Talk:Ecotope

Outdated term

I received this information by Terry Chapin, an expert on ecosystems, while working on the ecosystem article with him: "I’d be inclined to delete this word (ecotope). This Wikipedia article is the only place I’ve seen this word used. It is a word that was suggested decades ago but is not currently used." So perhaps this Wikipedia article should be mentioning something along those lines. E.g. to say that it's a somewhat outdated term. EMsmile (talk) 12:55, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

That's not how Wikipedia works. The key policy on Wikipedia is verifiability, which requires the citation of reliable sources. Hearsay from someone about what someone else they know, who they think might be an expert in some area, might have said, has no value on Wikipedia. Perhaps we can accept the testimony of your acquaintance that Wikipedia is the only place he/she has seen this word used. But that is irrelevant. What is relevant is that in recent years, since 2010, about 5000 publications on Google Scholar have used the term. By contrast, prior to 2010 only about 4000 publications on Google Scholar used the term. This does not support your claim that it is an "outdated term". — Epipelagic (talk) 05:42, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

It was just a general comment which might be useful for future editors of this page who come here years from now (the article only gets 20 pageviews per day, and has only had 3 edits since 2013 so it's not a big one). I know it can't be immediately used to make a change to the article. It's however often difficult to find a citation that would say "the term XX is used less nowadays than it used to be", rather than the opposite. Anyway, I thought it was interesting what Terry Chapin said about ecotope. That's all. EMsmile (talk) 09:38, 24 July 2021 (UTC)