User talk:Jaap Winius

Tasks: start a new article • add basic, wanted or requested articles • add definitions • add metadata • edit new pages

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Scientific names vs. Common names

In the time that I've been busy at Wikipedia, I managed to get myself into many arguments on the issue of whether scientific or common names should be used for article titles. Wikipedia's official policy is to use common names for this purpose whenever available -- preferably the "most popular" common name -- purely for reasons of presentation. However, IMHO there are too many problems with this approach:

• Articles names at Wikipedia have to be unique anyway, so why not use the only ones that are always unambiguous?
• Scientific names avoid conflicts, since many common names often apply to different species. In such cases, one article gets the "good" name and the others have to be, um, different. How is this good for presentation?
• Choosing between two or more more common names only on the basis of which one shows up more often in Google is arbitrary and unscientific.
• Selecting one common name for a species over all the others gives people the impression that it's more importance or more official than the others, even though that's not the case. An exception might be the AOU where they've tried to make certain common names for birds "official", but that's only for American species and even Wikipedia aren't following their lead.
• Using scientific names avoids petty conflicts between editors: no more fights about Siberian Tiger vs. Amur Tiger or Puma vs. Cougar.
• Common name tiles make category overviews pretty useless: just compare Category:True vipers with Category:Sharks at Wikipedia and you'll see what I mean.
• Using scientific names for article titles can teach readers more about how organisms are related: "These names are weird, but look how the first names are all the same... maybe they're all related!"
• Scientific names are universal while common names are not; people in one (English speaking) country may not be familiar with the common names in another.
• Using scientific names for article titles promotes better continuity when linking with other articles inside and outside of Citizendium.

Unfortunately, this is a minority position at Wikipedia, although I feel very strongly about it. As you can image, I'm very much hoping that the folks here at Citizendium, in all their wisdom, will do the right thing before it's once again too late.

Obviously, not everyone is familiar with these names, but that doesn't mean an article has to be inaccessible to the uninitiated. For example, in Vipera berus, the common names for this species are listed just below the title and there are redirects for all of them. Within the article itself, I try to use the title name as little as possible and prefer to use more general terms instead. All of the articles that I've worked on and copied here from WP are written this way. Notice also this category for common name redirects: Category:True vipers - Common names. Take a look around and tell me what you think.

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Jaap, thanks for joining us! First, the above really belongs on your talk page, or even better, on the Forums. We would like to keep user pages focused on only certain information. Second, excellent work in putting together the case for that side of this issue. I'd love to talk more about it--if only I could find time--perhaps on the Forums. I want to keep an open mind about it, and you've certainly got some good arguments. I would like to see your replies, however, to arguments on the other side, which are also powerful.

Also, regarding your work on the vipers (excellent from what I can tell), if you do intend to maintain these articles here on CZ, then do, please, add the [[Category:CZ Live]] to them.

Thanks again for joining us. Making a better place for hard-headed, serious hobbyists like yourself is one of the animating motives behind this project. --Larry Sanger 16:44, 7 December 2006 (CST)

Hi Larry! The sci. names v common names section that was on my user page has been moved to my talk page as per your suggestion. Last Sunday I started up a discussion on this subject (here) in the CZ Biology Forum and there there have so far been mostly positive responses to my position, but somehow I don't think we're done with it yet. ;-)

All of my articles now have [[Category:CZ Live]] tags (thanks!) and, yes, my intention is to maintain these articles here. On the one hand, I'm sick and tired of constantly having to remove unreferenced nonsense put there by anyone with an IP address and a sense of humor, while on the other I'm looking forward to working together with, or at least getting some serious feedback from, people who know more about this stuff than I do. Cheers, --Jaap Winius 14:14, 8 December 2006 (CST)

Hello Jaap, I briefly skimmed your note about scientific names and as a medical student and after studying organic chemistry and biochemistry at Boston College, I couldn't agree more that scientific names are extremely important. why not put the common name in parenthesis? or what about under the title of the article, the common name(s) could be listed. Scientific names should be first, but common names are important too. If someone searches a common name, the correct article should appear, even if it has the scientific name in the title. -Tom

Hi Tom! Thanks, but if you really want to support this idea, I believe the right place to say so at the moment is here in the CZ Forum. I put a lot of thought into an article format that I believe most people would be satisfied with. In Vipera berus, for example, the common names for this species are listed just below the title and there are redirects for all of them. Within the article itself, I try to use the title name as little as possible and prefer to use more general terms instead. All of the articles that I've worked on and copied here from WP are written this way. Notice also this category for common name redirects: Category:True vipers - Common names. Take a look around and tell me what you think. --Jaap Winius 15:59, 8 December 2006 (CST)

I have commenting on the biology forum about the name policy--and advocated exactly the opposite of what you are doing. The only justification I can think of might be the multiple common names--but of course if you did a full synonymy you would also find a variety of scientific names. I think it might be wise to wait for consensus on this matter. We are likely to get into a situation where some editors will not approve an article that starts with a common name, and some do just the opposite. At the least you should add the best-known common name in parenthesis DavidGoodman 17:20, 10 December 2006 (CST)

I've corrected the above--I see you do have a proper synonym list.DavidGoodman 17:23, 10 December 2006 (CST)

Herpetologist recruitment?

Hi Jaap, I am amazed at the amount of work you've done so far. Thanks very much and well done (as far as I can tell)! It seems to me that since you are putting this amount of commitment into the project, and since it will be expert-led, it would be a good idea if you could try to recruit a herpetologist, or several, to the project and have them look over your work on the vipers. Alternatively, give me the name and address of someone and I'll write. --Larry Sanger 12:43, 12 December 2006 (CST)

Hi Larry, I very much hope that a herpetologist will eventually show up to help out with this project, or at least critique my work. Unfortunately, I'm not affiliated with any universities so I don't really know any herpetologists. At least, not well enough to impose on them. Actually, I do know of one over at WP, although he's more into amphibians than reptiles: Dfcisneros. I don't think he's seen anything I've been doing, but he did mention that I was on the right track as far as the taxonomy is concerned (ITIS used together with McDiarmid et al. 1999). --Jaap Winius 08:00, 13 December 2006 (CST)

Another suggestion

The main (strong) argument, as I see it, in favor of using scientific names for various snakes (and other animals) is that they are precise. But the main (and perhaps even stronger) argument against using them is that the very people who want articles about these various snakes know them by their common names, not by their scientific names.

I'm inclined to suggest, therefore, that we rename, for example, Vipera berus to Common European adder (Vipera berus) (if according to scientific majority opinion "common European adder" is the most usual English name). This would be harder to link to, but quite frankly, particularly when we are talking about thousands and thousands of species, hardly any articles will be linking to these article titles anyway. --Larry Sanger 12:50, 12 December 2006 (CST)

Most scientific names are strange to most people. In fact, I'm not even familiar with the scientific names of most snakes (there are some 2700 species). However, I'm not familiar with the common names of most plants and animals either (including snakes) either, so what's the difference? The point is that using common names for article titles causes more problems than it solves (see my list above). Besides, if the articles are written likeVipera ammodytes, with all of the common names listed clearly at the top of the page, and there is even a picture of a specimen, how can there be any doubt what the article is about?

Using names like Common European adder (Vipera berus) addresses only a few of the issues I mentioned. It would still require you to select one common name over any others available, which makes it arbitrary, it would do nothing to avoid petty conflicts like Puma vs. Cougar, categories containing such articles would still not be sorted according to the scientific names, and internal/external continuity would not be served. What's more, such titles can easily become too long and unwieldy and would not be intuitive to anyone. It's kind of like the design for the space shuttle: originally meant to appease all sides, but in the end satisfying no one.

On the other hand, allow me to demonstrate one of the practical advantage of using scientific names. Recently, I finished adding category tags to all of the common name redirects, as well as the synonym redirects for the true vipers group. Here are the three main categories:

1. Category:True vipers - Valid scientific names

2. Category:True vipers - Common names

3. Category:True vipers - Synonymy

1. is a list of the current valid scientific names according to the taxonomy I'm using. Most of these names are the article themselves, but a few (17%) are redirects for cases involving monotypic taxa and nominate subspecies. Except for those redirects, this is the shortest of the three lists and it's complete. It is also a well ordered list that specialists can use to tell what's here and -- more importantly -- what isn't.

2. is a list of all the common name redirects for the articles in the first category. Even though many of the species and subspecies in the fist category do not have common names, this list is much longer (over 200 entries), but is never really complete. I've included all of the names that I know of that are used in the English language for the taxa in the first category. Mostly, this list is only of use to people who want to browse a list of common names, but at least at least it's relatively complete.

3. is a list of all the synonym redirects -- invalid scientific names according to the taxonomy I've used here -- for the articles in the first category. With over 500 entries, this list is nearly complete according to McDiarmid et al. (1999), missing only a few upper and lower case variants. If someone goes looking for a scientific name in the first list and sees that it is not there, they'll probably find it in this list (if not, it's probably very new, but may still be mentioned in a taxonomy subsection for one of the generic names). For people who are already familiar with many of the current scientific names, this list is kind of like a window into the past, showing the results of previous taxonomies as well as some proposals that may eventually be accepted.

If I were to use common names (where possible) for these articles instead, parts of the first and second categories would be mixed in with each another. To make the list complete, you'd really have to merge those two categories, but then you'd have a single main category with almost 350 entries (and probably more common names to be added later on). I cannot image that most people, given the choice, would want to see these lists merged. Of course, this wouldn't be an issue with your suggestion (i.e. Common European adder (Vipera berus)), but then it would be necessary to create four categories -- not very efficient. --Jaap Winius 10:22, 13 December 2006 (CST)

No matter how exact we may get in the text, at least the titles of articles at least should be immediately comprehensible to the layman--when possible.DavidGoodman 23:40, 19 December 2006 (CST)

You've got it the wrong way around: that certain parts of the text should remain accessible to the layman is far more important than the title. In wiki systems like CZ and WP, there is unfortunately only one title for every article, so in this case logically speaking (see my list of arguments) there can only be one choice. And what's so incomprehensible about an article format such as that of Bitis gabonica? Mind you, this article has GA status over at WP despite being different, so it must not be that bad. --Jaap Winius 10:17, 21 December 2006 (CST)

Your message

My problems were:

1. To place a "common names" line before the article rather than in the article looks very odd.
2. To use abbreviations rather than full names of unites is less clear for potential users (as is omitting a link to the relevant article).
3. To leave in Wikipedia templates that simply show up as red "template" signs is surely undesirable.
4. Why have something in "see also" which is already in the article? --Peter J. King 09:49, 13 February 2007 (CST)

See my answer on your talk page. --Jaap Winius 12:22, 13 February 2007 (CST)

Have you checked out the new use of categories with Wkgroup?

http://pilot.citizendium.org/wiki/Citizendium_Pilot:Biology_Workgroup

Check out the cool new stuff we have in the works on the workgroup page! You can now monitor recent changes of biology articles more effeciently! Make sure they get the proper workgroup category tag and it will make monitoring recent changes a cinch! -Tom Kelly (Talk) 18:25, 17 February 2007 (CST)

http://pilot.citizendium.org/wiki?title=Special:Recentchangeslinked&target=Category%3ABiology_Workgroup -Tom Kelly (Talk) 18:26, 17 February 2007 (CST)

You should add [ [Category:Biology Workgroup]] to your snake articles! -Tom Kelly (Talk) 18:27, 17 February 2007 (CST)

Snake pictures

Hey, do you have any snake pictures for your articles? -Tom Kelly (Talk) 18:33, 17 February 2007 (CST)

Lots. Check out the same series of articles on WP. However, most all of those images are on the Wikimedia server, which I was hoping CZ would eventually gain access to it, or else copy over to their own media server. I'm still waiting for them to do something because first, I don't feel like uploading all those images all over again, and second, if I did have to upload them again I'd rather save them on CZ's own media server (they're so much easier to organize that way). --Jaap Winius 21:12, 17 February 2007 (CST)