wish the reviewer had supplied a little more detail. But in any case, I think the article needs to be narrowed down a bit. It should focus on the recent decline. Similar to Decline in insect populations and Decline in amphibian populations: They don't talk about declines or extinctions from pre-history times. Therefore I would delete the entire section: "Quaternary megafauna extinctions" as I think that's another topic. What you have there is anyway mostly excerpts, so the same as at the other article on Quaternary extinction event. In general, I don't think it's good practice to mix an excerpt with new text, like you did in this section: "Quaternary megafauna extinctions". I think it's better if it's clear where the excerpt ends and new text begins. EMsmile (talk) 06:58, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Well, the issue with that suggestion is that it's putting the cart before the horse, in a sense: the main reason those two articles do not talk about prehistoric extinctions is because there isn't evidence of significant human-linked extinctions of species from those animal subgroups in the first place! Partly because preindustrial humans weren't in as a much of a position to do it, and partly because megafauna skeletons are much easier evidence to gather than remains of amphibians, let alone exoskeletons. Since we do have plenty of such evidence for wild mammals, it cannot be not included.

In hindsight, I certainly agree that I went too heavy on excerpts here. Then again, the article was, after all, a draft, and I considered giving it another pass later, but I never found the time to do so before this review approached. Before the end of the year (hopefully earlier) I'll convert the excerpts to something much more condensed, and do any other kind of changes I might find necessary by then. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 19:42, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

@EMsmile Well, in what has been a pleasant surprise, this article had been cleaned up two weeks ago by @JSwift49, and accepted the same day!

While I was loath to cut anything from the draft, I have to admit that this narrowed-down version actually is superior to it. It could clearly be made better still, but I think it's good enough for now. My priorities for "biodiversity loss and climate change" articles should really be focused on reworking effects of climate change on plant biodiversity and climate change and birds into the broader "decline in" articles, updating decline in amphibian populations (for a supposed "Good Article", it sure seems stuck in 2000s, and with very little on climate change), creating decline in reptile populations and completing the merge of marine habitat into marine ecosystem and of effects of climate change on ecosystems into effects of climate change on biomes. Approximately in that order.

That is, after the WikiProject-wide effort of dealing with the "consensus/controversy" articles is done. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 14:10, 25 November 2023 (UTC)