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Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of threatened fauna of Michigan/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was not promoted by NapHit 16:11, 20 September 2012 [1].

List of threatened fauna of Michigan

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List of threatened fauna of Michigan (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Dana boomer (talk) 13:31, 30 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Presenting another Michigan fauna article...this time a listing of the threatened, endangered and special concern species in the state. I look forward to your comments, and thanks in advance for the reviews! Dana boomer (talk) 13:31, 30 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment You may want to explain the ranks, eg Special Concern is rather vague. Maybe state the inclusion of animals in a rank. I would add this information in a box or in the lead. Also I am not sure why you capitalicized "Common Name" etc. Regards.--Kürbis (✔) 10:38, 9 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hi GOP, and thanks for your comments. I'm not sure what further information you're looking for on SC species - I thought that the last three sentences of the first paragraph of the lead were fairly informative about what a special concern listing entails. Also not sure what you mean by "the inclusion of animals in a rank"? I think I've fixed the table headers. Dana boomer (talk) 19:07, 9 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • To the two comments above: I do plan to work on creating more of these articles, and had in fact meant to do some already, but was sidetracked by family commitments. I honestly don't think the current redlinks harm the integrity of the list. Also, Afkatk, what do you meant by "the term rank is never explained in the context of the table"? A major part of the lead is devoted to explaining the different categories of listing (endangered/threatened/special concern/federal vs. state, etc). Dana boomer (talk) 11:14, 10 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • It would be much better to remove the red links and add them later once the article is created, otherwise depending on how long it takes to reduce them it might be easier to renominate the list at a later date. Afro (Talk) 10:26, 11 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Red links are not a bad thing, see WP:REDLINK, which specifically says "In general, a red link should be allowed to remain in an article if it links to a term that could plausibly sustain an article." Removing these links would do nothing to help the reader's experience, and could actually harm it if a name had been delinked, but then had an article created and never re-linked. Dana boomer (talk) 14:43, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I know that red links aren't bad, but the FL criteria call for "a minimal proportion" of them. I counted 120 red links out of the 400 or so items in the tables. Is that too many? It's a judgement call. I personally don't think so, and am not in love with the criterion in general (because it creates the gray area that lists like this one fall into), but it is on the books and should be respected. The best advice I can give is to continue pecking away at the red links, as you appear to be doing. Giants2008 (Talk) 21:16, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • OK, through a combination of tweaking links and creating articles, I've dropped the number of red links to 81, out of the 400 or so, a decrease of almost 40 from the time of Giant's count, and more than 40 since the first comments on red links. I would appreciate additional comments on this topic at this point... Thanks! Dana boomer (talk) 13:31, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm quite impressed with how many links you were able to turn blue in less than a week. As I said, I don't have an issue with the current number of red links, but it is a subjective matter. If there are continued complaints, you could always create a few more articles. Giants2008 (Talk) 20:12, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved comments from The Rambling Man (talk) 10:35, 28 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Comments just a couple of quick ones at the moment, will return in due course!
  • I know it may be a departure from the norm, but perhaps it would be nice to introduce each section of fauna with a mini-lead?
  • What kind of a mini-lead were you thinking? Something like, "Of the many mammal species in Michigan, twelve are listed as endangered, threatened or of special concern by the state of Michigan, while two hold federal listing status...yada, yada, yada..."? I could see that. Did you have any other thoughts as to what information you'd like to see in them? - DB
  • I'm also a bit concerned over the gradual increase in the proportion of red links as the article progresses.
  • I've been working on these, and since the above comments have blue-linked somewhere around a dozen articles, either by creating them or finding a plausible article to pipe them to. Part of the problem is that WP's coverage in some animal areas is so poor that we don't even have family/genera articles, much less individual species or sub-species. I am working on this, though. - DB
  • Would it be out of order to ask for the columns each each table be the same from section to section (so the Species col is the same width throughout the article, and so on)?
  • I think I've addressed this? - DB
  • What exactly is US rank? Which scale are you referring to here?
  • The federal listing. I've changed the column headings to "status" instead of "rank" - does this make it more clear? - DB
  • Given the scarcity of those US rank entries, perhaps remove that column and indicate the US rank by use of a symbol? It would avoid the many empty cells...
  • But then it would be impossible for people to sort by federal status, which I think is a plausible sorting mechanism. Perhaps I could remove the federal column from tables that don't have any, and add a note to the mini-leads that "none of the animals in this table have federal listing status."? This would serve to remove quite a few of the empty cells, without removing the sort capability on the others... - DB
  • Be consistent with the capitalisation, in the list you have "Blanchard's Cricket Frog", in the caption you have "Blanchard's cricket frog", in the list you have "spotted turtle" but in the caption you have "Spotted Turtle"...
  • I think I've addressed this. - DB
  • "A mayfly (no common name)" just (no common name) would be fine. See others...
  • Done. - DB
  • Something I've seen in other articles that use a massive PDF as a general reference, consider referencing perhaps just the sections with the actual page range of the PDF itself?
  • Actually, the MSU ref is the main ref for these tables. The massive PDF is mainly just a backup, as it's technically the official listing, but is a pain in the neck to use, because it's so unwieldy. The federal one is there to update a couple of things that have changed since MSU last updated their listing. So, the big PDF could be removed altogether, if you think it's best? - DB

The Rambling Man (talk) 16:30, 14 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the comments! Replies above... Dana boomer (talk) 14:43, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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