Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Fishes/Archive 1

This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Blue Marlin Picture

Could we maybe get a better picture of the blue marlin?

References

The current format that I've been using for citations is based on the MLA citation:

Author's Last Name, First Name. "Title of specific article." Title of complete work. ed. Editor Name(s) (City: Publisher, year), ##-##. URL: path.html ISBN #-###-#####-#

The MLA is more like the following:

Author's Last Name, First Name. "Title of specific article." Title of complete work. Ed. Editor Name(s). City: Publisher, year. ##-##. URL: path.html ISBN #-###-#####-#

The APA is more like the following:

Author's Last Name, First Name. (Date of Publication) Title of specific article. In Editor Name(s) (Ed.), Title of complete work (xth edition) (pp. ##-##). City: Publisher. URL: path.html ISBN #-###-#####-#

The reason I didn't purely follow the MLA was because doing underlines required me to use HTML, so I'd rather use WikiMarkup, so I italisized the title of the complete work (similar to how the APA does it). Other than that the existing way I did the citations was the same. In all cases above the handling of internet URL's in the format "URL: http://www.whatever.com" has been adapted from the correct "Retrieved on DATE from http://www.whatever.com".

Under the APA we should use something like the following:

Froese, Ranier, and Daniel Pauly (Eds.) (October, 2004). Xiphophorus hellerii. FishBase. URL: Xiphophorus helleri.
Integrated Taxonomic Information System (2004). ITIS Standard Report. Washington, D.C.:National Museum of Natural History. Retrieved on 2004-04-28 from ID 165920.

Under the MLA:

Integrated Taxonomic Information System. "Barbus tetrazona." ITIS Standard Report. Washington, D.C.:National Museum of Natural History. Retrieved on 2004-04-28 from ID 163655
"Puntius tetrazona." FishBase. Ed. Froese, R. and D. Pauly. 04/2004. URL: Puntius tetrazona

Proposed Citation:

Froese, Ranier, and Daniel Pauly (Eds.) (2004). FishBase. October 2004 version. S.v. "[http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/SpeciesSummary.cfm?genusname=Xiphophorus&speciesname=hellerii

Xiphophorus helleri]".

National Museum of Natural History (2004). ITIS Standard Report. ID 165920.

Personally I find the APA a bit cumbersome to use and a bit more inconsistent. The "template" that I have been using is an attempt at finding a single way to represent everything in an easy format, although it technically deviates from both formats. I much prefer the MLA style, but of course there is no set way to do things here, just that the citations happen. One major difference from the proposed citation format is the retrieved on date for ITIS. I think this is pretty important. Fishbase doesn't need it because the current version of the database is always given on the site and that is sufficient. It also adds the city/publisher which is required for proper citation. Despite my preference for the MLA, if the APA is what the consensus is, I will go with that too. -- Ram-Man 03:12, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)

I personally can't stand either MLA or APA; my professional field (history) uses Chicago. However, for science articles we should be following APA. There's no reason to use MLA, since it is a humanities style and inferior in every way to Chicago *wink*. (I'm a bit emotionally invested in that one since I'm constantly struggling with breaking students of bad MLA habits they picked up in English 102...). I've never heard of MLA being used in the sciences, either.

Don't get caught up in the italics/underlining thing, BTW: They are absolutely the same, and in a published work following any style, underlining should never be used. Some presses require it in manuscripts, but they change it to italics in the published work, and some outdated style guides for students still specify it because they haven't updated since students used typewriters incapable of doing italics to type their papers. Wikipedia should only ever use italics.

I'm a bit perplexed why you have "URL" in the citation. What follows is not the URL, which is automatically added to any external link when a Wikipedia article is printed. Guidelines for paper usage of the various styles append the URL to the citation, but that is superfluous for our purposes. The href should just go from the article name or ID number.

It is, I believe, redundant to include FishBase or ITIS as author, since they are also the titles. (Style manuals recommend omitting the author in footnotes where it is part of the title, e.g., William Shakespear's Complete Works.)

I used "s.v." (sub verbum), which is what we use in Chicago style to refer to reference works (encyclopedias, dictionaries, etc.), rather than an article title; it is the most appropriate for a searchable database. If you want to treat them as articles instead of database entries, I would use:

"Micropterus salmoides". FishBase. Ed. Ranier Froese and Daniel Pauly. October 2004 version.
"Micropterus salmoides". ITIS Standard Report. Accessed on 1 December 2004.

We should use wiki markup for the full date for ITIS so that users' date format preferences are respected. I know YYYY-MM-DD makes sense to programmers (I'm a Linux geek myself) but it is out of place in this context and is not used in Wikipedia style. We could use the full date (19 October 2004) for FishBase, too, since that is given at the foot of every FishBase page.

BTW, Wikipedia style specifies full names for authors, not initials, even when otherwise following APA format.

Publisher and place of publication are normally omitted for electronic sources; in both cases, they would moreover be redundant, because they are simply FishBase and ITIS.

It's probably not necessary to give the ITIS ID number, because that is part of the URL and can be therefore seen both by on-line and paper readers.

My objective with the format for these is to keep them as clean and simple as possible while ensuring that they fit with other source citations. Thoughts? —Tkinias 04:12, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Where can I find more information on your prefered style of citation? I wouldn't mind looking at that before doing anything else. I would note that it would be best if we included city and publisher information. I understand your desire to keep things simple, but I don't think that should be the driving force here. I don't really care so much about the format as long as it has as much of the information as possible. I should note that when I started, I abbreviated ITIS and someone else came along and didn't like that. They prefered to spell out the full name. I suppose this is because in a print version, ITIS would not be immediately understood. So while your new format looks great (for the information in it), I imagine you will want to leave out what you believe to be extraneous information, but what I think is necessary for a complete citation. I doubt I'm going to change my mind on this, and I think that the Wikipedia:Cite sources page would match with what I feel: format is secondary to content, and don't worry about the size. Now I'm not legalistic about Wikipedia "policy", but I do agree with it in this instance. -- Ram-Man (talk) 05:33, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

There's no on-line version of the Chicago Manual of Style, but I do have a quick-and-dirty guide based on it I put on line for a course (Guideline for Notes and Bibliography; it mentions Turabian, which is the students' "mini" Chicago). Chicago is a mammoth, comprehensive guide to all aspects of book and journal editing, typesetting, etc.

I think the person who "fixed" all the ITIS links is one of the anti-redirection zealots who goes through and changes all links to redirects; there are a few here.

As far as giving cities, we can guess Washington for ITIS—but a traceroute suggests that their server is in fact in Denver (that's the location of the last router before hitting their firewall). And where is FishBase? They have mirrors in Germany, France, Sweden, Taiwan, and the U.S., and DNS round-robin to send fishbase.org to any of them (I'm getting sent to Kiel, Germany, at the moment, even though I am in Arizona). Their home pages says FishBase was originally developed at the World Fish Center, which is headquartered in Penang, Malaysia, with the cooperation of FAO which is, IIRC, in New York City. I'm not opposed to giving a city in principle (and always would for something which had an unambiguous place of publication), but I think making one up or picking one at random for something which is published on servers around the world does not convey useful information.

As far as publisher goes, for both FishBase and ITIS the publisher is FishBase and ITIS, respectively. Full citations would be:

"Micropterus salmoides". FishBase. Ed. Ranier Froese and Daniel Pauly. October 2004 version. N.p.: FishBase, 2004.
"Micropterus salmoides" (ID 168160). Integrated Taxonomic Information System. N.p.: Integrated Taxonomic Information System, 2004. Accessed on 1 December 2004.

(N.p. is used for "no place" where no place of publication is indicated by the work.)

BTW, I can e-mail you a paper I'm working on which employs Chicago citation for a wide variety of sources. I can't post it on line, though, for copyright reasons. —Tkinias 20:35, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Alright, the full citation above looks fine for me (although I'd like to check fishbase's website later, but it appears to temporarily be down). The only problem that I might consider is that many people are not used to the format. For instance, I had no clue what "N.p." was. I'd suggest that you update Wikipedia:Cite sources and maybe add a section on the Chicago style of citations. That way I (and others) have a format to use with the fish articles when we use other sources. Because APA is so commonly used, I would almost recommend its usage just on that alone, but personally the citation above seems perfectly fine otherwise. It's the idea that sometimes we have to use the less technical or less preferred way of doing things in order that it becomes accessible to the largest group of people. But that's just a thought on my part. For now I support updating the WikiProject to reflect the full citation you've given. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk) 14:45, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

The project page now recommends use of the template, so we can tweak the format if we want. I don't have the APA book; what does it do for the equivalent of "n.p."? IIRC MLA also uses "n.p" for missing information (it can stand, BTW, for "no publisher" also, or both, as in "N.p., 1901"). Let's get the pages using the template and we can always change to APA if we want to later. I'll write up a bit on Chicago and Oxford (I also have that manual) at some point, explaining them both and their differences, to provide a traditional humanities style to go with the ultramodern APA. —Tkinias 16:56, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Sounds great. Since it's using templates, I figure we could sit on this for a while and not feel in any rush to change anything. Maybe someone else will provide some thoughts in the meantime. BTW, I added some more generic citation templates at Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles. They follow the style i've been using, but again they can change at any point. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk) 17:42, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

Scope

Question: Should this project cover only the Actinopterygii, or should it also include other taxa called "fish" -- the Chondrichthyes, Actinistia, Dipnoi, and maybe even Cephalaspidomorphi and Myxini? —Tkinias 08:46, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

All the taxa - general icthyological references always seems to include all these groups. Stan 14:51, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Reference templates

So that I can continue to work on articles while we discuss citation format, I've created templates for the references. I will update the project page to explain their usage. For now, the text they produce is equivalent to my last suggested format, but that can of course be changed. —Tkinias 09:39, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Pedant's question on project name

why not WikiProject Fish? Pedant 02:05, 2004 Dec 7 (UTC)

The other analogous projects use the plural (birds, mammals, cetaceans), and fishes is customarily used to refer to multiple species or types of fish: cf. the largemouth bass and the smallmouth bass are two fishes in the sunfish family and I caught two fish this morning. See also Fish#Note on usage: "fish" vs. "fishes", which I am trying to follow. —Tkinias 02:49, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, just like the famous Godfather quote: "Luca Brazzi sleeps with the fishes." If there had been only one species in that river, they'd have said "fish" instead of "fishes". :-) Dave 11:16, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Categorization

I see that the project states to Categorize under either the common name or the scientific depending on circumstances.. I wonder why you do not categorize under both. For the casual user of wikipedia, the common name is often beneficial, but for a student doing a project, being able to follow links by the scientific taxonomy holds a lot of value. Because there are 2 classification schemes common and scientific, why not follow both? Sortior 23:12, Dec 26, 2004 (UTC)

Seems kind of confusing - at least it confuses me. :-) Common names for classifications are more accessible all-around, because a scientist can see "catfish" and think "siluriform", while the reverse is unlikely to be true of a lay person. Note that I'm assuming we use official taxonomic criteria for categories; while one could create a Category:Sardines to include everything ever named sardine by anybody, I think that way lies madness; categorization is binary, doesn't allow for explanation of the nuances (for this fish it's a market name used by unscrupulous businesses, for that fish it's a traditional Sicilian term, etc). Anything that needs an explanation should be in an article, not in the category system. Stan 00:22, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I see this subject was last discussed two years ago, so sorry to revive it, but I do think it may need some consensus. I recently did some updating to the category to include the scientific names to the species in the category Tetraodontidae by adding the category link on the scientific name redirects. An inquiry was posted on my talk page asking about these actions. Following was my answer:

Regarding your question on adding category to redirect pages, I don't know that there is a specific policy on this. In my opinion, it completes the category list by giving both the common and the scientific name. Anyone doing a search by category can then find the species both to the common name as well as the scientific name. Although the redirect pages contain no material, if you click on these links from the category page, you will automatically be redirected to the actual article. In effect it completes the index. In particular, this could be helpful for wikipedians of other languages in that even if they can communicate in English, they may not know what the translation of a common name may be. For example, Sattel-Spitzkopfkugelfisch is german for Valentinni's sharpnose puffer, even the most advanced German english speaker (or vice versa), would be hard pressed to know the german-english translation for this, but the scientific name connects the two and so the scientific name should be included in the category list. I would suggest that this be done for all species and if it needs a policy, please let me know where I can go to propose it. To be honest, I think a separate scientific name index would be valuable as common names are not always the same. The above mentioned Valentinni's sharpnose puffer for example, is the official common name given on fishbase but it is far more commonly known as a black saddled toby. Which one is right? Regards Jnpet 02:44, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

At any rate, my impression of the category is that it is a form of index, regardless if you’re a fisherman or a scientist or German. The scientific name, connects it all together and should necessarily be included in the index. As seems to be the case in just about every reference book I’ve ever come across. May I suggest that this be a matter of policy?Jnpet 07:09, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Grunion

I am currently working on an article on grunion. So far, I've only put up the beginnings of the article (intro + infobox) as a subpage of my User page (see User:BlankVerse/Grunion). If anyone has any suggestions about article organization, sources for images, etc. that would be greatly appreciated. BlankVerse ∅ 17:17, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Batoidea

Our articles on batoids were a bit of a mess (and still are to some extent), involving a mixture of several systems of classification. I've tried to clean them up so they all follow the FishBase system — three orders Rajiformes, Pristiformes and Torpediniformes — instead of a mix of that and McEachran's system (which has the stingrays, eagle rays and their relatives in Myliobatiformes). I've added some discussion of the different systems of classification.

I would be grateful if someone could check Batoidea and the articles it links to. If some system of batoid classification is generally thought to be better than FishBase then please say so.

I've made ray (fish) redirect to Batoidea rather than the other way round, to avoid the question of "are skates rays?" If that's wrong, please change it around. Gdr 20:25:36, 2005-08-15 (UTC)

Fishbase references robot

I have just written and tested a robot that can read an article, find a taxobox, get the genus and species and add a reference link to fishbase. I have permission to run this for one weeks test and have successfully done so for some of the shark articles. If the taxobox does not contain both genus and species it does nothing. It should work for all fish articles also. The robot is User:StefanBot see edits to check pages it have changed. The bot have a few issues.

For now it can only handle 2-3 versions of the taxobox templates, I'm fixing it as I find more versions. For a unknown taxobos the bot just ignores the article.
It have problems with pages that have no header for external links, references, related articles or see also, if non of these exists the robot will add the reference section last in the article which is some cases places it after the fish_stubs templates, I will fix this, but I must list ALL templates by names to know what the bot shall put the text before, for the shark articles I have monitored this by hand, but for fish articles I do not think I can do that, which means that you who probably look at the fish pages more that I must do these fixes. I can change the bot to not update any articles that does not already have any of the headers mentioned above if that would be preferable. now fixed.
The bot adds the references as a * text, this does not look so good if the reference templates have been used in the article, I guess I can find {{ref and ignore the article but I have not found so many artciles yet that uses this so not sure. See for example of problem failed edit

Except for that the bot seams to do a OK job, I will not run it on the fish articles unless I get majority of positive responses here, please add comments. Also I plan to try to make it add marine bio references later, but that is when I have had time to learn more python. Stefan 05:29, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea! About placement, it doesn't concern me so much; it's more important to get the reference in there than to worry about positioning. (There have been periods when I've preferred to have the stub note in front of other end matter anyway.) A more serious question is how to ensure that the link is actually checked to see that it works; imagine a misspelled genus name for instance. It would be helpful to have the bot add a special-purpose category like "Unchecked FishBase references", requiring a human to actually verify that the link goes to the expected page before removing the category from the article. Stan 15:27, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

OK, that should be resonably easy to implement, I will work on it, fishbase gives a special page if the species does not exists, so I will modify my bot so that if the species does not exists in fishbase I will add a special category instead of the link. Stefan 09:57, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

OK now implemented and tested. I named the category "taxobox binomial name does not exist in fishbase" which is more descriptive I think, but I'm fine with any name. Also fixed the fish_stubs problem, now I insert the reference section before the fish-stub. Stefan 11:17, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Articles for the Wikipedia 1.0 project

Hi, I'm a member of the Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing using these criteria, and we are looking for A-class, B-class, and Good articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Can you recommend any suitable articles? Please post your suggestions here. Cheers, Shanel 20:17, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Hello - anyone here

Hello - I recently been doing some work on fishes and related articles - just wondered if anyone is here at the moment - maybe you could check some of my articles for errors etc.

Things I've done so far:

Added disambiguation pages for armoured catfish, sailfin catfish, suckermouth catfish

Moved 'plecostomus' articles to their respective scientific names - left the plecostomus page as a general page for Loricariidae catfish (especially those common in aquaria/pet shops)

Added to Loricariidae, created a Pterygoplichthys genus page.

Fish anatomy - created pages on Omega iris, odontode, suckermouth.

Fish keeping - created pages on related terms such as bogwood,aeration and L-number

If anyone is out there I'd appreciate you checking for errors / giving feedback etc. Otherwise I'll just carry on.HappyVR 18:49, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Looks OK. Don't forget to italicise genera and species. Gdr 19:15, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Questions about format - new genus article

I've added a new genus article - acanthicus - maybe someone could check it.

I've also got a few questions about formatting/page layout:

Is there any preference for a 'prose' article vs. a headed list eg:

Distribution South east asia
Habitat Mountain streams
Diet Small crustaceans

vs. "This species is found in mountain streams in south east asia and feeds on small crustaceans."

The headed list seems easier to use to find info. but the 'prose' version looks more readable. Any comment/advice?

Also the family Loricariidae contains links (mostly red) for all its genera - should all these genera have separate pages? As web sources/references for most of these pages are the same three sites maybe the family page should just contain a link to the sites without having a page for each genus - any thoughts?HappyVR 10:37, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I favor the prose version. The headed version looks semi-illiterate, as if the writer couldn't manage to produce actual sentences. Plus you miss out on some explanatory opportunity (presumably the "small crustaceans" in mountain streams are amphipods rather than king crabs, etc :-) ). On genera, we actually want articles for all of those with more than one species; not just for navigational convenience (why hunt through a long family article?), but also because each genus needs at least an explanation of its circumscription, etymology, and rationale, which often includes some interesting ichthyological history too. You won't find much good genus detail online, but books and journal articles are a great source. Stan 12:22, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

ok prose it is then - I've already have one person say they don't like the headings so two makes it final. And I'll continue adding genera as time allows. Is this page a good place to 'announce' new fish pages for checking? previously I've used Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science but the page is pretty busy. I don't think I make many mistakes but it's better if someone looks at the page early on to check for obvious mistakes that the writer overlooks.HappyVR 12:49, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

You might want to look at the pages linked from list of fish families to see what other editors have done with fish family articles. For example, Cichlidae shows a way to format a long list of genera; Carangidae and many others show ways to format a list of genera and species. In terms of level of detail and style I think Melanocetidae is quite good. Gdr 13:13, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Bass

Back when I was a newer editor, I stumbled across Bass (fish) which looked like this. After some head scratching, I took a cue from the category and made it into a disambiguation page. It was immediately reverted by an admin. Being new and not wanting to tangle with a trigger-happy admin, I let it go for a while (see Talk:Bass (fish)), but eventually remade it into its current version, discussing the various unrelated taxa that are called bass in English. I'm not happy with that, however, and I see now that this WikiProject recommends articles be about particular taxa, which Bass (fish) is not. What should be done with this article? --Ginkgo100 19:28, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Articles about miscellaneous fishes sharing a common name can be OK if the fishes have something in common; for example the flounder and halibut articles are not so bad, concerning as they do the cooking and commercial fishing of groups of similar fishes.

However, bass (fish) is really just a collection of summaries of unrelated articles, which is not such a good idea. I recommend you be bold and reduce the page to a disambig (after having made sure all the information is included in the appropriate genus and species articles).

I note in passing that the bass page is far from complete; see FishBase for many more species known as "bass". Gdr 20:19, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Seahorse, a request

May I request the Seahorse page to be :-

brought upto the high stds of WikiProject Fishes. It doesnt have a taxobox.
edited by someone to give the article a good opening. The opening paragraphs of the article in its present state are ambiguous to a person who expects to find a generic article on sea horses but comes up against a genus-based article.
more photos and information please.

The WikiProject may consider putting up a section/project page for suggestions, requests, development and cleanup.

I am of the opinion that Seahorse is one of the most important pages of this WikiProject since mamy children, parents or students would be drawn to this unusual and attractive group of fishes. I am ignorant about fishes in general and usually inhabit WikiProject Lepidoptera and its domain and sometimes venture to other articles.

I'm also impressed with the quality of the WikiProject Main Page and commend all concerned. Regards, AshLin 02:49, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

I've added the taxobox.HappyVR 11:30, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, looks better now, I've edited the opening sentance. Regards, AshLin 16:20, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Stub genera

I was thinking about attempting to complete the list of genera for the family loricariidae - however quite a few of the genuses have very little info available (and some are now possibly invalid) - apart from adding a taxobox and a link to fishbase and basic region found information many would contain very little info. otherwise. Should I go ahead and create these genus stubs or not bother or do something else?HappyVR 12:00, 16 June 2006 (UTC) For example acestridium this page contains about as much info as I could get hold of (for free) and other articles probably would contain even less info. than this.HappyVR 12:11, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Opinions differ, but I think a good-quality stub is better than nothing at all - not only does it add more facts than there were before, the linking in and out is useful in many ways (not least that it forestalls the creation of a bad stub by somebody else). I guarantee there are printed references out there that discuss the genus in some detail, for instance the taxonomic works justifying the definition of the genus in the first place. Stan 12:58, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, unfortunately the papers are not always in English - often Spanish (could that be Portugese?) or French, a translation by me would be very slow and quite probably wrong (one word at a time via a dictionary)HappyVR 13:31, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I'd say go for it. Think of the stubs that you create as a big welcome sign to everybody out there shouting out "ADD TO ME!". There are people who know some things about genera or species, but don't feel confident starting articles from scratch, or perceive that the lack of an article indicates a lack of interest in that article. Even if they are able to add a short reference from another source, having the framework there is more inviting for someone to throw in a bit of information, or a photo. Neil916 15:06, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I was also going to ask about genera that have been made invalid (or are debated) - I assumed to just include everything and let the reader make their mind up. I'm not a biologist but it seems that the reclassification of species is quite common.HappyVR 13:31, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

This project's page in the "taxonomy" section seems to state that Fishbase should be the de facto reference point for taxonomy. I've been interpreting that to mean that if a genus or species is no longer considered valid in Fishbase, it shouldn't be included here. This seems logical since Fishbase is updated regularly and can reflect the newest consensus in the scientific community, whereas my reference book from 1994 could be horribly outdated. If it were me, I'd create a redirect to the new genus or species and add a sentence or paragraph in the new article discussing the reclassification. (example: Tiger Barb has redirects from Barbus tetrazona, Capoeta tetrazona, and Puntius tetrazona, among others). Chime in if I'm wrong... Neil916 15:06, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I've been using fishbase as a source (mentioning differences when discussing old or now invalid genera). It seems widely used and accepted (even being used as a reference in popular fishkeeping magazines). There is a point I've been wondering about though - regarding the classification system: Is there an official board or similar organisation that decides when a new classification is valid. Some of the reclassifications I've seen seem to be based on published papers - which makes sense since these things are peer reviewed - but surely getting a paper published is not all that it takes - maybe some sort of consensus rules here, I've honestly no idea how it works in practice - I assume differences of opinion do arise? If no-one has the answer here I'll try on the science help desk. Can't find anything on wikipedia?HappyVR 22:29, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

There is no centralised authority for taxonomy, any more than for any part of science. In many well-studied areas, there's a consensus. However, there are always areas where scientific opinion differs. What this means for Wikipedia is that (a) we should say whose taxonomy we are following; and (b) we should document differences between experts. Gdr 17:10, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes. that gives me the info I need, thanks.HappyVR 17:29, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Redirects (or even disambigs!) from synonyms are highly desirable; they help prevent creation of duplicate articles for instance. Genera and higher taxa that have been broken up or entirely abandoned may actually need to have their own taxobox-less articles that tell readers what happened to them and why, and most importantly, how to find all the ex-subtaxa in WP; see Violales for a (poorly explained) example of a former plant order. Stan 17:00, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

FishBase is our reference if in doubt, but we are not obliged to follow it in all details. In particular, WP:NPOV means that we ought to describe obsolete taxa, and taxa in other systems. There are two sensible approaches:

Redirect to an appropriate page and describe the alternative taxonomies. For example, Rhinobatiformes.
Write an article describing the taxon, and explain where its members are classified in the FishBase system. For example, Myliobatiformes.

(I agree with Stan that Violales does not explain its subject well. Indeed the whole of Wikipedia's coverage of the higher classification of plants is poor in much the same way. A shame; let's hope we don't get into such a mess with fishes!) Gdr 15:52, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikiproject Banner

Is there already a banner for this Wikiproject, or is there someone who can design one for this project? See Template:StarTrekproject, Template:WPMILHIST and Template:Stargateproject for a couple of examples. Putting those on talk pages would not only attract the attention of editors with similar interests, it could also encourage consistency of pages by encouraging everybody to read the style guidelines. I think it would be a good tool; I don't remember how I first stumbled across this project, but most people probably aren't aware of it. Neil916 17:26, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Good idea - couldn't find such a thing but a few minutes cutting and pasting produced this:

Fishes Project‑class

	Fish portal This page is part of WikiProject Fishes, an attempt to organise a detailed guide to all topics related to Fish taxa. To participate, you can edit the attached article, or contribute further at WikiProject Fishes. This project is an offshoot of the WikiProject Tree of Life.FishesWikipedia:WikiProject FishesTemplate:WikiProject FishesFishes articles
Project	This page does not require a rating on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.

Which is inserted into an article using {{Fishproject}}.

As yet there is no fish portal but I've left that in 'just in case'. Any good? If the wording is wrong you can edit this as Template:Fishproject --HappyVR 18:42, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Well 'somebody' changed my White Cloud Mountain Minnow picture to a shoal of fish on the grounds that it was not 'exciting' - if minnows aren't exciting I don't know what is!

But seriously are we now going to use this template on all the talk pages, shall I start adding it to articles I've edited?HappyVR 13:59, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

I think it looks good. Thanks for your work. I think any minor changes can be hashed out on that banner's talk page and changes that are made will automatically change on the pages where it has been inserted, so go ahead and start inserting. I'll do the same. Neil916 16:03, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

ok I'll start using it.HappyVR 16:11, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

I've finished going through the all of the articles and inserting the banner in all of the talk pages that didn't have it. The banner is now included in about 1700+ articles. I think the banner has been successful, as the number of participants listed on this project have more than doubled in the month or so since the banner was rolled out.

The manual insertion of the banners was considerably more time consuming than I anticipated and am now wondering what will happen a few months down the road when new articles are created without that banner in them. Manually checking a couple thousand articles for the banner would be just as time consuming. I think that it would be a relatively simple task for a bot to accomplish; basically, start at Category:Ray-finned fish and navigate all of the articles and subcategories to check for the inclusion of the template in their talk pages. Anybody know anything about bots who is willing to volunteer for this? Neil916 16:19, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

What is our reference for species?

I wonder how we handle things like [1] and [2]. What I mean is what is our reference for what fish species there are? For the first example there is a reference "Last, Chidlow & Compagno" and I would use Compagno as the authority on shark species, but I think that wikipedia have fishbase as its main reference, not FAO or individual papers. Fishbase does not list Orectolobus hutchinsi yet? I do not want to change this page since I consider the edit to be correct but I would like to hear some others view? What is really our reference for the number of species and what they are in wikipedia? fishbase or something else? The second example I think is easier, I made that edit and I did not claim that the new species is official so I would say that is a correct edit also, but also want comments on it also. Stefan 14:35, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Any reliable source - I fishbase isn't up to date with new species - don't worry - If a new species has been discovered - add it - that's what I would do.

This project page does suggest using fishbase as it's main reference, however it's not 'our bible'. Your first example uses a ref from zootaxa - that should be a reliable source. There's no problem with individual papers. (Also fishbase is really just a collection of references - stuff on there always has a paper that the info. has come from. - it's not really the primary source.)

Not sure what 'FAO' means. Your edit seems fine - I'd suggest a note in the taxobox as well maybe. Though the article could do with some sub headings..(just my opinion). Oh and thanks for bring up Wobbegong - I've always found those interesting. Did that answer your questions?HappyVR 18:21, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, very good answer, thanks! And FOA is FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS, they publish species reports on sharks, see the only one online [3] which I though was the most official documents describing at least shark species. Stefan 23:56, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Please add new section

Please add a section where the fish-stub, project banner and any other templates concerned with WikiProject Fishes are displayed. You may like to see WikiProject Arthropods and WikiProject Lepidoptera as examples. Regards, AshLin 18:26, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I'll do that now, AshLin. Also, in the future, can you add new sections of this page to the bottom instead of the middle? It makes it difficult to find your edits otherwise. Thanks Neil916 19:20, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I've cut and pasted a version from the Arthropods Project page. The fish have a number of categories and subcategories that should be listed on a subpage that is redlinked in the part that I've added, but I don't have a lot of time to add that part today. Nor do I really understand how the categories are organized (which is a good reason in itself to add that page). If someone has the inclination, feel free to jump in and tackle it, otherwise I'll try to get to it in the next week or so. Neil916 19:35, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I've thrown together a first draft of the category sub-page. There are a lot of them. Many of those categories only have one page in them, although I'm sure that a year from now we'll be talking about how we need to split those into smaller groups because there are too many articles in each one :)

One source of potential confusion is that I listed the categories in a heiarchical fashion, then alphabetically. Most of the category names are scientific names based upon the family. Others use common names. Anybody have any ideas how to make that page easier to navigate? Neil916 08:09, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

It's a long list, not a lot we can do about that. I prefer using the scientific name as 90% already do. Luckily most of the common name categories are at the end of the taxonomic branches so it shouldn't cause too much confusion.HappyVR 13:10, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Can we also have a user-box for all WPFish participants like the TOL or Arthropod user-boxes. see my user page. I'd very much like to have a fish user-box there too.AshLin 04:12, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Added one. Consider it a starting point, as I couldn't quickly find a picture that looked decent in a 50x50 square; the fish needs a solid background behind it in order to be recognizable at that small size, so as it is, the picture is oversized compared to standard userboxes because that species is long and skinny. Something like a freshwater angelfish would probably look good if we could find a photo without a busy background. See discussion on the template page. Use {{User WPFishes}} to include it on your user page. Neil916 08:06, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

List of fishproject relevant categories

Hello. I've expanded upon the category list for this project a bit. Some of the categories I've added don't exist yet but I've every intention of using them later on. Here's a summary: Added Category:Poeciliidae for live bearers and added species to this new category. The 'old' category 'live-bearers' is unchanged but now does not specifically just mean the family:Poeciliidae. Also added new categories Loricariidae and Callichthyidae as sub categories of 'armoured catfish'.

I've also added 'Geographical categories' - some of which don't exist yet. I think all species/genus articles should be in one of these (list not complete yet).

I tried to collect all the 'relavance to mankind' categories. I'm not sure about the category 'cold water aquarium fish' - should this be a list - I will change it if anyone wants.

I've also added lists relevant to this project as it seemed sensible.

O.K. First of all I'm sure I've missed a lot - please start adding more stuff. Secondly is it ok, feedback please etc..HappyVR 22:59, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Questions - for categories such as Fish of south america - should I include every species or stop at genus or family level?HappyVR 23:44, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Also there's a choice between 'wildlife' and 'fauna' in the geographical categories - any thoughts?HappyVR 23:44, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Happy, It sometimes helps to stand back and look at some other category scheme for ideas. It may suggest a better way to organise or some new category such as 'fish-scientists' or 'fish-books' , yes, I dont know the correct terms for these. I suggest you take a look at Lepidoptera category and its sub categories. Its not yet completely done but we have done some house-cleaning in it. Also see draft guidelines for categorisation (at present of butterflies only) which can be accessed here.Regards, AshLin 04:07, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, category fish-scientists is a good idea - they're called ichthyologists, I guess butterfly scientists are called Lepidoptorists?HappyVR 13:42, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

You mean like Category:Ichthyologists? :-) Stan 16:36, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Live bearers category

I've created a category:poeciliidae and put added the category tag to all the articles about this genus I could find. Further to this I've added non Poeciliidae genus live bearing fishes to the category:Live-bearers. Finally I've added a request that the category:live-bearers be renamed category:Ovoviviparous fish. Which all made sense to me. See Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 June 25. Hope this is ok.HappyVR 16:46, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

category:viviparous fish and category:live-bearing fish also now exist.

My suggestion is that if the exact type of parental support is unknown the fish be placed in category:live-bearing fish otherwise category:viviparous fish orcategory:ovoviviparous fish should be used. Livebearers of the guppy, platy, and molly type should also go in category:Poeciliidae. Hope I've got that right.HappyVR 03:40, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

log of new articles

I know that wikipedia has a log of articles created - but what about fish - is there anyway to generate one so we can look at the new stuff. Otherwise how about having a user created one - I'd be happy if I knew any articles I had written had been given a good going over by a lot of other people. I definately have time to check a list, read an article and add any info. I have / do spelling. Is it worth trying this?HappyVR 19:13, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

You may find [4] and [5] useful (although these lists don't find pages with no taxobox). Gdr 07:29, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes thanks that works quite well.

Barbel

Note: for anyone using a link to the term barbel, I have disambiguated it.

New pages Barbel (fish species) Barbel (anatomy) and Barbel (disambiguation)

Thank youHappyVR 20:39, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I've merged the Barbel (fish species) article into Barbus barbus and further modified the disambiguation page. Neil916 15:19, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Categories - Europe

Seems quite a few people are working on categories at the moment - here's a note for anyone who knows their "European fish" - if you have time - there is a new category Category:Fish of Europe. ThanksHappyVR 13:15, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

barbs

(Copied from main page)

Would anyone with more information on 'barbs' like to write a non taxonomic article on them - suggested title Barb (fish species) - similar to the articles for carp or dace HappyVR 20:55, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Given the ambiguity of "barbs" would Barbus (the genus) be better? I'm happy to have a go at it? MidgleyDJ 00:52, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

that's one of the problems - many of the barbs (especially southeast asian) (tropical fish) such as the tiger barb have been moved into the genus puntius - hence the need for a barb (common name) page, So now there are barbs not only in barbus but puntius and it seems the tinfoil barb is in another genus as well.. My suggestion was basically for a common name disambiguation page (for 'barbs') but now you mention it the genus barbus article could also do with some work esp. regarding behaviour, habitat, taxonomy etcHappyVR 01:44, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Barb (fish) should exist and explain the difference between genus Barbus and the various species called "X barb". I find fish called "barb" in Barbichthys, Barbodes, Barboides (yes, they're different genera!), Barbonymus, Barbopsis, Barbus, Caecobarbus, Capoeta, Catla, Catlacarpio, Chela, Cyclocheilichthys, Devario, Discherodontus, etc. (BTW, I'm getting really fed up with the crackers who keep fucking with FishBase...) Tkinias 09:46, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

(Does fishbase get vandalised like wikipedia - I've never noticed this. What sort of problems are there.) Thanks for the list anyway.HappyVR 13:35, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Not like Wikipedia, just cracked into... the FishBase admins seem to have a running battle going with a cracker group right now, with the crackers getting in and defacing the site/taking down all the databases every few hours, and then the admins restoring everything... So I'm mostly using the French and German mirrors right now. Tkinias 14:33, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually you've given by enough info to get started on it, I'm going through the fish kingdom adding geographic categories so if I find more barbs I'll add them.

I'll start with a list and eventually try to have a short paragraph with relevant links for each genus that has 'barbs' in it (with a brief description)HappyVR 23:46, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

oceans

Re:Categories: Is there a term that describes (species) that are found in the pacific,indian and atlantic oceans (but not artic ocean), also is there a simple term that includes tropical and sub-tropical fish ie a replacement for category:Pan-(subtropical and tropical) fish?

Why not just list it in the indian ocean category, atlantic ocean category, and pacific ocean categories? Neil916 15:51, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I'll do thatHappyVR 15:53, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

trinomial fishbase

Is there a way to use the fishbase template to get a sub-species?HappyVR 14:49, 3 July 2006 (UTC) I can't get the subspecies fishbase template to work.. The ID is ?HappyVR 15:09, 3 July 2006 (UTC) Ignore - I've worked it out.HappyVR 15:14, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

To do list

I've added a 'to-do' list as suggested by User:Lethargy, probably a better way than adding stuff to the bottom of the main page. There should be a link from the talklist on the main page. I'll copy the current list over as well.HappyVR 15:56, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks to Neil916 for adding the tag to the talkpage. My last message got wipe on editing accident. Sorry this is so short.

See my notes on Salmon and classification of government websites and bystate.

See my Mad Cow Page for and example of what the classification will look like.

--meatclerk 19:10, 5 July 2006 (UTC) meatclerk 19:10, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Duplicate Spanish Mackerel article? Help needed

Expert advice needed re. possible merging of two articles. Please see talk page: Talk:Atlantic Spanish mackerel. Thanks! --Velvet-Glove 18:19, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Update to the above: article merge has now been completed. --Velvet-Glove 00:15, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Tilapia advice

We currently have a Tilapia page which discusses tilapiine cichlids (Tilapia, Sarotherodon and Oreochromis) under the common/trade name for these fish - tilapia. This is a confusing situation (see Talk:Tilapia). I was wondering whether I could get some advice from the WikiProject Fishes participants as to how to fix it?

Given the ambiguity of the common name (eg: tilapia vs Tilapia), I would suggest that a new page "tilapiines" or "tilapiine cichlids" be created to include most of the information on the tilapiine group as a whole (including information on aquaculture/invasive species) with links to three separate genera pages (eg: Tilapia, Sarotherodon and Oreochromis).

Thoughts/Suggestions? MidgleyDJ 21:48, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Tilapia should talk about the group as a whole - the name in that sense is just *so* common - and focus on the food and commercial aspects. Use Tilapia (genus) or Tilapia (fish genus) for the genus proper, give it more of the science, such as systematics and common characteristics of the genus. Stan 12:43, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

What to do- Reverts and Edits

Hi WikiProject -

I'm having some trouble with a user (User: 69.232.73.33) continuously reverting changes to cichlid. The user wont discuss the change (*which involves the listing of the genus Maylandia over Metriaclima*). Maylandia is the name given in fishbase - and the contentious nature of the genus is discussed adequately (and in a NPOV) on the Maylandia page itself.

So I'm asking for your advice in dealing with this person? MidgleyDJ 09:00, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Contribution history shows this is not the first time a problem has arisen, and yet this editor has not made a single edit to any talk page - ever. The editor does seem to know something of the field, so I hate to block summarily. Let's do a last warning. Stan 12:36, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

This particular editor has a long history of making edits that seem fairly minor, yet when you look deeper into his edits, many of them seem (to me) to be malicious in nature, while others are entirely constructive edits. MidgleyDJ certainly has memories of his robotic reversions of commentary about the accuracy of photos on Fishbase, which led to 2 3RR blocks of his anon account. His other edits to the Cichlid page in particular raises an issue, since this Wikiproject uses Fishbase as the ultimate authority on taxonomy. Most of his edits to Cichlid are additions of various genera that are in a state of transition. Fishbase doesn't acknowledge almost all of them, yet other authorities (i.e. IUCN) do. It's an issue I've deliberately kept away from since I'm in no way any type of authority on taxonomy, but today I decided to take a look at many of his recent edits and found that several were flat-out wrong (malicious? can't tell, he doesn't use edit summaries, ever.) such as the removal of asian arowana from the Endangered species article, changing species names in articles, and his arbitrary changing a caption on a photo in the Halfbeak article. I guess it wouldn't be so annoying if he would just respond to attempts to communicate with him on his talk page and article talk pages. That is why I would characterize many of his actions as malicious in nature. Even when he got blocked, he was right back as soon as the block expired with the same exact behavior without as much as an edit summary comment to defend his actions. Neil916 06:55, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

For what its worth, I too had a review of this user's history and even if he does seem to have some knowledge of the subject, the fact that so many of his edits seem to be non-verifiable or flat our wrong and especially the fact that he refuses to engage in any discussion about his edits makes me feel less inclined to give him the benefit of any doubt. How many warnings does someone have to have before he gets shown the door. If it were in my power I would ban him outright. Perhaps it is better that it is not in my power <grin>.Nick Thorne 12:05, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, I've posted the final warning. It's very rare to run across someone who does deliberate but subtle injection of bad info into WP, and there are reasonable edits mixed in, so it's hard to be certain of malice. Behavior strikes me more as someone who's utterly convinced of the correctness of his alternate reality. But in any case it sucks up too much time reviewing and re-reviewing un-discussed edits, we don't need that. Stan 12:22, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't think your warning worked. Neil916 15:34, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

The user has again made unexplained edits (this time removing all of one side of the story) to Maylandia, and also to cichlid. MidgleyDJ 20:07, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Photos with Tape Measure

Hi.. I think it is benefitial to have photos with a scale, so you get an idea of the size of a fish. This can be done by placing a physical tape measure or ruler next to the animal, when taking the photo. This would be more reliable than doing it after the shot, I guess. I think this can be included in the "images" section. However, I'm not a member of the WikiProject Fish, and I don't want to mess with your guidelines ! -- Andreas

You don't have to be a "member" of WikiProject Fishes. It's part formal, part informal group of people interested about the same things. That said, I have to agree with your assessment, but I would say that finding such pictures is perhaps harder than you might think. I've taken pictures of objects (example) that can't move, but it's a little harder, since you most likely have to remove the fish from the water, and if you do that it doesn't look as natural as taking a picture of a fish in the water (behind glass or through the clear water). Due to these complications, it wouldn't make sense to make it a "standard", but it's not a bad idea either. On the other hand, you don't need a ruler to get a sense of scale. A standard sized object next to the fish can also be helpful. Ram-Man 14:47, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I added a little paragraph on this subject. Feel free to change it! -- Andreas

Oceanic whitetip shark to FA

Hi!

We are trying to get Oceanic whitetip shark to FA status, please review and update. Thanks! Stefan 03:11, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Coregonus

There is an odd reference to a submarine at the end of the coregonus article that probably doesn't belong there. I've left it there, but someone might want to have a look.

The reference to blackfin cisco being extinct is incorrect, and is in fact contradicted by the blackfin cisco page. I'll make the correction. The status of this group is problematic. The proliferation of cisco species in the Laurentian great lakes is based on the work of a single researcher and the subject of debate. Some note might be made of that, but since it's all pretty up in the air, maybe not. I'm new to this encyclopedia business.

I will also clean up the capitalized species names in the section.--Peter3 18:28, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

OK. I've just started looking at some other coregonus entries and discovered that the submarine business crops up in other species. Doesn't seem to fit. The lake herring/cisco entry is a bit jumbled, with a bunch of stuff that has nothing to do with the species C. artedi but relates to ciscos generally. The general bits probably belong in the general Coregonus article.--Peter3 18:47, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I've added pages for some cisco species and redirects where appropriate, but I am new enough to this that I may have messed up the classification (I just classified everything Salmonidae),etc.

I also added a page for coregoninae and one called freshwater whitefish, and edited the dismbiguation page for whitefish accordingly. I've been working away at expanding the Coregonus entries and expanding various stubs. I have also added a northern cisco page and will edit the Cisco(fish) page to make it general to the group rather than specific to northern cisco/lake herring. Peter3 21:21, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Project Sharks

After trying to get enough people to join for a long time I have now made Wikipedia:WikiProject Sharks official, if anyone is interested please come join us! Stefan 23:13, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Water conditions

This has been bothering me for some time having worked on numerous fish articles. We often list the water conditions, such as what temperature and pH should be used. But these are often only averages. Fish in the wild are never exposed to the same conditions at all times. Temperature and pH change with the weather, especially different from dry and wet seasons. Really serious aquarists who do breeding and other such things will take the time to vary the temperature, water level, pH, and so forth to imitate the changing seasons, but if you read the average fish article you would have no idea about this. Some articles say something like "Fish in the aquarium should be kept at these conditions...", but that isn't necessarily true. Maybe the articles should be changed to say something like "average" temperatures. I'm not really sure. Right now our articles are great for people who want to keep fish, but maybe not as much as for scientific studies. Maybe that kind of information isn't well-known, however. — Ram-Man ^{(comment) (talk)} 12:50, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

prolink the Czech version

the Czech version of this page exist at http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mn%C3%ADk_jednovous%C3%BD how ever it is not suggested in the left-hand-menu

Yellow clown goby

I've requested a peer review for this article at WP:PR and was hoping to get someone from this project to have a look. I'm hoping for featured article status on this one. All comments appreciated! Mmoyer 15:22, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

merger proposal

There is a project at Wikipedia:Wikiproject Improving Fish Articles which covers substantially the same ground as this larger project. I suggest that whatever content is appropriate from the other page be merged into this one. Badbilltucker 20:11, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't see any content of value in the other one - looks like someone not knowing what we already have. Stan 22:51, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Fishapod sequence

In Late Devonian vertebrate speciation, descendants of pelagic lobe-finned fish like *Eusthenopteron* included *Panderichthys* with adaptions to muddy shallows, *Tiktaalik* whose limb-like fins could take it onto land, then early tetrapods in the weed-filled swamps like *Acanthostega* whose feet had eight digits and *Ichthyostega* with developed limbs. Pelagic lobe-finned fish continued, including coelacanth species.

In the dim mists of time when Tiktaalik was first found to have roamed the earth I put together an illustration and the following caption:

Late Devonian vertebrate speciation saw lobe-finned fish like "Panderichthys having descendants such as Eusthenopteron which could breathe air in muddy shallows, then Tiktaalik whose limb-like fins could take it onto land, preceding the first tetrapod amphibians such as Acanthostega whose feet had eight digits, and Ichthyostega with developed limbs, negotiating weed-filled swamps. Lobe-finned fish evolved into Coelacanth species which survive to this day."

When someone altered the sequence on some of the articles to put Eusthenopteron first and on checking it appeared that it was a pelagic fish, not a muddy shallows dweller, I revised the illustration and have been trying to sort out the caption: current draft shown to the left. Can some knowledgeable people please review this and suggest improvements. - - dave souza, talk 15:28, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

That's a fairly unwieldy sentence. I think it would be improved if, instead of a comma-separated list, you used bullets. Something like this:

In Late Devonian vertebrate speciation, descendants of pelagic lobe-finned fish – like *Eusthenopteron* – exhibited a sequence of adaptations:

*Panderichthys*, suited to muddy shallows;
*Tiktaalik* with limb-like fins that could take it onto land;
Early tetrapods in weed-filled swamps, such as:

*Acanthostega* which had feet with eight digits,
*Ichthyostega* with limbs.
Descendants also included pelagic lobe-finned fish such as coelacanth species.

In Late Devonian vertebrate speciation, descendants of pelagic lobe-finned fish-like Eusthenopteron exhibited the following adaptations:

Panderichthys adapted to muddy shallows;
Tiktaalik developed limb-like fins that could take it onto land;
Early tetrapods like Acanthostega in weed-filled swamps had feet with eight digits;
Ichthyostega developed limbs.

Descendants also included pelagic lobe-finned fish such as coelacanth species.

-Axlq 03:32, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I've tried it to the right of your list, with slight modification: bulleting as suggested didn't work in captions. Note that the information and sequence is my interpretation as a non-expert, and expert assessment would be appreciated. ..dave souza, talk 09:41, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

I just re-did your version above with with HTML markup instead of hard-coded bullets and line breaks. Unfortunately, I'm a non-expert also, so all I can help with is formatting and readability. =Axlq 01:27, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Flying fish and Ocean Sunfish

I just noticed that the flying fish page didn't have a fishes project tag, so I added it to the project and reorganized the paragraphs into the general order recommended. However, the article still needs work that goes beyond my knowledge. In particular I can't figure out what to do with the fishbase referencing; the month and date fields are confusing. (I'm new to this project) =Axlq 05:16, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Also the ocean sunfish page has many questionable assertions as well as some outright contradictions (a "weak swimmer" that can leap 10 feet into the air). I have flagged these with "citation needed" tags. This could be a good article with cleanup. =Axlq

common name vs genus

Morning all. I know the Wiki convention is to use the common name over the genus/species name. I am wondering what we do, however, when the common name isnt well known in some places. To give an example I am thinking of Neetroplus redirects to "poor man's Tropheus". I've virtually never heard anyone in Australia use this common name for this fish. Most often they are Neets or Neetroplus. In such cases I'd think Neetroplus would be a much better name than poor man's Tropheus. Thoughts?

Image Uploads

Is there a way we can contribute images for easy use? Have a number of photos which I'd be happy to share, but not sure how to label them for easy search and use for anyone wanting to create an article on a specific marine creature. Perhaps an image request list would be beneficial. Jnpet 07:17, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

The best place for them is the [Commons], which is the Wikimedia-wide image repository. Upload the photos and then either add them to existing galleries and categories, or create new categories for taxa not already there. For fishes, start from commons:Category:Chondrichthyes and commons:Category:Osteichthyes and work your way down to see what we have already. Generally article writers know to swing by commons and see what we have in our "stock photos" when putting together the article. Stan 13:32, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Pipefish and.... erm....

I took some photos at an aquarium yesterday, and did a little work on images in the Pipefish article earlier.... I boldly replaced the infobox image, which I thought had a dubious claim to fair use, and added a couple of others. I've labelled two of those photographs as Alligator Pipefish (I previously knew only that they were Pipefish) solely on the basis that they look exactly the same, to my inexpert eye, as the creature in the original infobox image, which was labelled as such. I'm sure this must be correct, but if possible, I'd like for somebody who knows their pipefish to confirm that this is the case.

Also, I wonder if anyone can identify these strange beasties?

[6] [7] [8] TheMadBaron 12:40, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Those beasties are Spotted garden-eels, Heteroconger hassi. Have spotted them a few times diving in Malaysia and Indonesia. When you see them on a dive, you'll understand why they're called garden-eels. There are usually several individuals burried in the sand with their heads sticking out and the distance between each burrow seems almost scientifically exact, (about 25~30cm?). So at first look, you see what appears to be a planned "garden" of something planted in the sand, which on closer examination turns out to be these fantastic eels. By the way, those are purely my own observations and so have no references. Cheers! Jnpet 01:44, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 23:43, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Wildlife Barnstar

There is currently a barnstar proposal at Wikipedia:Barnstar and award proposals/New Proposals#Wildlife Barnstar for a barnstar which would be available for use for this project. Please feel free to visit the page and make any comments you see fit. Badbilltucker 15:35, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Stablepedia

Beginning cross-post.

See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team#Stablepedia. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★MESSED ROCKER★ 03:35, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.

Weather loach

Hi WikiProject,

it seems there's a duplicate article in your project scope:

I've marked the articles for merging and thought I'd let you folks know here, too, so that it can be swiftly resolved. Thanks for all the hard work! -pinkgothic 19:09, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I think perhaps the reason for this was that "Weather Loach" can be used generically, but the article was written for a single species. As a result I've merged the articles. I can't say its the best merge, but it will have to do until someone else comes along and updates it. -- RM 20:17, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, that explains why there were two articles - thanks for letting me know. And of course: much thanks for the merge. -pinkgothic 16:13, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Antennarius

Frogfish seem very difficult to identify because the vast variety in camoflage coloration even within one species. Therefor, I thought perhaps someone here could help with the identity of this beauty. Initially, I tagged it as an A. pictus, but on further consideration, I'm starting to think it could be an A. commerson. Would highly appreciate a confirmation, correction or an alternate possibility. FYI, on this specimen. About 15 cm from head to tail and location is North Sulawesi, Indonesia.Jnpet 05:41, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

FishBase references

I notice that down at the bottom of their main page [9], they are asking people to include citations of their "main ref" and "data ref" publications. Makes sense, because FishBase is like us, they just aggregate other people's data. Only downside I can see is that we're adding refs to works we probably haven't seen ourselves - although I've done it before, I don't think every editor agrees with the practice, so we'd have to establish an explicit rule that it's OK here. Stan 15:34, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Review of Asian arowana

I have developed Asian arowana pretty extensively. Currently I'm soliciting other editors to review it, with the hope that it may reach FA someday. Any comments or contributions would be appreciated. --Ginkgo 100 ^talk 21:25, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Proposed Veterinary medicine project

There is now a proposed project at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Veterinary Medicine to deal with matters of veterinary medicine, a subject which currently has disproportionately low content in wikipedia. Any wikipedia editors who have an interest in working on content related to the subject are encouraged to indicate as much there. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 22:10, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

The Fish Portal created

Just to let you know that I have created the fish portal. Here are the current contents of the portal:

The fish portal
Selected article of the month (this can be anything: fishing, fishkeeping, fish in culture, etc.)
Selected fish of the month (this can be a species, a genus, or a family of fish)
Selected picture of the month
Fish news
Did you know...
Selected quote of the month
Categories
Fish lists
WikiProjects (links to WikiProject Fishes and WikiProject Sharks)
Related portals (links to the Sharks Portal, the Marine Life Portal, and the Biology Portal)
Selected topics about Fish (with 6 groups of topics: Fish biology, Fish taxonomy, Fishery, Food fish, Fishkeeping, Aquarium fish, and Others)
Things you can do (this is a link to tasks)
Web resources (FishBase and ITIS)
Associated Wikimedia

As the fish portal is just started, I took the liberty of choosing the December article and the picture of the month myself. But from now on the portal is open for nomination. Is there anything else I should include in the portal? Any comments would be appreciated --Melanochromis 00:27, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

The Fish Portal

Hi, User:Melanochromis has done a great job getting the Fish Portal up an running. At this point, more sets of eyes can help make it even better. If you can offer some tips on the portal talk page about how to improve Fish up to "featured" quality, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. Rfrisbie^talk 13:55, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I was impressed as well, and very pleased to see Asian arowana as the featured fish. --Ginkgo 100 ^talk 21:11, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Did you add Pala(the fish found only in river indus)

Hello there, I am aquarium fish lover, I wish I could keep some with me but I am afraid to mange them and feeding and I do not know what steps to take, I used to play tycoon fish game so that I can get idea of keeping aquarium fish, is not it funny ,well that game idea did not work. So still I am waiting to get strong to fulfill my hobby of keeping aquarium fishes .anyway I have to talk about topic ,I am just wanted to ask you, have you add Fish( Pala, this fish is only found in river Indus. if not then I request you to add it. Please). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Khalidkhoso (talk • contribs) 05:24, 12 December 2006 (UTC).

The fishbase shows that there are many fish with the common name Pala. But the one you are talking about is probably Tenualosa ilisha, also known as Hilsa, which is the national fish of Bangladesh. The Hilsa article says that the fish is also called "Palla" in Sind. Is this the same fish? If you are interested in the fish, I suggest you can help expanding the Tenualosa ilisha article. --Melanochromis 08:39, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedia requested photographs of fishes

Hi guys, I'm working on sorting out the ~6000+ photo requests currently in the Category:Wikipedia requested photographs, so I have among other things created Category:Wikipedia requested photographs of fishes. Populating it now by running AWB though the category and updating the photoreq template where I find your project banner. Just figured you guys might be interested (it's better to keep photo requests by subjects so interested parties can easily see what we want photos of rater than having to sift though one massive category full of "unrelated" stuff). Put {{reqphoto|fishes}} (or if the subject already have a fair use image, and is too rare to qualify as {{Replaceable fair use}} outright: {{reqfreephoto|fishes}}). On article talk pages add them to the category. Hope some will find it usefull. --Sherool (talk) 09:09, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Aquarium Fishes

Hello all, just like to let you know that the WikiProject Fishes has a new descendant project: The Aquarium Fishes Wikiproject. Check it out here !! --Melanochromis 02:29, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 17:31, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Portal:Fish feature nominations

The fish portal only has three users regularly voting for the selected article, selected fish, and selected picture. Come place your vote, or nominate your favorite article/fish/picture! --Ginkgo100^talk 20:53, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Gobius lagocephalus

Hi, anyone willing to start a stub on that critter? There is currently a major taxonomical dispute raging, and I have the papers and would like to put them somewhere. Being not very firm as regards gobies, I don't dare to start the article myself.

BTW, I have put a number of descriptions of new species (mainly catfish and tetras from South America) as annotations in the family or genus articles; check out the source code. Most should be online for free. If you're in the mood, grab that stuff and edit away. Dysmorodrepanis 21:49, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Microformat

Please be aware of the proposed Species microformat, particularly in relation to taxoboxes. Comments welcome on the wiki at that link. Andy Mabbett 22:36, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Internal fertilization

If someone can think of a good title for a single article on internal fertilization in fishes, we should go ahead and create an article. Claspers, Gonopodium, and Andropodium are all stubs, and their concepts overlap rather well. Although I'm no expert, the articles give some indication that, at least, gonopodium and andropodium are relatively similar organs. Anyone else got any ideas? MiltonT 07:44, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Wyoming Game Fish

I came across this via newpages. It seems like a good start to an article, but I'm not sure about the title (aside from the capitalization issue). Should it become something like Fishing in Wyoming? There aren't any similar articles for other U.S. states or even countries that I've been able to find, and this isn't a subject I'm familiar with. —Cel ithemis 06:47, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

fauna article naming conventions

Morning all -

Greetings from Sydney, Australia.

I'm writing to propose a change to the way common names are used as article names for fish species. I've been contributing to various fish articles on Wikipedia for some time now and I'd noticed a number of articles under common names not used in my country. To give some recent examples see the discussions at Talk:Managuense cichlid, Talk:Mayan cichlid. Neither of these common names are in "common" use outside the aquarium/fishing hobbies - and moreover - both names arent in common use in english speaking countries other than the USA. I understand the logic behind using common names for fauna such as birds - where there are established "formal" common names. These, however, don't exist for the vast majority of fish species. Fishbase lists any and all common names for fish, however, many arent in common usage in english (or even in english used in the fishing or aquarium hobbies).

Here's an example: Julidochromis regani has been assigned the common name "convict julie" by fishbase. I've kept Julidochromis species for 13 years and I've NEVER seen any Julidochromis regani sold in this fashion in Australia - where they are often just referred to as "regani". To use this commmon name as a title for an article - just because it's been assigned to the fish by fishbase seems very silly to me (incidentally - the same applies to the Mayan Cichlid, in my experience).

I'd like to propose that the common name policy for naming of articles should apply only when:

the name is used in the majority of english speaking countries
the name is in "common" english use (eg: goldfish, guppy)

Otherwise, use the scientific name. MidgleyDJ 23:08, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

FishBase has the advantage that it's an identifiable and verifiable authority. If you abandon it, what have you got instead? Personal opinion? How are you going to ensure that your personal opinion takes precedence over the snot-nosed 12-year-old that created his login 20 minutes ago? So we don't get into eternal move wars, can we get a reasonably algorithmic way to decide that a FishBase name is "made up"? (I agree, some of them make me suspicious.) Stan 00:25, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi Stan - I'm not suggesting fishbase be abandoned. I'm suggesting for the vast majority of fish articles the scientific name (sourced from fishbase) is a better option than the common name. MidgleyDJ 00:36, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Just to clarify my position I've got nothing against the commonsense use of common names - but using them as per my "convict julie" example doesnt seem very logical to me. MidgleyDJ 00:53, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

my vote is Uphold the current policy that uses FishBase common name as the default (species) article titles for the sake of consistency and for the general public who don't use (and can't remember) scientific names. Although wikipedia is written by experts and enthusiasts, it is read by lay people. Scientific names can be used as titles only when no common names are not available (taken by other articles, used for disambigution page). Otherwise just redirect them to the common names. --Melanochromis 00:44, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi Melanochromis, it's not a vote ;). It's about reaching a consensus. I'm unsure who is going to be searching for some of these common names - take my convict julie example. I'm not sure anyone knows what that is! MidgleyDJ 00:55, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, I was just making it easier for everyone to see what my position is about this. More of my argument can be seen at Talk:Mayan cichlid. Anyway, I agree that FishBase name can sound weird sometimes. But at least, like Stan said, it is quite the authority on fish and they have references for the common names they used. Even names like "convict julie" isn't chosen randomly by FishBase. It is a legal common name that can be traced back to a publication by American Fisheries Society. However, in extreme cases that you think FishBase absolutely made a mistake, there's always WP:IAR

--Melanochromis 02:18, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I wasnt suggesting that "Convict Julie" was randomly chosen by fishbase. It's not, however, a name for the species in regular english usage (in the cichlid keeping hobby or amongst members of the public). The question is very simple:

Why use a name no one uses (Convict julie), or a name some peoeple use (mayan cichlid), when there are two perfectly unambiguous names for these articles that everyone (even outside english speaking countries) uses: ie: Julidochromis regani and Cichlasoma urophthalmus? MidgleyDJ 02:36, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I forgot also to add - what is being suggested is no different in terms of consistency and "verifiability" to the current system - the names would be, in the absence of more recent verifiable sources, sourced from Fishbase. What I am suggesting is the same policy as is already in place in Wikipedia:WikiProject_Tree_of_Life that is:

Article titles and common names

In cases where there is a formal common name (e.g. birds), or when common names are well-known and reasonably unique, they should be used for article titles. Scientific names should be used otherwise.

For the vast majority of fish species - there is no formal common name as there is for birds. To extend my above example "Convict Julie" isnt a "formal common name", it's not well known - though it may be unique. If we were to adopt the TOL naming conventions the name of the article would be Julidochromis regani. MidgleyDJ 03:08, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

So, according to this WikiProject_Tree_of_Life policy we are going using FishBase common name? Because that's the closest thing to the "formal common name" we have for fish. --Melanochromis 03:19, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Birds and fish are different! Birds have "formal common names" - due to birdwatchers (and their associated clubs and societies which manage bird names). As Neale Monks points out in Talk:Mayan cichlid there is no such thing as a "formal common name" for fish. Therefore for those fish (assuming we adopt a TOL model for naming) without established "formal" common names we should use the scientific name. Scientific names are already the standard for species article titles in other parts of Wikipedia. See: WP:PLANTS. MidgleyDJ 03:41, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, then why suggesting a policy that prefers the use of "formal common name" when you don't think fish has "formal common name"? Are you trying to trick us, Midgley?

--Melanochromis 03:58, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Because I think for some fish, such as goldfish, the common name is MUCH better than the scientific name eg: Carassius auratus. In the case of goldfish - the name is also universal and unique. Several other animal groups use a similar naming convention. For example Wikipedia:WikiProject_Arthropods says: In cases where common names are well-known and reasonably unique, they should be used for article titles. Scientific names should be used otherwise. This seems also like a more sensible policy - which would mean the use of scientific names for the fish without well-known (and unique) common names. WP:FUNGI adopts the same policy as WP:PLANTS ie: scientific name is standard - unless the plant is better known under common name eg. is of economic value (like tomatoes, turnips, lemons etc) or is notable under it's common name for some other reason. MidgleyDJ 04:02, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

And I think I can argue the opposite way around that Common names are already the standard for species article titles in other parts of Wikipedia. See:

Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds (officially common names)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Gastropods (using bird's title guidelines)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Monotremes and Marsupials (also using bird's)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Sharks (common names first)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Amphibians and Reptiles (most of their articles are common names)

Other than Gastropods, all of these deal with vertebrates just like fish, and they prefer common names over scientific names. I'm not saying all articles must be common names. Of course there will be exceptions. Our policy should be using common names first and scientific names when the situation requires. Maybe instead of trying to turn our policy around, we should be discussing how to define the "situations" that the scientific names will be preferred over common names. --Melanochromis 04:17, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

The scientific name is and should be the ‘safe default’ in certain situations. However, I truly feel that the systematic renaming of most/all fish articles to their scientific binomial is absolutely unnecessary and possibly detrimental in some cases. For example, it’s my understanding that Wikipedia article titles are among the first (or sometimes the first) headings to come up in Google internet searches. We have to keep in mind who is searching, what they’re searching for, and what they’re going to see when they make the search. Whether one likes this fact or not, the majority of these searchers are going to be people who own a lot of these fish in an aquarium, and probably know next to nothing about them. I think it’s time to accept the reality of Wikipedia’s demographic. Now imagine the 10-year old searching for “fill-in-the-blank” cichlid on Google; wouldn’t you want a well-written, accurate, informative, cited, not-focused-on-aquarium-care Wikipedia article with a common name heading to be the first/among the first search results they see, or one of the hundreds of possibly inaccurate, biased hobbyist websites? I just did a google search for ‘kribensis’ (one of the articles recently changed to scientific name) and the Wikipedia article came up on the second page of search results. Another search for ‘Mayan cichlid’ (another recently proposed change, but not changed yet) delivered the Wikipedia article as the fourth result on the first page. Now before you jump at me for being ‘homocentric’, keep in mind that this is not Fishbase (which uses scientific name headings) or a similar style of database, but an encyclopedia, and a revolutionary one at that due to the way in which it has made previously archaic areas of information accessible to hundreds of millions of people who would otherwise be left in the dark. Note previously; and this is where I feel it is in the spirit of Wikipedia to avoid being too archaic without sacrificing scientific integrity (which of course can be quite difficult at times). Please don’t interpret this as disagreement with you Midgley; in fact I do agree with you partially, in that fish classification is unlike that of birds where there is a lack of ‘formal common names’ in many cases. What I do oppose is changing to the scientific name at the drop of a hat, and I most definitely oppose to changing most of the fish articles to scientific names. It may have to be, unfortunately, a more painstakingly case-by-case approach. Here are some ideas/possibilities:

Default to use only Fishbase common names (and I agree that sometimes they're questionable)
Maybe agree on a set of various common 'default' sources such as fishery societies, governmental organizations, aquarist societies, universities, all from an inclusive list of various English-speaking countries that we use like an informal literature review to come to a consensus
Other ideas?

Again, I'm not fully disagreeing with this proposal, but I think parts of it are drastic and unnecessary.--Terrapin83 04:26, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

My apologies if you thought I jumped down your throat ever Terrapin, that wasnt my intention. I've pasted the naming conventions for plants below - surely we can adapt this system to work for fish. It's a similar situation were some fish have "accepted/well known common names".

No need to apologize, I haven't taken offense at anything you've said. I was simply trying to make it clear that I'm not coming at this from an 'aquarist-centric' point of view but more from an encyclopedia writer's p.o.v. :)--Terrapin83 04:51, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

begin copy

Plant article naming conventions See also Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(flora).

Article naming for flora articles differs from standard TOL policy in the following ways:

Scientific names are to be used as page titles in all cases except the following, as determined on a case-by-case basis through discussion on the WikiProject Plants talk page:

Agricultural and horticultural cases in which multiple different products stem from the same scientific name (eg. brussel sprouts, cabbage & broccoli). In such a case, a separate page with the botanical description of the entire species is preferred (eg. Brassica oleracea).
Plants which are economically or culturally significant enough to merit their own page, using the common name as a title, describing their use. Example: Coffee. (A) separate page(s) with the botanical description(s) of the taxa involved, using the scientific name, is preferred.

Common names are to redirect to scientific names.

English sundew → Drosera anglica

All known common names for a taxon are to be listed in the plant article.

Hesperoyucca whipplei (syn. Yucca whipplei; Our Lord's Candle, Spanish Bayonet, Quixote Yucca, Common Yucca) is a species of flowering plant...

In cases where multiple taxa share the same common name, a disambiguation page is to be used.

An adaptation of this system would, in my opinion, solve the problem. MidgleyDJ 04:37, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Related to what Terrapin said is that wikipedia redirects don't show up in google. So, the naming of the articles has the "search" factor to consider too. We have to consider that general public aren't taxonomy-savvy and they won't use and can't remember scientific name. Most likely they will google by the common name. Like what I said in talk:Mayan cichlid:

There will be some random readers like anglers searching for this article and I think they will most likely google a common name rather than a scientific name, remember that wikipedia redirects won't show up in google. On the other hand, experts who use scientific names would probably already have other sources, unlike non-expert people, and would not need to wikipedia this fish as much. I think this is the exact reason why various policies prefer a common name over the Latin name as the title. --Melanochromis 04:41, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

In replying to the suggestion of [[Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(flora), there's already a well-established Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna) which prefers commmon names over scientific names in most cases. The fish cases are even used as examples.

If there is a common name in English, use that (following Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names) and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English)). ... If the article is about an animal belonging to a group where Wikipedia editors have agreed on a standard for choosing a common name, follow that standard: ... If there is no common name, or if the only common name would be taken by a higher-ranked group, or if the only common name is needed for another article or a disambiguation page, use the scientific name:

Drosophila melanogaster has no common name.
Monocentris japonica is commonly known as the "pinecone fish", but so are all the other species in the family Monocentridae, so that name is not available.
Fish in Sciaenidae are known as "drums", but drum is used for the musical instrument. (In cases like this, the article can be placed either at the scientific name or at a disambiguated common name like drum (fish).)

You see that there are situations that require scientific names, but those are situational, and common names are preferred first anyway. --Melanochromis 04:50, 21 March 2007 (UTC).

Melanochromis - I understand your point re: google but disagree. Regarding the Mayan cichlid, no one in the UK or Australia knows the fish by this name. How exactly then do we other english speakers (whether we are 10 or not) go about "googling it" :-) . Furthermore, it's not the fishbase common name. Also re: the above example, I work in a biology department and I can assure you that Drosophila melanogaster do have a common name! Using my Julidochromis example from above - I've never heard anyone in the fishkeeping hobby search discuss the fish using the name "convict julie" they certainly would not know to google using that name. The usage of common names for fauna in Wikipedia, in my opinion - has arisen for species that are better known by their common names: yaks, cheetahs, goldfish and the like.... it makes no sense to me to use scientific names for those species (yaks, cheetahs, goldfish) with better known common names.... but for most fish these names simply dont exist. They arent in universal, common usage. MidgleyDJ 08:12, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I cannot begin to describe my regret that the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Birds situation has been taked to be valid for other animal groups as well. Without being snobby about it, I think it is a deeply misguided attempt by non-experts to try and simplify things, but in doing so they actually make things more complex and more subjective than they need to be. Biology has settled on the fact that Latin names are the ideal. They are language-neutral and (in theory at least) apply to single entities so won't get muddled up with other entities. If I talk about Lepisosteus oculatus everyone knows exactly what I am talking about. But if I talk about "gar", that could mean a lepisosteid, a needlefish, a halfbeak, a characin, etc. The name "gar" was originally coined for a European marine fish, but most Americans assume it belongs solely to their freshwater fish -- who's right? If you search "gar" on Wikipedia, you get the American freshwater fish, not the European marine fish, which comes under "needlefish". In short, common names create confusion; Latin names do not.

With birds, you have two key things that set them apart from all other organisms. Firstly, there are birdwatchers all over the world recording their sightings. The majority of species of bird are observed on a regular basis. In other words, most birds are familiar to a substantial number of amateurs, and these amateurs spread information via books, magazines, and TV shows. Fish are different. The vast majority of fish are unknown to amateurs and only seen by fishermen and/or scientists, and in many, many cases things like deep sea fish are hardly ever seen by anyone. New fishes are discovered all the time, and even in the aquarium trade there are new species that don't even have Latin names they are so new. Secondly, there is no "official common name" as there is for birds. So "House Sparrow" or "Barn Owl" means something just as specific as a Latin name because ornithologists have agreed to it. Fishbase, while a worthy project, is a compilation of published data and performs no original research and has no mandate to fix or otherwise recommend common names. In many cases their common names will not match those in certain regions or industries. For example, the page for Danio rerio uses the common name "Zebra danio" [10], which is hardly used in the aquarium hobby any more (they're usually just plain "danios") and never used in the scientific literature, where "zebrafish" is more common, and indeed "zebrafish" is what is used on Wikipedia.[11]

In short, applying the bird rules to fish is silly, and even with things are clearcut as danios Wikipedia isn't matching Fishbase, so the argument Fishbase trumps everything else falls flat. Ultimately a common sense approach has to prevail: where the common name is so universal such that no-one could reasonably argue with it, then the common name is fine. Guppies, oscars, angelfish, goldfish, Atlantic cod, largemouth bass, etc. probably fall into that category. But where things have a variety of common names, as with Mayan cichlid, then the Latin name should be favoured as the least troublesome, most neutral, approach. Another example would be Gymnocorymbus ternetzi, usually called the "black widow tetra" in English aquarium shops and "petticoat tetra" in American aquarium shops but added as the "black tetra" in Wikipedia despite the fact Fishbase lists at least three different species that can go by that name![12]

Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 09:48, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Just some comments on the above posting..I've noticed you using the argument that the bird naming conventions shouldn't be used for fish. As a matter of fact, I think you brought it up way back in the discussion page for the Mayan cichlid, and a couple of times since. However, no one has ever once proposed establishing some sort of 'standardized common names' list for all fish, as exists for birds. You were the first person to bring that issue up. Maybe the mention of birder and ornithology on my user page led you to voice this concern? This is surely not my goal, and I fully accept the use of Latin names on wikipedia in certain, if not many cases, especially when it comes to fish. I've actually never edited one bird-related article; I'm not even a member of the bird wikiproject. I don't think I've even yet looked at the wikiproject:birds page. My point is there are no ulterior motives here, and no one is disputing the validity of the Linnaean system(!). As I stated above, I'm concerned about the reality of Wikipedia's demographic (the vast majority of whom will never, ever search for a fish using the scientific name), the maximization of the readership of fish and fish-related articles, and a relative amount of consistency with other species articles. Since this debate has started I've become much more accepting of the fact that the scientific name is appropriate as an article title for many fish, so please don't think I'm taking some sort of all-or-nothing stance! I think progress is being made on this issue, and I commend everyone for their contributions :) --Terrapin83 20:42, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Hello Terrapin83. My reference to birding is that that seems to be the model used quite frequently. I've seen in specifically with the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Cephalopods, and if you go to the umbrella project Wikipedia:WikiProject_Tree_of_Life there is the tricky sentence "In cases where there is a formal common name (e.g. birds), or when common names are well-known and reasonably unique, they should be used for article titles". What seems to have happened is that this example has become a guideline, and it causes a specific problem unique to using birds because only birds (to the best of my knowledge) have agreed "official" common names. While the original drafter of that sentence may have meant to say something relatively simple, like many birds have common names, so use them, this has metamorphosed into the ridiculous situation where we have an article called Böttger's Argonaut, a name based on a common name no-one in cephalopod science uses and wouldn't have any value in the vernacular because no-one other than a ceph scientist would see these animals! So while I have nothing against common names if they're widely used, I'm very againts using them for the sake of using them simply because someone, somewhere thinks they are "easier" for the layperson to understand than the Latin names. Latin names have problems all their own, I hasten to add (e.g., synonyms) so simply switching to Latin names wholesale doesn't automatically make life easier. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 21:49, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting that common names are "easier" for the average user to understand; that would be quite pretentious of me. I'm merely looking at the practicality of what is being searched for.--Terrapin83 06:46, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi again Midgley, Terrapin, and everyone else, I can't believe I posted this much in one day. It is enlightening to participate in this intellectual argument but it's also very exhausting. So, what I'm gonna do is to stop talking about principles and start drafting a policy of title naming that compromises with everyone's idea and taggles different issues (country-specific, google factor, importance to humans, etc.). I'm trying not to radically change the current WP:Fishes policy, but to modify it to allow more uses of scientific names as well as providing some measureable methods (to avoid edit wars and disagreements). Here it is:

Titles of fish species articles (draft)

Articles on fish species should be titled using the FishBase preferred common name, if one exists.
If Fishbase does not list any common name, use the scientific name. (note that Fishbase doesn't provide common names for many fishes).
If the FishBase preferred common name is mostly an unknown name, measured by Google search that yields less than 500 results, use the common name listed in FishBase that yields the most google search results.
If no common names yield more than 500 google results, use the scientific name.
If the FishBase preferred common name is single-country specific, use a more internationally-known common name, as measured by references from governmental or respectable non-profit sources from at least three different countries.
If no common names are available (taken by another article, or disambiguation page), use the scientific name.
In the case that the fish is of very low importance to humans (no values for aquaculture, fisheries, sport fishing, aquarium, culture, etc.), the article may use scientific name even if there is a FishBase preferred common name.
In the case that is beyond or not described by this policy and consensus can't not be reached how to name the article, respect the choice of the first editor of the article.

--Melanochromis 09:33, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

So is this draft acceptable to everyone? --Melanochromis 09:33, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi Melanochromis - no, I'm afraid I have some issues with it. But I appreciate the effort you've put into it! Using fishbase as a source of "commonsense" common names doesnt make sense. Here's an edited proposal of mine. I think common names should be used where they are sensible and I think this largely reflects that. The fishbase common name is frequently not sensible, universal or unambiguous and we (in my opinion) should not tie ourselves to the use of it. MidgleyDJ 10:32, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

FishBase common names aren't "commonsense". Each common name listed there has a reference and each name would be sorted methodologically into ranks (there're 6 ranks or something like that). It's a system of standardization of fish common names, probably the only one in this scale. Although not the perfect one (I don't think any system is), it's not bad at all. That's why I think FishBase is very useable. Besides, if we don't stick to FishBase, what else are you gonna use to decide which common names to use. There'll be tons of editing disputes, this I forsee. --Melanochromis 10:52, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Correction - I think there are 3 ranks of common names in FishBase. They also identify whether the common names are unique to a particular fish or not. So there's no worry that FishBase names would be ambiguous. --Melanochromis 11:36, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Proposal II (feel free to edit, dismember etc :D!)

Titles of fish species articles (draft II)

Common names should be used as article titles where:

The common name is in general, common usage in the majority of english speaking countries OR
The common name has economic, cultural, historical or other significance warranting the articles listing under the common name AND
The common name is unambiguous.

In all other cases the scientific name is preferred.
All articles should include the scientific name and all english common names in bold.

--MidgleyDJ 10:36, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Can you add some measureable criteria for 1,2,3 ? I'm afraid we'll need some kind of measurement otherwise it'll be too subjective and there'd be never-ending disagreements and discussions like this. --Melanochromis 10:44, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi Melanochromis - perhaps Neale could offer some suggestions on how to measure criteria for usage. My guess is that the most sensible way is to use common sense and consensus building where disagreements arise. I do believe the common name of a fish is useful - particularly for aquarium species and economically important species. Where this common name is in general use I fully support it's use as a title - and I do see people's points re: Google searches - but I stress again, using a common name that no one (or a limited subset of english speakers) knows isnt helping either. MidgleyDJ 10:53, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I know we all want to use common sense, but unfortunately in our case, common sense would do no good. Look at how long this discussion is and we can't even reach a compromise. If there's no clear procedure and solid methods to stick by, I think we'll end up like this again and again. --Melanochromis 10:58, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Would some kind of dictionary search for "common usage of common names" help? Just a thought? Is there an online dictionary we could use? Melanochromis, it's been a good length discussion I agree - but it's been useful! I think we will get to something that everyone can live with in the end! MidgleyDJ 11:17, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Commenting on the above proposals: (1) How do you decide "the majority of English-speaking countries"? Are Hong Kong and Singapore and India English-speaking? They certainly are in some ways, if not in others. Does a plurality of smaller countries outweigh usage in one larger country? So would usage in England and New Zealand and the Republic of Ireland outweight usage in the US? Even within one country, is there a standardised common name? I think not; Salmo trutta can be "brown trout" or "sea trout" in the UK depending on where it is found. (2) Certain species may have legally-respected common names, specifically where fisheries or conservation management are concerned. Hence EU fisheries managers will all mean a single thing with "Atlantic salmon" and politicians and conservationists will agree on what the "Devil's Hole pupfish" is and use that name in environmental protection laws and publicity. Those sorts of names can probably pass a 'common sense test'. (2b) Economic names are more difficult to justify if used in, for example, retail either as food or aquarium fish. To take an example, the meat of the dogfish Scyliorhinus stellaris can be sold as huss or rock salmon, though marine biologists would never use such a name for the living fish. To take another example, aquarists widely call Synodontis spp "upside-down catfish" but in their native habitat their common name in English is "squeaker", a name also used by biologists.

Measuring "ubiquity" is difficult, but one pragmatic approach would be simply to use the common name by default, but if someone raises an objection on the talk page, and can demonstrate an alternative name has at least some significant usage (e.g., on Fishbase or in some respected fish book like Smith's Sea Fishes) then the content should be moved to a Latin name entry and the original and newly-discovered common name become redirect pages.

Cheers, Neale — Preceding unsigned comment added by Neale Monks (talk • contribs)

I agree that this draft needs some more objective and clear measurement. In my draft (the one above this draft), there are 2 measurements. One is how well-known the name is (common name with less than 500 Google search results can't be used even if it's preferred by FishBase). Another is preference of a common name that is not single country-specific (you can change it to another common name if you have references of that name from at least 3 different countries). Maybe something like this can be applied to this proposal too. --Melanochromis 22:31, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a good plan to me Neale (although sometimes it might be tricky to show a common name isnt in use in a particular country). Is there a way we could draft that into a proposal? Melanochromis - what do you think? Stan? Terrapin83? MidgleyDJ 18:18, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Why dictionary? I think some respected fish book, like Neale said, would be better. And even better is the FishBase. It's the best fish database online that anyone can access (unlike books which most wikipedians won't ever get to verify your choice of common name) and their common names have clear references where they are used and whether they are unique or not. --Melanochromis 22:31, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Dictionaries would aid determination of "general" use. Anyway - I'm more than happy to go with Neale's suggestion. Common names are fine when they are in widespread use. I'd like to see this drafted into some kind of guideline for article naming re: consensus and talk pages where disputes occur in usage. MidgleyDJ 00:54, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Although painstaking, it seems like we're making progress in getting this pendulum to stop swinging back and forth. Everyone has brought up good points and I thank everyone for their contributions! I'm still absorbing all this, and I don't have much time at the moment but I'll be back later with some ideas.--Terrapin83 10:10, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

How about something like this:

Proposal II (feel free to edit, dismember etc :D!)

Titles of fish species articles (draft III)

Common names should be used as article titles where:

The common name is well known and reasonably unique (standard TOL policy).
If reliable sources demonstrate the common name to be ambiguous or not in general use then the scientific name should be used.

- For ambiguous common names, eg. trout, black widow tetra, kribensis etc. create a disambigaution page linked to the various species represented by this common name listed under their scientific names.
In other cases the scientific name is preferred.
All articles should include the scientific name and all english common names in bold.

--MidgleyDJ 10:36, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Is this a better proposal? MidgleyDJ 11:13, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I think so, but "reasonably unique" is surely an oxymoron: a name is either unique or it isn't. "Atlantic salmon" is a unique name [13]; "black tetra" isn't [14]. I'd suggest for item 1, Use the common name if (a) it is only applied to a single species, and (b) that species is only referred to by that common name. This would be the case with Atlantic salmon. This would seem to me to be unambiguous and safe.

For item 2, agreed. If the common name is used for more than one species, as is the case with Black tetra, then that page should disambiguate to the various Latin name-titled articles of those various fish. An exception might be made where the name is overwhelmingly used for a single species, and the one or more other species are only referred to that name in older literature or very infrequently. You might make that argument for kribensis, a name almost always used for P. pulcher and only very rarely for other species in the genus [15], which are normally traded under their Latin names (in the US/UK at least).

For item 3, agreed.

I might mention I wrote a little (freeware) Mac/Windows program called Fisbase Client that makes searching for common names on Fishbase faster and easier that using the web page. Type in whatever, press search, and it'll return all the fish with that common name.[16]

Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 12:30, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I think this draft, like the previous one, still needs to be operationalized. How can they be reliably and more objectively measured? For example, how do you define "well known"? Google hits? And "unique" definitely needs a way to be measured. Common names, by nature, aren't absolutely unique. Strictly speaking, even the extremely common names like "goldfish" aren't 100% unique or 100% unambiguous as it doesn't always refer to Carassius auratus [17]. But I really like it that you included in the proposal that the disambiguation page is needed for some common names (although, like Neale, I'd argue that kribensis isn't that ambiguous). A disambiguation page is better than just a simple redirect. --Melanochromis 15:30, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Morning (at least in Sydney, Australia). "Reasonably unique" is from TOL, not me :D! Melanochromis, some of these things cannot be quantified - and require consensus building. Certainly none of the other naming conventions have "google hits" etc as their guidelines for the most "common" of the common names. There's nothing wrong with consensus building on talk pages and it would works well in most articles.

revised with Neale Monk's suggestions MidgleyDJ 20:47, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Proposal IV (feel free to edit, dismember etc :D!)

Titles of fish species articles (draft IV)

The common name should be used as article titles:

If (a) it is only applied to a single species, and (b) that species is only referred to by that common name. Similar to (standard TOL policy).
If reliable sources demonstrate the common name to be ambiguous or not in general use then the scientific name should be used.

- For ambiguous common names, eg. trout, Indian glassfish, green spotted puffer etc. create a disambigaution page linked to the various species represented by this common name listed under their scientific names.
In other cases the scientific name is preferred.
All articles should include the scientific name and all english common names in bold.

--MidgleyDJ 10:36, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Thoughts? MidgleyDJ 20:47, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 20:50, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Though I'd change the 'ambiguous' examples. Certainly "trout" qualifies, but "black widow tetra" and "kribensis" probably don't; the former is only used for Gymnocorymbus ternetzi as far as I know, and the latter only very rarely for anything other than P. pulcher. The really ambiguous things are names like "green spotted puffer", which is two species (possibly three), "Indian glassfish" (at least two genera, Chela and Parambassis) and so on. Neale Monks 20:57, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Neale, fixed. MidgleyDJ 21:01, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Oops. Forgot to add re: our current aside regarding Kribensis. Unfortunately both P. subocellatus, P. taeniatus and several unnamed Pelvicachromis species are both freqeuntly sold as "kribensis" in Australia. A Fishbase search of the common name "Kribensis" does confirm this. Sometimes they are sold as "spotted kribensis" or similar - and at better aquaria under their scientific names. I agree that the common usage is for P. pulcher and I've made that clear in the stub. MidgleyDJ 21:09, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I'd seen that in Fishbase too. For whatever reason, the market here in the UK (and apparently in the US too) demands those other Pelvicachromis species are sold not just by Latin name but by variety too. I happen to have Pelvicachromis taeniatus "Nigerian red" for example. No-one would sell them as mere kribs because of the price premium -- ordinary kribs are under £5 a pair, Pelvicachromis taeniatus or Pelvicachromis subocellatus £10-20 a pair. Having said all that, this probably makes Pelvicachromis an excellent test case. I'd actually suggest the kribensis article be a disambiguation page with a bit of history too; the name comes from Pelvicachromis kribensis because Pelvicachromis pulcher was originally (and erroneously) sold under that name before its true identity was revealed. Pelvicachromis kribensis is in fact now a synonym for some other species, but I can't recall which. Perhaps Pelvicachromis subocellatus. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 21:24, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi Neale - at better, more cichlid specific aquariums, you can purchase Pelvicachomis with locality details etc attached. The places I've seen with P. subocellatus, P. taeniatus labelled as "kribensis" tend to be more general pet shops and the like. I agree re: expansion of the disambiguation article. I was planning to update Pelvicachromis pulcher further and will follow up the Kribensis article also. Cheers, David. MidgleyDJ 22:34, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Wow, look away for a moment, and foomp! Since I was involved with changing the plant convention, I should say that among the reasons for preferring sci names was that there was nothing resembling an authority for English names, and often not even regional consistency (a Mojave Desert endemic could have one name in Barstow, and another in Las Vegas!). For fish, I agree with not trying to count Google hits - these days the results are very likely to be skewed by our own decisions here, so just not that meaningful. A hard case is when a species has a name that's used by everybody except for the three Barbadian fishermen that came up with a funny name duly recorded by FishBase; by this latest proposal, the fish would have to go under sci name, against everyone's intuition. FishBase does identify some names as established by organizations like AFS; I think those names should get a little extra weight. Another thing we did for plants is to tell people to post exceptional cases to the project page for discussion, a useful safety valve for rules run amok. Stan 12:39, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi again everyone, I think we are making progress. Here're my suggestions with this fourth draft.

(a) and (b), as currently worded, are not practical and are too strict. In fact if this is be applied strictly, by a policy-thumbing or a stubborn editor, nearly all fish articles will end up changing its titles to scienctific names. Even guppy or goldfish wouldn't pass this criteria. This is way too radical and will cause a lot of problems. A policy should consider all possibilities, especially the disastrous ones.
I'm not comfortable with the inclusion of TOL policy in our policy. First, TOL has only a single sentence in their policy regarding how to use common names. Second, TOL itself stated that there is no "common standard" and allowed each project to use their own policy. Third, instead of TOL, it should be Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna) which arguably is a higher authority than a wikiproject and it also gives much more guidelines regarding our issues.
"ambiguous common names" must be defined. We can't assume that everyone has the same understanding. And the disambiguation page should be used only when needed. In many cases it makes more sense to just put a tag in the article like

This article is about the <put text>; for the <put text> see <put link>.

The creation of a disambiguation page doesn't mean that other related articles are automatically titled by scientific names. Something like "goldfish" and "goldfish (disambiguation)" can co-exist and this is a common practice in wikipedia. You don't need to change the first one to Carassius auratus.
Regarding the Google hits, I agree it is skewed by certain factors and is not the ideal method. I'd be happy if we can find a more reliable method. But the reason I suggested Google hits is that it at least provide some numbers which is measurable. Instead of, "this name can't be used because it's not well-known" or "this name can't be used because it's not known in <name the area>", which can be argued for most articles, why don't we include some methods.

--Melanochromis 17:14, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Proposal V

Titles of fish species articles (draft V)

Use the common name where:

Only a single common name is used for a species, and that common name is not otherwise used for any other species. Example: Greenland halibut.
Only a single common name is used for a species, and that common name is demonstrably only used for other species is used so rarely that confusion is unlikely to occur. Example: Guppy.
Only a single common name is used by the relevant legal, conservation, or fisheries institutions in the region where the species is endemic and of importance, even though other common names may exist. Example: Atlantic salmon.
Only a single common name is used for a species, and similar names can be separated from it by appropriate use of geographical, descriptive, or other modifications to those names and where these differentiated names satisfy criteria 1, 2, or 3 above. Examples: Shovelnose sturgeon, Little shovelnose sturgeon, False shovelnose sturgeon.

The Latin name should be used as article titles where:

A species shares a common name with one or more other species. Example: Green spotted puffer.
A species lacks a single, universally recognised common name. Example: Black widow tetra (a.k.a. Black tetra, Petticoat tetra)
A species has different common names in different English-speaking countries. Example Plec (UK), Pleco (US).
A species has no widely used common name. Example: Dermogenys sumatrana.

Regardless of the title used, all articles should include the scientific name in italics and all English common names in bold in the first paragraph (preferably the first sentence) of the article, and all reasonable attempts should be made to include disambiguations to species with which the present one might be confused. Hence articles on the silver freshwater hatchetfish should disambiguate to the silver marine hatchetfish and vice versa. Neale Monks 20:50, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

My turn now! Neale Neale Monks 20:50, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Looks good to me Neale. Thoughts Stan, Terrapin, Melanochromis, Others? MidgleyDJ 23:51, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

That's a great draft, Neale. I think we are so close. I have only some minor changes to add. Here the modified version of Neale's draft V. : --Melanochromis 02:56, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Proposal 5.01

Titles of fish species articles (draft 5.03)

Use the common name where:

A single common name is used for a species, and that common name is not otherwise used for any other species. Other common names, if they exist, are rarely or insignificantly used. Example: Greenland halibut. (Note: excluded "rarely or insignificantly used" names because even fish like the Greenland halibut has "rarely or insignificantly used" other common names. Ed.2: Added "they"
A single common name is used for a species, and that common name is demonstrably only used for other species so rarely or insignificantly that confusion is unlikely to occur. Example: Guppy. (Note: fixed a typo.)
A single common name is used by the relevant legal, conservation, fisheries or local institutions in the region where the species is endemic or of importance, even though other common names may exist. Example: Atlantic salmon. (Note: added international. Ed.2: Changed the international part - relevant is probably all that's required.)
A single common name is used for a species~~, and similar~~ where similar names can be separated from it by appropriate use of geographical, descriptive, or other modifications to those names and where these differentiated names satisfy criteria 1, 2, or 3 above. Examples: Shovelnose sturgeon, Little shovelnose sturgeon, False shovelnose sturgeon. (Tweaked "and" to "where".)

The Latin name should be used as article titles where:

A species shares a common name with one or more other species, and confusion is likely to occur. Example: Green spotted puffer. In such case, also create a disambiguation page. (Ed.3 Note: distinguished this from common name#2, disambiguation)
A species lacks a single, universally recognised common name. Example: Black widow tetra (a.k.a. Black tetra, Petticoat tetra)
A species has different regional common names, each significantly used in different English-speaking countries. Example Plec (UK), Pleco (US). (Note: prevented the "three Barbadian fishermen vs all other people" case)
A species has no widely used common name. Example: Dermogenys sumatrana.
A species is virtually known only by ichthyologists and has no ~~anthropogenic~~ human or commercial importance in terms of fishing, fisheries, aquaculture or the aquarium hobby as described in the Fishbase. (Note: added more possibility where the Latin name is preferred. Ed.2: Changed to "anthropogenic". Remove "etc.") (Changed anthropogenic, since that means from human activity, not for human uses.)

Regardless of the title used, all articles should include the scientific name in italics and all significant English common names in bold in the first paragraph (preferably the first sentence) of the article.

All reasonable attempts should be made to include disambiguations to species with which the present one might be confused. Disambiguations can be done by; (Note: added detail.)

explanation of the ambiguity in the first paragraph of the article with links to other fish. Example: tilapia.
addition of a disambiguation tag: Example: freshwater hatchetfish. The following is a simple format of disambiguation tag.

This article is about the <put text>; for the <put text> see <put link>.

creation of a disambiguation page especially in the case that the ambiguity involves many fish. Example: tigerfish.

Orginally drafted by Neale Monks, edited by --Melanochromis 02:56, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Some minor eds by under "Ed.2" otherwise unchanged. Looks good to me now. Would this resolve the Talk:Mayan_cichlid issue ? MidgleyDJ 03:12, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Ed.2 is good with me. I just added things that I forgot to add with Ed.1. See Latin name#1. So the draft is now 5.03. Re: Mayan cichlid, that article will probably be the first to get to test this policy. --Melanochromis 03:32, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Draft proposal to change the naming guidelines

Removed the various editorial comments so it's easier to read now. Included all changes made up to and including the last edits by Neale. I didnt make any new changes. Looks good now to me. MidgleyDJ 20:57, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

The common name#2 (the one with guppy example) was removed when you cleaned it up. I just put it back. --Melanochromis 22:36, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry :(, I was overjealous with the mouse! Thanks for returning it Melanochromis. MidgleyDJ 22:43, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Proposal 5.03

Titles of fish species articles (draft 5.04)

[A] Use the common name where:

A single common name is used for a species, and that common name is not otherwise used for any other species. Other common names, if they exist, are rarely or insignificantly used. Example: Greenland halibut.
A single common name is used for a species, and that common name is demonstrably only used for other species so rarely or insignificantly that confusion is unlikely to occur. Example: Guppy.
A single common name is used by the relevant legal, conservation, fisheries or local institutions in the region where the species is endemic or of importance, even though other common names may exist. Example: Atlantic salmon.
A single common name is used for a species, where similar names can be separated from it by appropriate use of geographical, descriptive, or other modifications to those names and where these differentiated names satisfy criteria 1, 2, or 3 above. Examples: Shovelnose sturgeon, Little shovelnose sturgeon, False shovelnose sturgeon.

[B] The Latin name should be used as article titles where:

A species shares a common name with one or more other species, and confusion is likely to occur. Example: Green spotted puffer. In such case, also create a disambiguation page.
A species lacks a single, universally recognised common name. Example: Black widow tetra (a.k.a. Black tetra, Petticoat tetra)
A species has different regional common names, each significantly used in different English-speaking countries. Example Plec (UK), Pleco (US).
A species has no widely used common name. Example: Dermogenys sumatrana.
A species is virtually known only by ichthyologists and has no human or commercial importance in terms of fishing, fisheries, aquaculture or the aquarium hobby as described in the Fishbase.

Regardless of the title used, all articles should include the scientific name in italics and all significant English common names in bold in the first paragraph (preferably the first sentence) of the article.

All reasonable attempts should be made to include disambiguations to species with which the present one might be confused. Disambiguations can be done by:

explanation of the ambiguity in the first paragraph of the article with links to other fish. Example: tilapia.
addition of a disambiguation tag: Example: freshwater hatchetfish. The following is a simple format of disambiguation tag.

This article is about the <put text>; for the <put text> see <put link>.

creation of a disambiguation page especially in the case that the ambiguity involves many fish. Example: tigerfish.

In cases of disputed naming, where a consensus cannot be reached on the articles Talk page, the matter should be discussed at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Fishes to allow a consensus decision to be reached.

I think this is about as precise as anyone can hope to get. I still think it would be good to explicitly direct problematic and/or disputed cases to this project, so better-informed editors can get engaged before the revert wars and bannings :-) rather than after. (If you just put up a naming conventions page, it's common for editors to take it as Holy Writ immediately and fight over minutiae of interpretation, rather than coming back here to say "hey, what about this case?" "Oh yeah, we didn't think about that." Stan 23:21, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Good idea Stan, added this point at the end. MidgleyDJ

Jumping in here, I see a problem with item #2 under Latin naming. "A species lacks a single, universally recognised common name"? You might as well just throw in the hat and say "just use latin names on everything". Take something as simple as the zebra danio. Fishbase lists "leopard danio", "striped danio", "rerio", "zebrafish", and "zebra danio" among its many, many common names for Danio rerio. Find any species that is common in the aquarium trade that doesn't have multiple common names listed on Fishbase. I hate to be a wet blanket here, but I guess I should speak up and say that I don't see the point of this proposed standards change to begin with, and my opinion, for what it is worth, is that the project's article naming standards remain unchanged entirely. Neil916 (Talk) 03:16, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi Neil916, Latin name item #2 does seem to be much broader than the others. What if we removed #2? Would the rest of the draft be acceptable? --Melanochromis 03:30, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, my main point is that the beauty of the current policy is that it's simple. You don't need to evaluate 15 different bullet points to decide what to name an article. Use the common name as you know it. If a dispute arises as to the naming, look at www.fishbase.org, use the common name listed there and it's the end of discussion. Create redirects from other common names and/or disambiguation pages when necessary. Sure, not everybody is going to be madly in love with the answer that fishbase spits out every time, but it's the same with the binomial names. A good policy should be simple, unambiguous, and consistent. Since the fishes project already defers to Fishbase as the final authority on binomial naming, why get into protracted arguments over whether a fish is "known only to ichthyologists", or having to debate the prevalence of various regional common names? Neil916 (Talk) 04:24, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Hello all. Please let me comment on Neil's statement above, thus Since the fishes project already defers to Fishbase as the final authority on binomial naming, why get into protracted arguments over whether a fish is "known only to ichthyologists", or having to debate the prevalence of various regional common names?. Fishbase isn't an authority on anything. It is a compilation of information taken (largely) from the scientific literature as well as (to a lesser degree) fisheries and aquarium literature. Fishbase exists to improve access to scientific information, but it isn't a source of information in its own right (except insofar as records can be compared and analysed in bulk). No-one is an "arbiter" on Latin names; all Fishbase does is respect the currently accepted Latin name used by the bulk of ichthyologists. This is an absolutely fundamental problem with Latin names that I have mentioned earlier -- they are not like barcodes or license plates and can (and often do) change as advances in taxonomy arise. But, and this is a big but, for all the flaws in the use of Latin names, their massive advantages are consistency and lack of national bias. There's no need for anyone to whine about a fish in America, Canada or England or wherever being traded or otherwise known by another name, because the Latin name trumps any such discussions. In the draft naming convention I created above, there is ample scope for sensible use of common names. No-one is going to go around renaming rainbow trout or yellow perch or mouth almighty or whatever because those names satisfy one or other of the "use common name" criteria. It is not difficult to establish the "legal" common name in English as required. If the fish is involved in North Atlatic fisheries for example, there are lots of pages at the EU fisheries commission to indicate which common name has precedence. Similarly, most environmental and conservation agencies tend to have established common names for species of concern, such as pallid sturgeon or Devil's Hole pupfish. The problem is really with fishes in the aquarium trade, which are often marketed under an assortment of names. To a lesser extent, some fishes of interest to anglers may also have local names depending on the waters where they are fished. In these instances, if no single name has clear and non-confusing precedence, then a Latin name makes much more sense. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 16:05, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry Neil, but I have a big problem with deferring to Fishbase as some sort of final arbiter. The fact is Fishbase does frequently get it wrong, and they are spectaculalry unwilling to listen to any suggestion of change, despite what it says on their web site. An example is Galaxias brevipinnis a freshwater fish common to much of the coastal waters in SE Australia as well as New Zealand. Fishbase uses the New Zealand Maori name "Koaro" for his fish as the common name. "Kaoro" is a name unique to New Xealand and one not used for the fish elswhere (and which BTW is used for several species in NZ). This fish is sometimes called the broad finned or short finned galaxias but is usually known as the climbing galaxias. So I support the change, simplicity is an excellent ideal, but the situation with fish is not simple and trying to force the naming of fish into a simple model is only going to make more problems than it solves. The issue of people not searching for scientific names is true, but articles for fish using scientific names are for fish that Joe Average has never heard of and is unlikely to be searching for by common name anyway, so it is a nul argument IMO. Nick Thorne 11:51, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I think the reason that Fishbase prefers "Koaro" over other names because it's the name designated by both FAO and American Fisheries Society. "Climbing galaxias", although also listed in Fishbase, doesn't have the same status. I think Fishbase itself doesn't really make a decision, as it always chooses the designated/legal name (usually by FAO or AFS) over the vernacular ones. It's the FAO/AFS who is to blamed when there's a mistake or a weird naming of fish. Sounds like you have contacted Fishbase about this. I'm curious to know what their response is. --Melanochromis 12:48, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

You are right, I have contacted Fishbase about the climbing galaxias issue and eventually, it took about 5 months IIRC, I got an email back basically saying "well the FAO says so, too bad" which struck me as a really distorted sense of priorities. This fish is endemic to Australia and New Zealand and using a name unique to one of those countries and one that is not even unique to this species at that seems odd to say the least. Frankly my opinion of Fishbase has changed and now I see it as no more than a useful aggregation of technical information with information about primary sources. Fishbase is not of itself an authority for anything and it is a misunderstanding to use it as such. Primary sources are the authority and although Fishbase can help find information, intelligent editing by knowledgeable editors is a much better method of ensuring accuracy. As I said above, the naming of fish is not simple and no matter how attractive it is to have a simple source that we treat as the oracle for common names, the truth is that no such source exists. The same applies whether it be Fishbase, the FAO of the AFS. Each fish needs to be dealt with on a case by case basis. Nick Thorne 02:35, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi Neil, my problem with the current system is that its reliance on fishbase yields some very silly results. eg: Convict Julies, Rainbow Kribs, Mexican Mojarra's (to use cichlid examples from fishbase). My preference is to use latin names - but I understand why this isnt suitable for all fauna, and why we have a fauna naming convention that differs from the flora naming convention. Obviously there are cases where the common name is better, goldfish is the best example that I can think of, though atlantic salmon, largemouth bass, guppies etc all fall into the same category. Personally, I'd rather a slightly more complex system that sought to address the problems over a simple system which ignores the problems. Is there a way you could adjust this proposal to meet your aims/needs/concerns also? MidgleyDJ 04:37, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Hello Neil916. Your argument with the aquarium names for fish precisely makes the point of rule number 2. Suppose you were familiar with af fish under one name that hadn't been used by the author of the article who had used another name. In the UK, Gymnocorymbus ternetzi is universally sold as the black widow tetra. On Wikipedia, the article is under black tetra; but suppose it hadn't been added and didn't come up in the search. How would you find the information you wanted? Using a Latin name is a standard way to name fish useful for speakers of all languages, and it puts the onus on the author to create disambiguation or redirect pages as required as well as include common names in the first paragraph of the article he or she is creating. This way by default you encourage inclusion of varied common names rather than assume everyone is using yours. You also get situations where parallel articles discuss the same species of fish, e.g. zebrafish and leopard danio, a total nonsense as far as biological science is concerned. Far easier in these cases to put the body of the article under a Latin name title, but use the common names as redirects or disambiguation pages as the situation requires. Another issue is that aquarists tend to assume the whole world sees fish in the same way that they do. They do not. There are too many fish articles here written for aquarists first and foremost. They are not. In terms of broad use by anyone researching fisheries, aquatic ecology, conservation, taxonomy, etc there are a totally different set of priorities. I certainly have no objection to fish articles having an "in the aquarium" section towards the end, but I strongly believe that all biological articles should be written first and foremost as scientific-quality articles rather than fishkeeping articles. Under such circumstances, the majority of purely local, often inconsistently applied, common names a fish is sold under in aquarium shops isn't helpful. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 09:00, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I think that under the circumstances you described with regard to the black widow tetra, there should have been a redirect from the scientific name to the black widow tetra article. Once I went to create a redirect from the scientific name (as the current naming policy dictates), I would have discovered that another article already exists and used a simple 30-second test to determine whether the article was appropriately named. (i.e. under current policy, check what Fishbase lists as a common name). I use Fishbase as the reference source/"arbiter" here not because I think it's infallible or that everybody is going to like the answers it spits out, but because it's an uninvolved third party. If we can come up with another point of reference that is as easily referenced as Fishbase that you and the others would be happier with, I'm fine with that. My point is I don't think we need to encourage people to create a bunch of big debates about what the name of an article should be. Such debates waste time and energy that could be used to write and edit articles instead. Keep it simple. Neil916 (Talk) 05:04, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Draft proposal to change the fish naming convention - Survey of support and opposition

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

There's been a decent length discussion on this issue and I think most people have had an opportunity to present their point of view. I'd like to propose we adopt proposal 5.04 (detailed below) drafted by Neale Monks with edits by a number of other users.

Here's the proposal:

Proposal 5.04

Titles of fish species articles (draft 5.04)

(I)Use the common name where:

A single common name is used for a species, and that common name is not otherwise used for any other species. Other common names, if they exist, are rarely or insignificantly used. Example: Greenland halibut.
A single common name is used for a species, and that common name is demonstrably only used for other species so rarely or insignificantly that confusion is unlikely to occur. Example: Guppy.
A single common name is used by the relevant legal, conservation, fisheries or local institutions in the region where the species is endemic or of importance, even though other common names may exist. Example: Atlantic salmon.
A single common name is used for a species, where similar names can be separated from it by appropriate use of geographical, descriptive, or other modifications to those names and where these differentiated names satisfy criteria 1, 2, or 3 above. Examples: Shovelnose sturgeon, Little shovelnose sturgeon, False shovelnose sturgeon.

(II)The Latin name should be used as article titles where:

A species shares a common name with one or more other species, and confusion is likely to occur. Example: Green spotted puffer. In such case, also create a disambiguation page.
A species lacks a single, universally recognised common name. Example: Black widow tetra (a.k.a. Black tetra, Petticoat tetra)
A species has different regional common names, each significantly used in different English-speaking countries. Example Plec (UK), Pleco (US).
A species has no widely used common name. Example: Dermogenys sumatrana.
A species is virtually known only by ichthyologists and has no human or commercial importance in terms of fishing, fisheries, aquaculture or the aquarium hobby as described in the Fishbase.

Regardless of the title used, all articles should include the scientific name in italics and all significant English common names in bold in the first paragraph (preferably the first sentence) of the article.

All reasonable attempts should be made to include disambiguations to species with which the present one might be confused. Disambiguations can be done by:

explanation of the ambiguity in the first paragraph of the article with links to other fish. Example: tilapia.
addition of a disambiguation tag: Example: freshwater hatchetfish. The following is a simple format of disambiguation tag.

This article is about the <put text>; for the <put text> see <put link>.

creation of a disambiguation page especially in the case that the ambiguity involves many fish. Example: tigerfish.

In cases of disputed naming, where a consensus cannot be reached on the articles Talk page, the matter should be discussed at WP:FISH to allow a consensus decision to be reached.

Taking on board the discussion below, I'm modifying the proposal slightly, as follows, partly to simplify it. Please comment.

Proposal 5.05

Titles of fish species articles (draft 5.05)

Use the common name for any species that satisfies at least one of the following criteria:

1(i) The species has a single common name that is widely used and never used for any other species. While the species in question may have additional common names, those names are rarely used. Example: Greenland halibut.
1(ii) The species has a widely recognised common name that is so rarely applied to other species that confusion as to the subject of the article is unlikely to arise. Example: Guppy.
1(iii) Within the area where the species is endemic and/or of commercial importance, only a single common name is used by the relevant legal, conservation, fisheries or local institutions, even though other common names may exist. Example: Atlantic salmon.
1(iv) The species has a common name that is normally separated from similar common names by use of geographical, descriptive, or other modifications to those names. Once differentiated, these names satisfy criteria i, ii, or iii above. Examples: Shovelnose sturgeon, Little shovelnose sturgeon, False shovelnose sturgeon.

Use the Latin name for any species that fails to satisfy criteria 1(i) to 1(iv), including such situations as the following:

2(i) The same common name is regularly applied to multiple species. Example: Green spotted puffer.
2(ii) There is no single common name used for the species in question. Example: Black widow tetra (a.k.a. Black tetra, Petticoat tetra)
2(iii) The species has different common names in different English-speaking countries. Example Plec (UK), Pleco (US).
2(iv) The species simply has no widely used common name. Example: Dermogenys sumatrana.

Guidelines

Regardless of the title used, all articles should include the scientific name in italics and all significant English common names in bold in the first paragraph (and preferably the first sentence) and in such a way that it clearly differentiates the fish from other species with which it might be confused, for example by mentioning geographical distribution.

The guppy (Poecilia reticulata) also known as the millionsfish, is a small fresh and brackish water fish from Central America.

All reasonable attempts should be made to include disambiguations to species with which the present one might be confused. Disambiguations can be done by explaining the ambiguity in the first paragraph of the article with links to other fish (tilapia) or the addition of a disambiguation tag (freshwater hatchetfish).
The following is a simple format of disambiguation tag.

This article is about the <put text>; for the <put text> see <put link>.

Creation of a disambiguation page especially in the case that the ambiguity involves many fish. Example: tigerfish.
Before renaming articles, discuss the reasons for doing so on the Talk page.
In cases of disputed naming, where a consensus cannot be reached on the articles Talk page, the matter should be discussed at WP:FISH to allow a consensus decision to be reached.

Survey

Add # '''Support''' or # '''Oppose''' on a new line in the appropriate section followed by a brief explanation, then sign your opinion using ~~~~. Please remember that this survey is not a vote, and please provide an explanation for your recommendation.

Survey - in support of the move

Support The proposal addresses the problem with common names while retaining their use where the common name is widespread and accepted. It also deals with the issue of "common names beause fishbase says so" which results in some silly choices. Given the proposal maintains the use of common names where they are actually common, and encourages the use of disambiguation pages it also (in my opinion) addresses the "audience" concerns. ie: what's being searched for at google/insert other search engine. Finally it also includes a final point to WP:FISH were consensus cannot be reached. I think the proposal is a sensible, constructive improvement in the way Wikipedia deals with the most diverse (and probably most poorly studied) vertebrate group. MidgleyDJ 03:36, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
Strong Support Trying to make naming of fish simple is like trying to put the proverbial square peg in a round hole. Fish naming is complex. This proposal retains the common name where it makes sense and uses the Latinised name elsewhere. People doing Google searches will find the fish either way and the proposal avoids using non-sensical "common" names that are neither common nor in fact useful because they are not actually used by anyone. Further, the proposal is more intelligent WRT external authorities and avoids relying solely on Fishbase as the arbiter of all, which it is not, especially for fish that are endemic to a region and where Fishbase often ascribes common names that no one in the area concerned would recognise. Nick Thorne 05:22, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
Support. There are problems with Latin names of course, and some editors may find their usage intimidating. But for the widest number of people coming to Wikipedia from the widest range of occupations and interests, Latin names will be the most convenient. They are standard in science, law, conservation, fisheries, and increasingly fishkeeping. Usage of Latin names will promote accuracy and improve communication between Wikipedia users from around the world (many of whom won't have English as a first language but will certainly have access to Latin names via whatever source books they are using). Reliance on Fishbase alone for common names is promoting Fishbase to the status of an authority, something that it most certainly is not and ends up placing convenience before scientific accuracy. Neale Monks 10:13, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
Support. I think this captures most of our intuition about when to use common names and when to use scientific name. If we don't like how it works out in practice, we can always reconvene and try something else. (Massive renames? No problem, there are always wouldbe admins wanting an easy way to pump up edit counts. :-) ) Stan 12:20, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
Support. While I'd still prefer to have all articles under the appropriate scientific names, this seems like a fair compromise. While WP is mainly for the major populace, it is also here to educate these people, no matter how non-scientific they are. As an aquarist, sport fisherman, cook and ichthyologist, the above rules seem the fairest when dealing with fishes from an interdisciplinary standpoint. Shrumster 08:18, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Support. Seems a long-winded way of saying "use common sense" to me but I guess processes need to be documented. Richard Barlow 09:16, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Qualified Support. I think a lot of these machinations are necessitated by some reluctance to use scientific names, generally, with appropriate common name redirects. Whether that reluctance is well-founded or not, I think, is not really for me to say. Working in the field, I have come to appreciate the universal character of scientific names. Nonetheless, I appreciate the opinions that others have expressed, here, and I also agree with Stan when he says that we can always change it in the future if we don't like how it works out. — Dave 14:20, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Conditional Support. Overall, this proposal is a progress. But I'm not supporting this exact draft. I'll support the policy change only if some modification is made to accommodate the concerns of Neil916 and Stefan. I agree with Neil916 that the item #2 under Latin naming: "A species lacks a single, universally recognised common name" is problematic, as it is way too broad and doesn't cover anything specific like other items. Most fishes have more than one common name, and because of this, for most cases, one can say there's no such thing as "single, universally recognised common name". This argument can be used to change the titles of a massive number of fish articles. So, having this item will potentially generate disputes and edit wars rather than to provide solid guidelines. It's not constructive. I think this item should be removed entirely as the rest of the draft already covers what we want. --Melanochromis 15:37, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Comment Melanochromis, I suspect we're at cross-purposes, in which case re-wording that line may be valuable. When I said "single, universally recognised" common name I expressly didn't mean "single, exclusively used" common name. What I meant was a name that might not be the only common name used, but is certainly recognised by the vast majority of English speakers (with an interest in fish, anyway). Hence Great white shark would quailify as a "single, universally recognised" name despite the fact that it also has other, more or less obscure or limited, common names like "white pointer" or "man-eating shark" and so on. Even people who locally call the shark a white pointer will recognise that as the same species as the great white. That's what I meant by "universal". Of course, we can't factor out the 3 Barbadian fishermen who don't have a clue what a great white and only know it as a white pointer, so at some level common sense must prevail. As I've said elsewhere, if a common name title for an article is so widely used that is hasn't been challenged and can't be reasonably challenged (e.g., by reference to Fishbase or some recognised authority such as Smith's Sea Fish or Baensch's Aquarium Atlas) then as far as I'm concerned the common name title can stay. It's where, like Mayan cichlid you have names that can be challenged that the rules above need to come into play. Neale Monks 17:39, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
This clarification/wording change would remove one of my major concerns about this new proposal. Neil916 (Talk) 17:58, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Excellent, we are getting closer! Would someone like to suggest what: "A species lacks a single, universally recognised common name." should be? I think it conveys the intent Neale describes above. Perhaps what we need is a footnote? something like:
a) "Universal" refers to a common name that would be recognised by the vast majority of english speakers. It does not proclude the existence of other more obscure common names.

We should be cautious to avoid are situations where the common name is obscure (or ambiguous), eg: "black tetra" (like the UK, it's the "black widow tetra" here in Australia), "Convict Julie" unused anywhere so much as I can gather etc., and yet it's inclusion as the "official fishbase common name" necessitates it's use. MidgleyDJ 19:46, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Well, when you come right down to it, there is little difference in meaning, for the purposes of the draft, between the phrase used in the top half, "a single common name", and that in the bottom half, "a single universally recognised common name". In fact, I'd venture that the phrases could effectively be interchanged without damaging the meaning. Hence, here's what I should like to propose:
Change all instances to "a single common name". Upon the first use of that term, add, as a footnote, a definition of the term. I propose this definition, based on that of MidgleyDJ, above:
a) For the purposes of this document, a "single common name" is a name that would be recognised by the vast majority of English speakers within the species' range. It does not preclude the existence of other more locally used or recognised common names.

Does that help? — Dave 20:14, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Let's not make it even more complex than it already is (beef #1 in my opposition below). How about just changing "A species lacks a single, universally recognised common name" to "a species lacks a common name that is recognized by a vast majority of English speakers with an interest in fish" or something to that effect? The proposal is still too complex for my tastes, but at least it won't get even more so. Neil916 (Talk) 21:55, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I think the footnote as Dave suggested is useful. Neil, I dont think it really adds to anything to the compexity of the current proposal it's simply a definition (which would be added as a footnote - not directly included in the proposal) to prevent the overzealous interpretation of the policy. Unfortunately, a "common sense" naming policy requires a more complex naming protocol. I dont think it's too bad, and I'd be surprised if it resulted in mass changes. I also think it's important that a link be made to WP:FISH for naming disputes. MidgleyDJ 00:19, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
Strong Support. I agree with Melanochromis that this proposal is progressive (and finalized guidelines could serve as the framework for the renaming of corals) but that Item #2 under Latin naming "A species lacks a single, universally recognised common name" can be used to change the titles of a massive number of fish articles potentially generating disputes and edit wars. Unfortunately, Stan's comments about admins and, more increasingly bots, should minimize this effect. I offer that a more significant foundational ideal was well stated by Nick Thorne on his discussion page in that We should remind editors that the audience for Wikipedia extends outside the USA, and any particular interest group such as aquariasts, anglers and indeed fish biologists and agree with Shrusmster regarding educating the masses. As a longtime reefkeeping enthusiast and coral propagator, I suggest that the audience from ReefCentral and message is significant though usually most are silent lurkers. Excellent start and discussion! ChicagoPimp 02:26, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
Support The proposal is much as I've been doing already. Whatever name is used for an article, it is important to Redirect the other name - then everyone is catered for. Don't forget, the vast majority of users aren't scientists. GrahamBould 06:56, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
Support I find myself mostly agreeing with Neil's comments below, but the important thing about the proposal is it provides a fairly straightforward guideline for naming while still allowing for discussion on individual article titles. As long as the naming rules are a guide and not a rigid policy I'll support it. Yomangani ^talk 14:11, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
Support Personally I don't care what's at the top of the page so long as I can get to the right article using the names that I know. So I strongly support the guidelines section encouraging forwarding and disambig pages, they'll be a big help to casual and non-expert readers. Some of the comments below indicate that the proposal can be read as being quicker to fall back to scientific names than the proposer(s) seem to have intended, so some rewording may be beneficial. -- Siobhan Hansa 18:10, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
Support Only question now is why this is for species only, what about genus and family? Should apply also? See Rkitko question below. Stefan 09:33, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
Support It is important to do everything possible to limit confusion. Jamie|C 22:10, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Survey - in opposition to the move

Oppose because of 1: Complexity. It is an unnecessarily complex method of determining the title of an article. 2: Ambiguity. Too much debating, not enough article writing. Pick an uninvolved reference source and in the event of a conflict, defer to that. Sometimes you'll like the outcome, sometimes you won't. I suggested Fishbase in the discussion above, as does the existing policy, but it could be any comprehensive reference(s) that we agree upon. Fishbase has a significant advantage in that it is easily accessible to all wikipedia editors. 3: Overly broad. Item #2 under Latin names is far too broad and will require way too many fish articles under the latin name, which is, in my opinion, out of touch with the people who actually want to use Wikipedia as a reference source. (3rd point of opposition removed as a result of clarification/wording changes discussed by Neale Monks) Neil916 (Talk) 04:44, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
Oppose as per Neil916, if this proposal is accepted I guess e.g. Leopard_shark have to be renamed to Triakis semifasciata since Zebra shark is often also called Leopard shark and I do not think that is a good, I want wikipedia to be for normal people and they do NOT use scientific names and Leopard shark is known enough to be called that. I'm sure there are many other simmilar examples. I see issues with both options, so better stick with the current rule set.Stefan 05:20, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Stefan, I corrected zebra shark. It originally said that it could be "mistaken" for the leopard shark which obviously it couldn't because they live in entirely different hemispheres. Now it simply makes the point that the zebra shark is sometimes called the leopard shark because of the change in colours, and that leopard shark is a name often applied to another species. Thanks for bringing this example to our attention! A classic example of where reliance on common names, and assumption that one is the "true" common name, creates scientific nonsense. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 10:21, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, agree that this is a better way of describing that in the article. Stefan 14:08, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Comment Stefan: The use of a disambiguation page may solve the issue (and is suggested in the proposal). Your example highlights one of the major problems with the current system and in my view is a good reason to change to the new system. If "Leopard shark" describes two (3 according to fishbase) different species, a disambiguation page should exist which can redirect people to the correct article. eg: Leopard shark is on of the common names for three distantly related species of shark Galeocerdo cuvier, Stegostoma fasciatum and Triakis semifasciata etc (Common names checked at from fishbase). Keep in mind anyone searching in Wikipedia will find Triakis semifasciata if they search for "leopard shark" regardless of whether disambiguation pages were created. If the disambiguation page was created anyone who entered "Leopard shark" at google/yahoo etc would be brought straight to the disambiguation article. Cheers, David. MidgleyDJ 07:48, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Comment Furthermore Stefan, there is a difference between "wrongly" using a common name, and simply using it for more than one animal. A common name is used wrongly if I call Panthera leo a tiger. It is not a tiger, it is a lion. But, if I call Stegostoma fasciatum a leopard shark, that is not wrong. That is merely an accepted usage of the name for a different species to the one you use it for. If British people use one name for Stegostoma fasciatum but Australians another, who is right? Writing in a biology article that a common name used by others is "wrong" is simply presumption on the part of the editor, and has no reality to taxonomy or scientific practise. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 09:56, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, I used the wrong word, I did not mean wrong, I meant also, nevermind, I still say that if this change in naming convention makes it convention to rename the zebra and leopard shark to scientific names I will oppose, that is NOT what I think is the most used common name and I do not think, that wikipedia should be for scientists, i think that >99% of our readers is much more comfortable with common names and would rather have a page name with a common name than one with a scientific name. But ok to play along, would this policy if it is accepted also mean that we in the aricle would talk about the Zebra shark as Stegostoma fasciatum? or can the page stay as is, with just a page name change? If it can stay as is I can not understand why we need this policy change, and if we need to change the page and write about Stegostoma fasciatum, I do not agree.

Reading the guideline WP:COMMONNAME again, it states Convention: Use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things, so by that test this new convention is correct, but beeing a supporter of WP:IAR I read on and read When choosing a name for a page ask yourself: What word would the average user of the Wikipedia put into the search engine? So I ask how many of our readers would use a scientific name and how many a common name? and further I find the rational I will copy it fully here and bold some highlights.

Names of articles should be the most commonly used name for the following reasons:

We want to maximize the likelihood of being listed in external search engines, thereby attracting more people to Wikipedia. For example, the pagename is Jimmy Carter and not "James Earl Carter, Jr."; the string "Jimmy Carter" in the page title make it easier to find: search engines will often give greater weight to the contents of the title than to the body of the page. Since "Jimmy Carter" is the most common form of the name, it will be searched on more often, and having that exact string in our page title will often mean our page shows up higher in other search engines.
We want to maximize the incidence that people who make a link guessing the article name, guess correctly; people guessing a different name may think there is no article yet, which may cause duplication.
Using a full formal name requires people to know that name, and to type more.

Redirects help, but give a slightly ugly "redirected from" announcement at the top of the page. On the other hand, if someone reads or hears "Elizabeth II", and wonders who might be meant by that, the "(Redirected from Elizabeth II)" at the top of the page describing the monarch in question puts the reader at ease that this was the intended queen: the "redirect" message indicates that the system hasn't been playing tricks, and that this was the page to which you were supposed to be led.

So this describes pretty much why I want a common name and not a scientific name when a common name exists. Stefan 14:08, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Comment. In my opinion the issue of audience is addressed in this policy. If the fish has a common name that's very widely used it's likely to be the article title. I'd suggest the current "common name policy" doesnt help our audience. A good example of this would be when half the english speaking world doesnt know the "common" name. Take a few cichlid examples I provided: no one in Australia (and very likely the UK) would search for "Mayan cichlid", "Convict Julie", "Kennyi" or "Mexican Mojarra". Additionally, where the common name is used for muliple fish species, a disambiguation page can be used (this again addresses the issue of people searching via common names at google.) MidgleyDJ 19:35, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Discussion

Add any additional comments:

I have just left a notification on the WikiProject Sharks and the WikiProject Aquarium Fish talk pages as those projects would also be affected by this change and the members may be unaware of this proposal. Neil916 (Talk) 00:17, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Assuming this proposal goes ahead, I think it would be wise for us to formulate some guidance about the implemetation of the policy WRT existing pages. Changing the names of existing pages needs to be done with care and we should discourage inexperienced editors from making wholesale changes without regard for the consequences of changing the names of articles. Perhaps we need to make a handy checklist of what to check for when making a change - for example checking other articles that link to the page, creating redirect pages etc. IIRC, there is already an article that deals with this, perhaps we can simply supply a link to it. Nick Thorne 02:56, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Comment: Where do we go from here assuming Neil and Stefan dont change their minds? Is there a consensus position that can be reached? I'd like to ask those editors to consider trying this new policy, as Stan points out above it's something we can reconvene on if we dont like the outcome. MidgleyDJ 03:44, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Comment: I might not change my mind, but I will accept consensus, if consensus is to rename (and maybe rewrite) articles using scientific names, there is not much I need to do, I will not sit down and rename xxx articles to a naming standard that I do not like, I would suggest that someone starts making a list of pages that should be renamed according to the new policy, then we can also assess the impact. Also I think that 6 'votes' is a bit to few, more people should make their voice heard, but making the list will take some time I'm sure, so would be good to have the list before we close the 'vote'. Can someone answer my question above, for a article that we change the name, does that mean we must change the text in the article also using the scientific name? Stefan 04:52, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Comment: Hi Stefan, all articles should include the latin name currently regardless of the outcome of this proposal. So while the first sentence may need a little re-jigging in some articles most wont require major changes. I should also stress that this policy is not a wholesale conversion to latin names. It's about trying to reach a sensible balance between their use and the use of common names. There is no point, in my view, in using an "uncommon" or worse an ambiguous common name for an article simply because it exists. For what it's worth I agree with everything you've said about audience... and about targetting the articles to those searching -- I guess my view is that the proposal addresses these concerns. MidgleyDJ 05:41, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Don't forget, under the proposed policy, many existing pages will not need to be renamed. What we are really proposing is a reflection of how fishes are usually referred to in the real world. Well known fish are usually called by one or more common names. Less well known fish, particularly those that are generally only known by those with a particular interest in fish are usually known by their scientific names. We cannot seriously expect to find a perfect solution, but this one mirrors actual practice and I think the concerns abouot people performing Google searches etc are weak at best, these people will continue to find the same Wiki pages using the same search parameters that they currently use. Nick Thorne 05:50, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I know, not all articles, but to make the question more specific, IF this proposal where to be passed would the 2 mentionings of leopard shark in the leopard shark page be changed to Triakis semifasciata and the top of the taxobox and the picture caption, i.e. all text with the exception for the first where we explain that Triakis semifasciata is really also called leopard shark sometimes. Stefan 07:07, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I believe that the correct process in a case like this is to mix up the use of the names in the article so as to both make it more interesting to the reader and to subtly educate readers about the fish in question. Thus on a page about Murray cod for example, within the text you might variously refer to the fish as Murray cod, cod, greenfish, goodoo, Maccullochella peelii peelii and M. peelii. There is a general principle of good writing in English to avoid making your writing boring by always using the same word for something (which makes it repetitive), instead it is common practice to use synonyms to break up the repetition. Particulalry, it is generally considered bad style to start consecutive paragraphs with the same word or words. By mixing up scientific names and common names (all the better if there is more than one) then you can make a more readable article. A side benefit is that you improve the chances of search engines finding your page since word frequency within the main body of a page is one of the factors considered in page ranking. Nick Thorne 11:27, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, I don't think randomly using different common names in the text body is a good idea; it's confusing, because it sounds like you're talking about different things, and the reader keeps having to stop and remember "oh, goodoo is the same as Murray cod, not some other species". It's a little like the AE/BE thing; once an article is written in a particular dialect, we want to be the same dialect throughout, for consistency and readability. Stan 11:46, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

So I guess the answer to my actual question is that when we change the ARTICLE name we also change in the text, so this means using scientific names in the TEXT of the article! OK, nevermind I looks like the consensus is to do that change. Stefan 14:25, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Stefan, no, you don't need to use a Latin name throughout. What I would suggest is that where a common name is already in place, the article simply reflect the original usage unless there is an overwhelming case not to do so. Essentially, you treat common names in the same was as you treat metric versus imperial measurements: use whatever is there in the original version unless there is a good reason not to. In the case of zebra shark the article should mention all its common names in the first paragraph, but since it was drafted originally with zebra shark as the name, respect that and stick with it. Examples of situations where you might want to change the common name to a Latin name throughout is where use of the existing common name creates confusion. Such cases will be rare, because the context of the article should make it completely clear which fish is being discussed. For example, while having Silver hatchetfish as a title is confusing because there is an Amazonian characin with this name and a deep sea fish with this name as well, but in the article itself, it should be obvious that discussions of ecology or aquarium care refer to one sort of fish or the other. Hence, situations where Latin names were used throughout the article should be very, very few. Neale Monks 15:06, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I looked at the list of members of this project (and removed two accounts that have been permanently blocked from editing Wikipedia). There are 31 members, of which 23 have made edits to Wikipedia within the last 30 days (22 of them have edited in the past week). This doesn't include WikiProject Sharks or WikiProject Aquarium Fishes (I'm tired and heading to bed). I'd also like to see more than six people chime in on this change. Oh, and if you're interested in how I got those numbers, I created a table at User:Neil916/WikiProject Fishes Members. Feel free to edit it if you wish to add any information (such as the other projects). Neil916 (Talk) 06:14, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi Neil, I hope you dont mind, but I've used your listing to place a message on everyone's talk page on the list with the exception of Terrapin & Melanochromis (and those people who've already posted their opinions in the survey). Both of the latter are aware of the debate and presumably are mulling over the issues :D! I agree it would be good to the opinion of others in this. Cheers, David. MidgleyDJ 07:08, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I have updated the list to include descendant wikiprojects and have also notified active contributors who are listed under those projects. Neil916 (Talk) 01:04, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Also one more question, IF this proposal where accepted I assume leopard shark would fall into the scientific name category, but what about zebra shark, I guess it is also to be changed? Correct? Ok sorry for my shark focus, but what about great white shark, it would go to Carcharodon carcharias since our aussy friends call it white pointer? No I do not like this proposal. Stefan 07:07, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Stefan I'd advocate keeping both great white shark and tiger shark where they are currently (I'd suggest white pointer redirect to great white shark). Both "tiger shark" and "great white shark" are common names that are certainly in common use in Australia and well known. I dont see any point in changing either. As for "zebra shark" I've not enough experience to say, but certainly based on the uniformity of the common name in Fishbase I'd suggest it also be kept in Zebra shark. As for leopard shark I'd recommend the creation of a disambiguation page which links to the three species with that common name (discussed above). MidgleyDJ 07:13, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

OK reading the text again, I see what you mean, but in my opinion the text is not very clear, the word 'single' can be missunderstood, I read the text as you can not use a common name if a species have more that one common name (i.e. not a single name), not sure if that is just me not understanding english good enough? Anyway if that is the case I would like to change A species lacks a single, universally recognised common name. to in the common section A species have a universally recognised common name. If we do those changes or at least that is what we mean I guess I can accept this proposal. (sorry for the confusion but I obviously did not read this proposal the same way as you did, sorry if my understanding was wrong. I just want to minimize the use of scientific names.) Stefan 14:25, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Fair point. What I meant by my draft was that there was at least one name that the majority of English-speakers would immediately recognise as belonging to a single species of fish, e.g., great white shark, guppy, rainbow trout, etc. These fish may have additional common names in certainly places, such as guppies are known as millionsfish in Trinidad and some other Carribean islands, but even there people will also recognise "guppy" as a name for the same fish. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 15:06, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, that sounds like something that I can accept, but as I said that is not how I see the proposal as written now. Stefan 15:14, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

We need to let the draft proposal sit for at least a week now. I often don't notice things like this until after a proposal has been up for some time, voting patterns suggest I'm not the only one like this. :-) Stan 11:46, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I second the requests for a rewrite concerning clarity around "single", acceptableness and lack of confusion. As written, the "policy" would support an absurdity like locating Bat ray to Bat eagle ray, because that's the "common name" in the UK; however, as the UK does not have these fish it's hard to see why it would be important what the UK common name is. The proliferation of rules tends to favor adherence to rules over common sense and usefulness. Demi ^T/_C 19:17, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Comment: Demi, the problem with bat ray isn't that it has another name in England, but that the name is used for two different species, Aetomylaeus maculatus and Myliobatis californica. For Myliobatis californica in particular, it is a member of the eagle ray family (Myliobatidae) and hence expanding the common name to bat eagle ray may be slightly more cumbersome than bat ray but bat eagle ray is at least unique to Myliobatis californica and thus avoids having to rename the article to Myliobatis californica.

Furthermore, item 3 on the 'use common name' section of the proposals says the following:A single common name is used by the relevant legal, conservation, fisheries or local institutions in the region where the species is endemic or of importance, even though other common names may exist. In other words, if bat ray is the name used for US fisheries and conservation, then the common name bat ray could be used despite the British having a different name for the beast (though this other name should be included in the introductory paragraph of the article. Item 2 on the 'use common name' section says: A single common name is used for a species, and that common name is demonstrably only used for other species so rarely or insignificantly that confusion is unlikely to occur. In this particular case, if the use of "bat ray" for Aetomylaeus maculatus can be shown to be very rare or localised (it appears to be used in this way only in India) then the argument can be made that "bat ray" is unlikely to cause confusion, and all that would be required would be a disambiguation at the top of the page saying that the article is about Myliobatis californica but that the name "bat ray" is occasionally also used for Aetomylaeus maculatus. Simple as that. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 19:59, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't know what to say...:/ --Mitternacht90 20:53, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the note on the discussion. I still have problems with the same example that Stefan quoted. Under this proposal we would move leopard shark to Triakis semifasciata and create a disambiguation page for leopard shark which would point to the leopard shark (Triakis semifasciata), the zebra shark, and the tiger shark (fishbase, you are funny!), which seems fairly pointless as the disambiguation link on the top of the current leopard shark serves this purpose quite adequately (now I've put it back and leaving out the strange tiger shark reference) without requiring either a disambiguation page or the move from the common name to a latin name. Now, it is obviously common sense not to create a disambiguation page where one is not necessary, but this proposal sets out a series of rules that would mean somebody could come along and create the disambig page, rename the leopard shark article and quote the proposal as justification. Also, some clarification on whether all or only one of the criteria have to be met in order to use the common name would be useful. If all criteria have to be met then great white shark would have to be renamed (as more than one common name is in use and hence it fails criteria 2 and 3). At the moment the proposal seems to be intending to propose the use of common sense while actually being a set a of rules to allow you to override it. I think it is close to being right without quite hitting the spot. Yomangani ^talk 01:32, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Yomangani, a few comments. Firstly, at the top of the article leopard shark any and all species also known by that name should be disambiguated. I had made this correction, adding tiger shark alongside zebra shark. Simply because one editor uses a common names for a certain species doesn't invalidate any of the other common names. Such common names should be listed for the benefit of all readers. I cannot make this clear enough: there are no "official" common names for fish species. Triakis semifasciata Galeocerdo cuvier, and Stegostoma fasciatum are all leopard sharks, pure and simple. No one species has a "better" claim to the name that the others. Really, there should be a simple disambiguation page for leopard shark listing the three different species, preferably outlining their distribution so that readers can quickly decide if they want the Indo-West Pacific benthic species, the East Pacific benthic species, or the pan-tropical pelagic species. The more I am learning about the use of "leopard shark", the less happy with the existing article I am. Editors are writing that the "leopard shark can be confused with the zebra shark" for example. No, it can't. They live in totally different hemispheres, so you aren't going to see them next to each other. You may use the name differently to someone else, but that's not confusion or error, that's a linguistic problem (and proof of why Latin names are better).

OK, not the great white shark question. No, it wouldn't need to be renamed to its Latin name. It satsifies items 1 and 3 in the 'use common names' section; i.e., (1) no other shark is known as the "great white shark", and (3) the name "great white shark" is in widespread use in terms of science, law, and conservation, and though it has other common names, none of these are widely used. The "rules" that have been drafted to actually provide cases for most common names to remain the titles of articles. The use Latin name rules are really there to catch articles where different editors use different common names and where no consensus can be demonstrated that any of those common names is sufficiently widely used to make a universally recognised title for the article. Obvious examples are Mayan cichlid, a name note in wide use everywhere, and silver hatchetfish, a name that applies to two entirely different fish. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 10:20, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

The problem I had with the leopard shark article wasn't that other sharks were known by that name, but that Triakis semifasciata is known only by that common name, so it seems churlish to force it into the Latin name when we have a perfectly good common name and the ability to disambiguate in the appropriate pages. The creation of a disambiguation page here seems to me to be an argument for switching everything to a Latin naming schema. (as an aside: the "confusion" wasn't over physical identification, it was over the names listed on WP which is solved by the disambiguation link at the top of the page (but the new wording is better). Beside which, to say they can't be confused because they live in different hemispheres makes the assumption you are observing them in the wild). As for the use of leopard shark for the tiger shark I'm sure any mariners from the 18th century and both Bigelow and Schroeder will appreciate the disambiguation, although if anybody knows who now uses that as a common name I'd love to hear from them. If I was applying tests for the common name "tiger shark" as the title for Galeocerdo cuvier it would certainly pass without the "alternative" common name "leopard shark" causing too much trouble, wouldn't it?

For the great white example, it does indeed satisfy point 1 (although it could be said that the widespread use of white pointer means it fails point 3), but is it enough to met point 1? How many of the points need to be met? If it met point 3 but not point 1 should it use the Latin name? Must it meet either point 1 and 3 or point 2 or point 4? That is the clarification I'm looking for (point 3 is redundant to point 1 as far as I can see, as it merely makes a more specific case for point 1)

Further comments: What is the point of the second section? Surely the Latin name should be used in all cases where the criteria for using the common name are not met. If it is there to clarify the application of the rules from the first section, I'd suggest something is done about point 5 in this section, as either it is redundant to point 4, or point 5 relies on the editor discovering a threshold for the use of the common name (is it of no interest to the general public? How do we tell?). The disambiguation advice which follow the rules is also confusing: can I use this to bypass some of the criteria in the first section? If I write an opening paragraph listing all the other species that this fish might be confused with, can I use the most widely used common name as the title and avoid having a disambiguation page?

Don't think I'm opposing: to some extent I'm playing devil's advocate, I just don't want to see a proposal pass that ends up tying us in knots over the difficult cases (which is after all what the proposal aims to deal with). Yomangani ^talk 12:16, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Firstly, no, you only have to demonstrate 1 of the 4 reasons to use a Latin name. Hence, great white shark would be fine, because it has a name that isn't likely to be confused with any other fish. As I've mentioned earlier, by default a common name can be used *until* such time as another editor can clearly show that that common name is ambigious, for example is applied to another species with sufficient regularity (the silver hatchetfish situation; or that particular fish is commonly known by another name in other parts of the world (the plec and pleco situation).

As for tiger shark, that name is fine for Galeocerdo cuvier. As given in point 3, you can use a common name if similar names are distinguished somehow. In this case, the fish with "tiger shark" in their name are tiger shark, sand tiger shark, bigeye sand tiger shark, etc.

I propose that articles should mention all the common names early on, but otherwise stick with a single common name throughout the rest, respecting the first editor's choice of common name unless there is clearly a case not to (e.g., the original version used the wrong common name or something very obscure). But switching from the original common name to another should be discussed on a case-by-case basis on the article's Talk Page.

Yes, the second set of criteria about is largely redundant, but it is there to demonstrate situations where Latin names are preferable.

Does that help? Neale Neale Monks 12:57, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I appreciate the explanation and like the new wording better, but I still don't see a case where point 3 isn't covered by the wording of point 1 (the quoted example of Atlantic salmon doesn't help much as it lists no other common names that are in general use but not used by fisheries, legal or conservation bodies). I'm not saying it couldn't arise, but do we have an article where this is the case and it is explained in the article, so it can serve as a useful example? Yomangani ^talk 13:56, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm thinking particularly of species where a fish may have multiple names related to habitat or stage of its life cycle. So Atlantic salmon will simply be salmon in English fishmongers, or parr, smolt, grilse, or kerr at certain times, or sea salmon, landlocked salmon, or spring salmon depending on where it was caught. But for purposes of conservation and fisheries science, these are all Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar, as opposed to any of these other names. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 14:28, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Discussion (family & genus articles)

Responding the query re: family and genus articles. How many families have common names that are in common use? This is something that's difficult for me to answer. My preference is to use scientific names and redirect all common names to these names. It seems odd to name a "genus article" with somthing other than the "genus name" to me. Thoughts? MidgleyDJ 00:58, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I'd probably concur. Even with "obvious" examples where the genus might be moved to a common name, like Cyprinus to carp or Salmo to salmon, there are still multiple other genera that are called by those common names. This is particularly true when comparing regional forms of English. "Gudgeon" for example refers to a cyprinid genus Gobio in England but various (sleeper) goby genera in Australia. Similarly, a "gar" in England is a marine fish, but a freshwater fish in the Americas. With families it is more tricky. Some families do have good, reliable common names, such as cichlids (Cichlidae), porgies (Sparidae), marine angelfish (Pomacanthidae), loaches (Cobitidae), etc. There's also less chance of confusion in most instances. I'd be tempted to give common names the benefit of the doubt in such cases, and use redirects from their Latin names unless it transpires that doing otherwise simply isn't working. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 08:17, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, then for Salmon and Carp the naming standard would say that a latin name would be used and there seams to be different pages for the latin name and the common name anyway so that issues is correct no matter what, but for a few more examples Sphyrna and Alopiidae both redirects the way I would prefere and that would be according to the naming standard above, also not sure if you have same name for genus and subgenus (in latin) what that means :-), I checked a few more esox main page and Muraenidae redirect and so on, I'm pretty sure that in the shark articles we have as standard to use the common name when one exists, otherwise use latin, but for the rest of the fishes there does not seam to have much of a standard. I say use same rules for at least genus and family. Stefan 14:48, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I have no problem with the Alopiidae article, since (as far as I know) all thresher sharks are Alopiidae, and all Alopiidae are thresher sharks. I have more of a problem with Sphyrna being identical with hammerhead shark. For one thing, the present article seems to be trying to force Sphyrna, Sphyrnidae, and hammerhead shark to all equal the same thing. They quite obviously don't. While all Sphyrna are hammerheads, not all hammerheads are Sphyrna, some are Eusphyra. Furthermore, not all Sphyrnidae are hammerheads either, some are bonnethead sharks with a totally different head morphology. So what you have is an article lumping different taxa together simply to make writing the article easier. It may do that, but it also creates confusion about what is mean by the terms Sphyrna, Sphyrnidae, and hammerhead shark. Neale Monks 15:07, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry but you lost me there in all that latin, checked britannica [18] and it seams that you are correct, still even though this shows that I do not know my latin names, I still say that the naming standard would solve this issue, i.e. since there are hammerheads outside Sphyrna, we can not use hammer head for sphyrna, but for Alopiidae we can use thresher sharks? Stefan 15:30, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Stefan, no need to apologise. The problem is that taxonomy is complicated and if there really was a simple way to handle it, scientists would be using it. There isn't. All names are subjective and arguable. Latin names happen to be the least worst way to name things, that's all. Anyway, to answer your question, I'd personally keep Thresher shark and have Alopiidae redirect to it. No problems there because they describe exatcly the same group of sharks. But, I'd create three articles:

One article for Sphyrna (about the genus, maybe just a list of species and how it is characterised)
One article for Sphrynidae, again, very simple, a list of genera plus some comments of the diversity of their odd head shapes, contrasting hammerheads with bonnetheads
One article on hammerhead sharks about Sphyrhna and Eusphyrna together but biology rather than taxonomy, about why they have odd heads and what they use them for.

Provided all thre articles interconnected, there really isn't a problem. See for example what we have tried to do with Tilapia, a nightmare because the common name is given to at least three genera, of which one is Tilapia!!! Neale Monks 16:15, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

MidgleyDJ, why is it any more strange to name a genus with a common name, than a species, if they have a common name then use it for both species, genus and family??? Stefan 14:52, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I think the point is that at species equal real-word things. You can point at Felis catus or Canis familiaris. Genera and families are taxonomic groups with zero meaning in reality. You can't point at "a" Felidae or Canidae. You may recognised those groups in the same way you recognise other groups like "vegetables" or "languages" but that's about all. Neale Monks 15:07, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

That's what I meant, thanks for explaining my hastily written comment Neale. Apologies for creating the confusion. I agree with the idea that Neale's raised. (and also the examples he points too). The naming proposal attempts to capture a common sense idea that is: If the common name is in "common use" use it, if not, dont. Using it for genera and families extends this basic idea with the a second question ie: Do all things in that genera or family fit the common name description? MidgleyDJ 20:04, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I created a lot of the family articles once upon a time, and basically used the common names from Nelson, which by an amazing coincidence is what FishBase uses too. :-) Didn't try to guess whether some of the dubious-sounding ones were really that common, Nelson being more expert than myself and all. Given that some common names for families are well-recognized, it seems unduly pedantic to force all into sci names. By contrast, I think genera should have a pretty high bar for common name, since so many have been re-circumscribed in recent years and no longer correspond with any particular common name. Stan 14:57, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree Stan, but I suggest that what you are saying is in fact the same thing as is proposed for species. The only thing I feel strongly about family articles is that there needs to be a latin name redirect for all articles, IOW if there is a recogniseable common name then it fine to name the article that way, but make sure that there is a latin name redirect. When we have the situation where a common name is used for fish from multiple families, a simple article for that name with a list of the included groups and links to their respective articles would seem appropriate. I believe that what is proposed is a common sense approach and so long as editors approach it in good faith we should not have too much trouble. Of course we need to keep in mind that fish naming is a mess anyway and we are never going to overcome that, whatever our intentions. Nick Thorne 02:33, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Deep sea frill shark

if it is not too much trouble, could someone find the binomial authority for the deep sea frill shark? i'd like to at least finish the info in the taxbox before i start to wrie in depth. -thank you Ryan shell 02:00, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

this could help with your article :-) --Melanochromis 02:31, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

The Fish Quiz

I'm happy to announce that the Fish Portal has added a new feature - The Fish Quiz!! Come test your knowledge, interact with other fish editors, try to win the game and have your name honored in the Hall of Fame, and have a fun break from editing wikipedia. Cheers --Melanochromis 08:20, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Prairie fish?

Someone look into this Prairie fish article. I have no doubt that this fish is not supposed to be Neoceratodus forsteri, the Australian lungfish. However, the article is sourceless and gives a scientific name that I can't find. Since I don't know much about NA natives it's possible the "prairie fish" common name refers to a completely different fish. Therefore, I don't know if the article should be edited or purely deleted; I'm relatively sure it's the latter, but I'd like someone else's confirmation. MiltonT 19:41, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it's a fake fish. Somebody has too much free time! And it's pretty ironic that that article is more interesting to read than many real fish articles. --Melanochromis 23:30, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I summarily vaporized it. Stan 12:13, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

request for peer review

I've made substantial changes to Pelvicachromis pulcher and would appreciate a few people having a look over the article prior to submitting it for good article status. If anyone has time for a peer-review it'd be most appreciated. Cheers, David. MidgleyDJ 10:34, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Looks very good to me. I like the emphasis on biology (which is useful to everyone) rather than the aquarium husbandry (which isn't much use to anyone but aquarists). Cheers, Neale

Feature article review for: Aquarium

I know it's not technically part of this WikiProject but:

Aquarium has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.

MidgleyDJ 05:45, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Rasbora

Greetings, all! Just a heads up that I left a message at Talk:Rasbora concerning the structure of the article titles and would appreciate any thoughts an input before I took any action since I'm not familiar with naming conventions your project might use. In my search for guidelines on article naming, I noticed the following sentence fragment on the project's main page:

Articles on taxa above the generic level should be titled with the Latin form of the name and not the anglicization, e.g. Cyprinidae not cyprinid...

Even though this is written as an example, the article title is at cyprinid and not Cyprinidae. Should it be moved? Cheers, --Rkitko ^(talk) 08:24, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Or... if I had only read several discussions above this one! I see you're in the process of revising the naming convention. For the record, I like what WP:BANKSIA has done. All articles at scientific names with common name redirects, which are then categorized into Category:Banksia taxa by common name and duplicated in a list, I believe. (Obvious exceptions excluded, of course, to adhere to Wikipedia's main naming convention.) Though I'm not a part of this project, there's my two cents worth. --Rkitko ^(talk) 08:35, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Fish diseases

This articles appears to be about aquarium fish diseases and treatment. I'd like to move it to an article with that name. I think the article fish disease should be about the immunology and parasitology of fishes in a broad biological context, though reference to aquaculture and aquarium care towards the end would not be out of place. Thoughts? Neale Monks 10:57, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Good idea Neale. The article you are proposing could simply link to Diseases of aquarium fish or perhaps Aquarium fish health? Cheers, David.MidgleyDJ 11:25, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Naming proposal adoption

I think most people have expressed their views on the new naming guidelines for articles on fish. Most people appear supportive of the proposal, and in my view the majority of concerns have been addressed. Should we move to incorporate the changes to WP:FISH now? MidgleyDJ 22:44, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Nick Thorne 00:39, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, consensus is for the change, despite my objections. Neil916 (Talk) 16:01, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Go for it. Stan 15:47, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Done. MidgleyDJ 22:08, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Not too fast with that renaming

I see the renaming of articles is already starting, with blackline penguinfish renamed as Thayeria boehlkei. But doesn't our new policy state that "Before renaming articles, discuss the reasons for doing so on the Talk page"? I'd really appreciate if the editors propose it first in the article talk page or this page. Why did we have to spend all the time and energy creating this new policy if it's gonna be ignored? --Melanochromis 01:14, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Melanochromis, the article itself was a direct copy from fishbase. If you'd like to see how I've changed it here's the details. To my mind this is a perfect example of why the guidelines were changed. It has multiple not-in-common-use common names ie: blackline penguinfish, blackline Thayeria, hockey-stick tetra, penguin fish and penguin tetra. I personally have never seen it as the blackline penguinfish - it's always sold as the blackline tetra or hockey-stick tetra in Australia. If you have a problem with the renaming of this article - perhaps we should discuss it on the articles talk page. I assumed, perhaps wrongly, that this was one of those cases were the common name was not appropriate. It's my view that the discussion re: naming guidelines has had plenty of time to people to mull it over, and I'll be honest: I'd rather spend my time constructively improving articles. Is it your concern that this change doesnt conform to the guidelines? MidgleyDJ 01:27, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Apologies to anyone concerned about this change: I've placed a discussion point on the Talk:Thayeria_boehlkei. If you'd like to discuss it there please do so. I'll make sure I do this prior to title changes in the future. MidgleyDJ 01:32, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Sorry if my post sounded harsh. I was looking at my watchlist and all the sudden Thayeria boehlkei showed up which I did not remember adding to my watchlist (well, there're like 800 fish articles in my watchlist. I like to play memory games and such but 800 Latin names to remember isn't that fun.). --Melanochromis 01:39, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Melanochromis, no apology needed. I've just re-read my post and it was a little hastily written too :). I know we are both in this for the right reasons! MidgleyDJ 07:36, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I also turned Parrot cichlid from a redirect into a disambiguation page. Is there concerns about this also? MidgleyDJ 01:40, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

In the fishkeeping trade -- that is collection and retail -- the penguinfish can be either Thayeria boehlkei or Thayeria oblique. No attempt seems to be made to separate them, and unless aquarists have a sharp eye for detail, they're easily mixed up. Baensch pages 312-313 explains the differences quite nicely, but I'd be tepted to keep a simple penguinfish article that disambiguates to the two species and perhaps also explains how to tell them apart. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 09:41, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Parrot cichlids - what to call articles?

I'm planning to create some articles for the other two parrot cichlids ie: Hoplarchus psittacus & Hypsophrys nicaraguensis

Fishbase lists the common name of Hypsophrys nicaraguensis as Moga (also Nicaraguense, Butterfly cichlid, Nicaragua cichlid) all things I've never heard of. Other common names for the species include "parrot cichlid" "macaw cichlid" "Spilotum". According to fishbase Hoplarchus psittacus has no common name - despite Baensch (vol II) using Parrot cichlid.

In my view the new guidelines suggest to use latin names. Parrot cichlid is now a redirect (as above). Thoughts? MidgleyDJ 01:50, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

This seems to me to be a clear cut case where the common name must be a disambiguation page, leading to articles entitled Hoplarchus psittacus, Hypsophrys nicaraguensis, and Parrot cichlid (hybrid). Baensch sometimes "creates" common names by translating either the Latin or colloquial German names into English, and almost certainly that's how Hoplarchus psittacus became parrot cichlids (from the Latin name in this case). In the UK trade at least, parrot cichlids are normally the hybrids. As and when we get around to it, at least two cichlids are called chocolate cichlids, so that would be another case for a disambiguation leading to Latin name articles. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 09:11, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Neale. Parrot cichlid (for Hoplarchus psittacus) seems reasonably widespread in the US - is the sole source for this Baensch? All cichlid hobbyists in Australia know Hypsophrys nicaraguensis as the parrot cichlid (perhaps it's a corruption of their other common name the Macaw cichlid?), H. psittacus is very uncommon in Australia so there's little confusion. I'll create the articles you've suggested. MidgleyDJ 09:30, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Parrot cichlid articles done. MidgleyDJ 10:28, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Parrot cichlid now leads to Hoplarchus psittacus, Hypsophrys nicaraguensis and blood parrot cichlid. Cheers, David. MidgleyDJ 10:32, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

More info

We need more general info on practically every animal article I have seen, but most of all in fish. Information on things such as diet, size, weight and the like tend to be more important than what the fish is theorized to be related to. Also I think it would be nice to have some of the more exotic and/or deepsea fish articles have more pictures and info. I know that deep sea fish pictures are hard to take, as deep sea fish tend to live deep down in the sea, but that is what would be nice. Thank you all! Zantaggerung 03:11, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, more info would be good. On picture, many deep-sea fishes are "reconstructed" from pieces, having exploded or come apart on the way up, so for many the only depiction is going to be a drawing. Stan 21:19, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

References in public domain

The following books will be of interest

Among many other gems now available in public domain on www.archive.org. Some of the images have been extracted and have been uploaded by me [19]. Its tiring, and need more hands and more importantly a knowledge of fish. Cheers. Shyamal 13:57, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

And many more Fish related books Shyamal 14:30, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for this, the images may be useful. I did a glance and saw a diagram of Clariidae's labyrinth organ, which would be a useful picture, among other images. MiltonT 16:49, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Carp

I know nothing about editing on wiki, but I am something of an expert on the genus Hypophthalmichthys and I have it on my list of things to do to address the bighead carp and silver carp pages on wikipedia. I started to do that a little bit and realized that I couldn't figure out how to do it. I click on edit and I end up on a page that gives a lot of computer code in boxes. It looks like the only thing I can get to is the references section.

Anyway, the picture of the bighead carp is not a bighead carp. It is a silver carp. The picture on that page was created by a fellow USGS employee for our book on Hypophthalmichthys, now in galleys. I don't mind the picture being used - it is in the public domain - but if you go to the link you can see that whoever selected that picture selected the wrong one. How do I change the picture? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Carptracker (talk • contribs)

Wyoming Game Fish

Should Wyoming Game Fish have its own article? I turned it into a redirect to Game fish but an anon editor feels differently so I thought I'd bring it to this project for discussion. MidgleyDJ 19:30, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I created the article and think it has information that merits an article. However, I don't think that only Wyoming should have its own article. Since each state has its own regulations, etc., I think there would be merit in creating one for each state. And if enough information can be gathered, pages for nations other than the U.S. certainly deserve mention, as well. If the articles for each state are created, a list by state could be added to the Game fish article for navigation. If it's decided that there shouldn't be a separate page for each state and/or country, then Wyoming Game Fish should be deleted, rather than redirected.Ninjatacoshell 21:53, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps merge the material into Wyoming and Game fish I personally dont think there is enough information to warrant the inclusion of this article in WP. MidgleyDJ 22:09, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Ironically Wyoming Game Fish is a better developed article than Game fish. Redirecting this to game fish without transferring its content is practically deletion of an article. If it is to merge with another article, then please find a way to save the content. Also, you might want to consider renaming the article to Fishing in Wyoming as proposed earlier by User:Celithemis. --Melanochromis 22:18, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Any objections? Ninjatacoshell 22:00, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

"Fishing in Wyoming" seems like the right kind of umbrella. Each U.S. state has a unique subculture and government agency governing fishing, most have at least one multi-hundred page book on the subject that would be the main authority for an article. Stan 18:51, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Moved. Ninjatacoshell 22:00, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Naming queries

Family level names

Should Cichlid and Cyprinid redirect to their latin counterparts? Characin, for example, does already ie: Characidae. I've no strong feelings on this myself - but I'm wondering whether there's a consistent usage at the family level? MidgleyDJ 23:42, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

No. Cichlids are always called cichlids as far as I know, and the same with cyprinids. The cases where the formal family names would be preferable would be where the same colloquial name is used for more than one family, e.g. hatchetfishes (Sternoptychidae versus Gasteropelecidae), soles (Achiridae versus Soleidae), etc. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 08:36, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Three spot gourami

We are currently discussing what to do with the name of this article at Talk:Three spot gourami. Feel free to join in! MidgleyDJ 21:22, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Three-bearded rockling

I have just created the page Three-bearded rockling and I was wondering if anyone would be kind enough to check it out or improve it as I am unsure as to the standard conventions for fish articles. Thanks. Bass fishing physicist 23:27, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Lost photo of Paratilapia polleni

I had a found a photo of Paratilapia polleni on Wikipedia or the Commons and was going to add it to the cichlid article. I have, however, lost it and cant find it now. If anyone could point me to it I'd be most appreciative.

Cheers, David. MidgleyDJ 07:45, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Coreoleuciscus splendidus

Hi all. This is my first time writing an article about a fish, so I wanted to ask more knowledgeable editors --- is FishBase's list of synonyms considered authoritative? I'm particularly confused by [20], which would mean that the fish in question is not unique to Korea, contrary to widespread belief.

Incidentally, is the article at the right name? Wasn't sure whether to use the scientific name or not. "Korean splendid dace" is the "English name", but I don't know if it really qualifies as the common name among English speakers; it appears to be Latin translationese made up by Korean academic authors, and outside of English abstracts of Korean journal submissions, the only place I see it used is in some genomics database. The indigeneous name Shiri/Swiri isn't used in English either except in connection with discussion about the Korean movie of the same name (in which the fish plays a major role). Thanks, cab 07:37, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Cab - Fishbase is just a collection of information and references, sadly it's not an authoritative source in and of it's own right. I think the scientific name is probably the best name for the article (as the fishes common names in english arent in "common use" or widespread. Do you have a picture of the species by any chance? MidgleyDJ 08:20, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

North American Fresh Water Fishes Project

I recently proposed a Wikiprojet: north american fresh water fishes. if any one would be interested in joining, please sign your name Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals. thanks, Ryan shell 21:51, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Syngnathiformes

Unless anyone can reasonably support otherwise, I propose merging Syngnathiformes into Gasterosteiformes. References I have to validate this include Helfman, et al. "Diversity of Fishes", Nelson "Fishes of the World", ITIS, and at least one scientific paper [21] that discuss their phylogeny. Helfman himself left a comment on the talk page of Actinopterygii. These sources move the fishes previously classified in Syngnathiformes into Gasterosteiformes. FishBase in this case does not seem to be the source to go by, especially since it cites both the Helfman and Nelson texts on the Syngnathiformes page yet continues to treat it at as a separate order.

However, this would require a rather big change. Family level pages would have to be re-categorized into Gasterosteiformes, and all Syngnathiform pages would have to have their taxoboxes fixed. Although this is a change that I'm supporting, I would rather not start doing all that work if people disagree with this change. MiltonT 16:48, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm in two minds about this. I haven't read these papers, but have been aware for some time that the seahorse (Syngnathiformes) and stickleback (Gasterosteiformes) groups were very closely related. Rather than merging the two groups, I'd suggest renaming the Syngnathiformes to Syngnathoidei and adjusting taxo boxes accordingly. Provided the seahorse group is a clade, then treating them as a separate entity within Wikipedia makes practical sense. The Gasterosteiformes article could then be changed to incude discussions of both groups and the phylogentic analyses, and the original, stickleback-centric info for Gasterosteiformes could be moved to Gasterostoidei or whatever. Simply conflating the two articles would seem, to me, to be muddying the waters even if technically more accurate. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 17:02, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

This is another possible route, but it is not very different from my own in the end. All Syngnathiform and Gasterosteiform articles would still have to be edited to reflect this taxonomy in their taxoboxes and their categories. It would seem to make not much of a difference except in the "main" Gasterosteiformes article. Hmmm... MiltonT 02:30, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Query about native fish to Michigan

Can someone point me in the direction of a list of fish species native to Michigan? I need it for a school project. Thanks Corvus coronoides Contributions_{MGo Blue} 18:25, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

There appears to be a list here at the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 19:46, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

WP:TOL template

I'm working on a proposal to subsume all the WP:TOL project banners into a single one. Please see Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life/Template union proposal and its talk page. Circeus 19:22, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Categorising redirects

Hi there. I noticed the discussion Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Fishes#Rasbora up above, and thought people here might be interested in the discussions at Wikipedia_talk:Categorizing redirects. From what I know of fish taxonomy and common names, trying to bring order to the bewildering array of common names might be a fruitless task, but just wanted to let you know about that discussion anyway. Carcharoth 12:01, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

internal inconsistency at Crucian carp

specifically, it says:

Many sources will claim that crucian carp are the wild version of the goldfish (Carassius auratus auratus). The wild form of the goldfish is however Carassius auratus gibelio, or rather Carassius gibelio with auratus as the subspecies.^{[citation needed]} While they are certainly closely related, they are different species which can be indentified by the following characteristics:

C. auratus has a more pointed snout while the snout of a crucian carp is well rounded.
The wild form of the Goldfish C. auratus gibelio or C. gibelio often has a grey/greenish color, while crucian carps are always golden bronze.
Juvenile crucian carp (and tench) have a black spot on the base of the tail which disappears with age. In C. auratus this tail spot is never present.
C. auratus have less then 31 scales along the lateral line while crucian carp have 33 scales or more.

Despite what the article says, if the goldfish is Carassius auratus gibelio and the Crucian carp is Carassius auratus auratus, they really are the same species, just different subspecies. (I added the {{fact}} in there...) Someone who knows more about this please clarify what's going on? Here, on my talk page or in the article? Please? Thanks, Tom e r ^talk 21:00, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Ad

Miranda 11:37, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Interesting idea. But "Love oceanography? Enjoy marine life?" sounds more like an ad for WikiProject Marine life. --Melanochromis 02:58, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I like it! May I use it on my user page? I'll be sure to credit you. FireFly5 05:45, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, sure. Ads can be used in userspace. And, dead or alive, fishes exists in marine life, too! :-D Miranda 08:07, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Amphiprion species identification

The following discussion was brought up due to a question posted on Portal:Fish/Quiz. I thought it appropriate to move this over here to open it up for discussion in the proper forum. Any input would be appreciated. --Jnpet 07:53, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Wow! I think this particular question has cleared up a mystery for me. I encountered this Amphiprion on a dive off Sulawesi Indonesia back in October and for the longest time I have been unable to identify it. First I thought it could have been a Mauritian Anemonefish, but the middle white band just seemed too wide and what would a Mauritian be doing in Indonesia? Now I see it could actually be a black perc! It was certainly behaving as friendly as the orange variety. I'm adding picture here and sorry to hi-jack the quiz, but I'd appreciate if I could get some concurrence. You think this could be a Black perc? --Jnpet 10:39, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't really look like one. The colour on the snout is too bright, the pectoral fins shouldn't be yellow, and the shape is a little off. Besides, black percs are only found in the reefs around Darwin Australia. I doubt one would be found in Indonesia. It looks like an amphiprion polymnus to me. According to this site: http://www.nhm.ku.edu/inverts/ebooks/ch2.html#polym saddleback anemonefish that inhabit heteractis crispa anemones are usually entirely black with a few yellow markings... FireFly5 17:47, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Could also be amphiprion sebae? The black melanistic variety of course.

FireFly5 18:01, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

From images I've seen of amphiprion polymnus, they lack the white band at the base of their tail as in the specimen on this picture. Can they vary that much? As for amphiprion sebae like the Mauritian, they're in the Indian Ocean, whereas this specimen was encountered in the Western Pacific off the coast of Sulawesi. Darwin would be closer...--Jnpet 07:53, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't know. It may well be amphiprion ocellaris, but the yellow pectoral fins really point to something else. So does the white tipping of the dorsal and caudal fins. For people not previously involved in this discussion, I'll repost the pics of my black false perc...

FireFly5 17:21, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm starting to think this could indeed be a saddleback, from my search it appears this species have a lot of melanistic variety. I also found that there is a wiki article on this species, but I think the section on appearance would need to be updated. And as there is currently no image, if we all agree this image is indeed a saddleback, we can pop this one into the taxobox. Thoughts? --Jnpet 08:43, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I wish I could find a good picture of a black saddleback anemonefish for comparison. The best I could find is this: http://www.aquamarinediving.com/images/DFugitt_ClarkFishCleaner.jpg. In the end, it's really up to you: you saw the fish in person. If we say it's a saddleback and it turns out not to be, oh well. It looks sufficiently like one that no one is going to blame us for the mistake. We both spent a lot of time trying to figure this out, (you much more than me, admittedly). FireFly5 19:38, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your help FireFly5! I have updated the appearance section in the Saddleback clownfish article and added the image as well. Cheers! --Jnpet 03:46, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Featured article candidates/Ocean sunfish

Just want to let everyone know that ocean sunfish is now a candidate for featured article. Feel free to come support, oppose, or make comments at the nomination page here. --Melanochromis 03:28, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Ocean sunfish is now a featured article. Congratulations to all the editors involved with the process. --Melanochromis 18:10, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

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