Talk:Effects of climate change on livestock

Shorter paragraphs please

Can we please break some of the long paragraphs into two? It makes for difficult reading when the paragraphs are so long. In general, the rule of thumb is 4-6 lines of text per paragraph. EMsmile (talk) 22:04, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Fair enough. I see you went ahead and broke it up already, and I have no objections to it. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 13:36, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Images

For now, my main concern about the article is finding more relevant images to illustrate it with. Even the current 9 images are not enough for the size it has. Images for pig and poultry sections should be obvious (even if finding ones with the right license may not be), but I'm not sure about what further images to fit for heat stress. Any ideas? InformationToKnowledge (talk) 20:00, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

That image issue really is difficult. I grapple with it all the time. Even for something so simple such as heat stress in humans (for the heat illness article), I didn't find much on Wikimedia Commons at all. I haven't yet tried the images that were advertised on the WikiProject CC page (Climate Visuals). EMsmile (talk) 09:58, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

I think I would prefer a different image in the lead though, rather than this text-heavy image (which is really no image at all). How about a 2 x 2 image collage like we have at sustainable energy? EMsmile (talk) 10:01, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Also, what do you regard as the benefit of having left-aligned images? I am just curious. I tend to always have them right-aligned and not think any further about it. EMsmile (talk) 10:01, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

To me, it's similar logic to that behind of avoiding long paragraphs. Our brains constantly scan for patterns, for things that look similar, and when they do, they deprioritize. Much like how we begin to skip over long paragraphs (or paragraphs with poor punctuation, etc.), I suspect we start paying less attention when all the images are in the same, expected position, and alternating is a little subconcious trigger helping to keep readers engaged.

Granted, this is a guess and I have no idea if there has been proper research into the subject. (Wouldn't be surprised if there was, though.) Either way, this is my logic.

I'll have to think more about composing a collage and using more Climate Visuals (a couple of article photos were already taken from there) later on. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 13:46, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

All right, while Climate Visuals didn't seem to have anything with the right license, I think I found two appropriate images from Wikimedia Commons, and a closer look at the papers I have already cited turned up some immediately understandable diagrams. Altogether, that's six more images, and I think that should be enough for now. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 15:52, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for those images. I've moved one because I think it's better to have just one image in the lead. I still feel that the lead image should be more visual, not text based (but also not a world map), i.e. a 2 x 2 photo collage showing actual animals. But I don't have time at the moment, so I am just putting this here as a reminder for later maybe. EMsmile (talk) 08:46, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

@EMsmile: I didn't look at this closely at first, but now I think I would strongly disagree with these points.

Most importantly, I do not understand your objection to the map. It is far more visual than the current image (and makes for a far better preview when someone hovers over the internal link) and it immediately shows the global stakes of the issue. I think the other image complements it well, which is why I placed them one after the other. I do not think there's a notable difference between that, and placing a collage, as you have advocated. I have also went and checked MOS:IMAGELEAD, and while it doesn't explicitly mention multiple images in the lead, it doesn't explicitly prohibit it either. (And it certainly does not say anything to discourage map images!)

Further, the fundamental issue with "a 2 x 2 photo collage showing actual animals" is that it would be just that: a collage of domestic animals. It would be far better suited for the livestock page itself (which, I should note, currently does have two images right after the other in the lead), as it wouldn't explicitly show the effects of climate change. A collage of animals that are diseased or suffering heatstroke might work, but I don't think it's worth the brush with MOS:SHOCKVALUE: not when perfectly good scientific graphics are available. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 10:42, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Map of countries considered most and least vulnerable to adverse impacts of climate change on their grazing livestock.

Fair enough, I take your points. They are well argued. I think most of the WP:FA articles have only one image in the lead (and an infobox with multiple images or an image collage counts as "one image" for me). You can compare with some of those FA articles. The map (copied on the right) is in my opinion sub-optimal because it looks like all the other maps that show environmental or income, health, education etc. indicators: It's always the countries in the Global South that light up in red (i.e. bad). Compare with the maps at developing countries... From that perspective, it does not give a unique visual clue to the reader that they have arrived at the right page.

Having said all that, I won't stand in your way if you want to change the lead image back to how you had it. You have done far more work than me on this article, so I am happy for you to take the executive decisions on this. :-) EMsmile (talk) 11:52, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Done!

I see your argument about the map, but since we currently appear to lack open-access studies with good graphics describing global impacts on livestock (the paper on Jamaican livestock has a lot of good graphics, but I wouldn't want to use something so regional as the lead image for a global-scale article), it still seems like our best available option by far. It would also make the excerpts of this article appear a lot better than they do right now. And keeping the second image should help to clarify that this is indeed the right map. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 14:38, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

References

this article is not about GHG emissions from livestock

The lead mentions GHG emissions from livestock too prominently (already in the first sentence!) even though this is clearly not the focus of this article. I would remove the mention from the first sentence but perhaps add a mention in the last sentence of the lead with a link to the relevant article: greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. To be sure that this aspect is not forgotten about, it could also be mentioned in the main text, as the last section. Similar to how it's done here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_climate_change_on_agriculture#Contributions_of_agriculture_to_climate_change EMsmile (talk) 20:08, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Well, this is all true. Yet, the relationship between livestock rearing and GHG emissions is just so strong relative to their role in the global food security, that I struggle to see the lead work in any other way. Already, much of the online discourse only seems to consider livestock in our climate future purely as a "Should I/we go vegan?/will others force me to go vegan?" question, depending on the speaker's politics. This is why I think it's important to acknowledge the reasoning and the concerns behind these debates before describing how livestock are bound to suffer from the warming they did not choose to cause.

I even saw an example of this on our own pages recently: soon after this article was created, I chose to excerpt it on the most relevant livestock animal & animal product articles. Unfortunately, I forgot to watch those pages, and only recently found out that on the largest and likely most prominent one of those (Cattle, a page which ranks fourth on our popular articles list!), this addition was reverted a month ago for being too large (an arguable, yet fair point) and for supposedly ignoring greenhouse emissions - in spite of the article already possessing a fairly substantial section devoted to environmental impact!

I hope that this can be resolved through discussion, but in the meantime, it only reinforces why I chose to write the lead in this manner. If you have an idea for an alternate way in which to structure the lead, perhaps present it on this talk page first? InformationToKnowledge (talk) 13:54, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

As an aside: I am encouraged to note that this page is already starting to get translated to other languages! I know I shouldn't get too excited, since in a much better world, there would have been no reason for this page to exist in the first place. In the world we do live in, though, seeing the material we have painstakingly assembled becoming available in more (and hopefully more and more) languages is a wish come true. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 14:03, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

I've made some changes to the lead now (sorry, I didn't discuss them here first because they come to me as I edited; I didn't have a pre-arranged plan). Hope you like it. My rationale was that I wanted the lead to be less of a "story", like you had written it, but more of a "summary". Similar to the abstract of a journal paper. The lead is currently on the long side (562 words, 5 paragraphs). If it was up to me, I would shorten it a bit.

I've also added an excerpt about GHGE from livestock to the end of the article, and some statements about GHGE to the end of the lead. I think this makes the lead better as after all the article is called "effects of", so these effects should really be listed in the first and second paragraph of the lead.

Regarding the cattle article, it was a good idea of yours to include an excerpt there. I see you are now discussing there on the talk page how to go about it. I tend to only use shorter excerpts, at the most 4 paragraph long. I think longer than that then the excerpt takes up too much room. Often I only use the first paragraph even. Maybe see if they would agree with having a 1-paragraph excerpt on the effects of climate change on livestock? I'll put that page on my watchlist now. I have also got beef on my watchlist - probably similar issues there.

Regarding translations, I wish they were all translated simultaneously with a good automated translation tool. The way it currently works is this: article A gets translated to language X today, then article A gets improved tomorrow but the translated article in language X will stay on as the un-improved version forever... EMsmile (talk) 22:19, 6 October 2023 (UTC)