Talk:List of Major Vegetation Groups in Australia

Australian versus global categories

This article seems to go out of its way to avoid linking to existing articles like mangrove swamp, estuary, heath (habitat), etc.

I can see how we can have articles specific to the Australian Floristic provinces. And I can see how we can have articles for things like Mangrove swamps. I'm a bit skeptical that we're going to get non-stub articles for all the intersections thereof. Of course, some plant communities are found nowhere outside Australia. But for those which are, I'm not sure separating the Australia-specific material is the way to go. Some of the existing articles, like the heath one, already have Australian material. Kingdon 14:02, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I had some doubts about this when I posted it, Kingdon. Should I link to heath even though Australia's heath is a unique vegetation complex of myrtaceous-proteaceous shrubs, nothing like the international concept of heath; or do I leave a red link for an article on the Australian understanding of the term. I suspect this comes down to the philosophical question of whether you want something useful now or strictly correct in the longer term. Hesperian 14:13, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, at a high enough level of abstraction, both heaths are landscapes dominated by woody shrubs (but so is chaparral and others - perhaps shrubland would be a better link than heath (habitat)). I don't have the knowledge to comment about that example in detail (or any of these examples in detail, really), but it seems to me this is more a question of "detailed" versus "general" than "correct" versus "incorrect". As for philosophy, I would say that if we pick something which is useful now, we can always change it later if a more specific article gets written. But we shouldn't take that so far as to link to an article which is about something which is different and specific (as opposed to a general article which covers both kinds of heaths, or mangroves, or seas, or whatever). That's one reason I didn't want to just be bold about it. Kingdon 15:09, 13 July 2007 (UTC)