Naming policy

[Jaap Winius]

Hi All,

Are there any plans yet for a discussion on naming policy? I suppose you're aware of Wikipedia's naming policy regarding titles for articles on biological organisms: they prefer the "most popular" common name available to take precedence over the scientific name for the sake of presentation. I've always disagreed with this, and for a number of good reasons. Here's a few I can think of:

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

I can think of a few more, some of which would probably be more relevant at Wikipedia, but the point I want to make is that we have a chance to set things right this time around. Anybody else feel the same? In case you don't agree, take a look at the article called "Bitis gabonica" (gaboon viper) at Wikipedia or at Citizendium. The common names are listed right at the top of the article, so even those not familiar with the scientific name can see immediately what the various common names are. And, despite being different, this article has "GA" status at Wikipedia, so there must be something good to say for this approach.

Cheers,

Jaap Winius

[Zachary Pruckowski]

Two issues - that's a crapload and a half of articles to move, and what will "non-scientists" do when they can't easily find an article.  If a non-scientists is looking for something, they're looking for "West European Sand Frog"*, not "Sandfrogis Europa".  If they can't easily find "West European Sand Frog", then they're gonna go somewhere else.

* = note that there is no such thing as a West European Sand Frog.  This is deliberate.  That allows us to avoid the differences inherent in any specific case.

[Jaap Winius]

Yes, that's a lot of articles to move, so the sooner we start the better. But, I'm not suggesting that we move articles right away just for the sake of renaming them -- only when we rewrite them. That way, it would be a gradual process. Plus, many of them already have scientific name titles anyway (Wikipedia has many rebels in the biology department).

In addition, non-scientists should have no problem finding the right articles, since there would be redirects for as many common names as possible. This is in contrast to Wikipedia, where they often stop after settling on the common name for the title. I also create redirects for the entire synonymy. Oh, and let's not forget disambiguation pages for common names (and even scientific names) that apply to different species.

As an author, I have no problem making a clean break with this particular collection of Wikipedia articles, since really over 95% of their stuff is crap! (probably more). Some of those articles may look okay, but if they don't cite their references, why should anyone trust them? How can they be of any (research) value if you don't know where the information comes from?

[Pedro S]

I find Jaap's suggestion quite sensible. The only problem I find is the need to manually change the disambiguation links: the WP template {{otheruses}} is present in many of those artcles, and when one renames "Lion" to "Panthera leo", the disambiguation message becomes "For other uses, see Panthera leo (disambiguation)"   
It is indeed a whole lot of work, but I think that (besides all the good reasons listed by Jaap)  it would be a nice way to show the "cultural differences" between CZ and WP.

PS: I would support moving the articles as soon as possible, provided the original WP has not changed meaningfully since September: I guess that an article only stops changing for that long only when it is quite reasonable (and so we should not be missing much by making it Live) or when it is not often read in WP.

[Derek Harkness]

I think the use of the scientific name would render category based browsing almost usesless to the non specialist. While the Go, search and wikilinks should be unaffected (given that the proper redirects and disambiguation are in place) the category lists would be filled with only the scientific names, no common names. So someone browsing the categories would find it confusing and difficult to find the article they are interested in.

Also, I can see a slippery slope, if articles are named by the scientific name, then why not use the scientific names in the text. Why stop at animals, likes put anatomy and surgical procedures into the scientific form too. This would certainly make the more accurate and avoid disambiguation. But then the legal articles will start using Latin and legalese. Oh well, why not just write the whole thing in Latin and be done with it.

You may think I exaggerate a little - but I don't! If you don't use the common name in the page names, why use the common name anywhere. The resulting pages would be unreadable to Joe Public. We must be carefull not to become elitist and exclude people who are still learning. After all, our target audience is people who want to learn - not people who already know.

To exemplify my point, look at this article about a very common and simple word - The Arm: http://pilot.citizendium.org/wiki/Arm

"Osteofascial compartments
The arm is divided by a fascial layer (known as lateral and medial intermuscular septa) separating the muscles into an anterior and posterior osteofascial compartments. The fascia merges with the periosteum (outer bone layer) of the humerus. The compartments contain muscles which are innervated by the same nerve and perform the same action."

Can anyone, without a medical degree or nurses training, understand the above passage? This is the result of using 'proper' names instead of 'common' names. This is not the only article of it's type. I hope the biology workgroup can produce something more accessable in future articles.

[Jaap Winius]

* Category lists. Have you seen my examples at Wikipedia? Category:True vipers may be useless to non-specialists, but so is Category:Sharks (I recognize a few, but the rest may as well be Latin). At least Category:True vipers is of use to the specialists.

* (Scientific) Names in the text. I suggest we do this as little as possible anyway and use more general terms instead. Names, especially common names, are overused in many WP articles, sometimes with every paragraph starting out with the same name. That's terrible writing regardless! If you must refer to another species in the text, I see no problem with mentioning a common name for it as well, or just using a common name (correctly wlinked) and nothing else. Much of the best scientific literature is written this way anyway.

* Unreadable articles. "Arm" looks like a good example of something that was more or less copied right out of a textbook (without any references). Obviously, that's not what we should be aiming for.

* Disambiguation links. I can hardly wait to get rid of these and see them replaced with disambiguation pages for common names. A lot of work? Maybe, maybe not (I use a template to start pages like this), but at least we'll be doing it right. Plus, with a little more effort, we'll be able to better show that many common names apply to many more species than the folks at WP know of or would like to admit.

[Pedro S]

I think the use of the scientific name would render category based browsing almost usesless to the non specialist. While the Go, search and wikilinks should be unaffected (given that the proper redirects and disambiguation are in place) the category lists would be filled with only the scientific names, no common names. So someone browsing the categories would find it confusing and difficult to find the article they are interested in.

As far as I remember, Categories are supposed to be eliminated (or greatly reduced), anyway... I do not believe anyone would fail to find any article: the search function exists, and every common name would redirect to the proper page.

Also, I can see a slippery slope, if articles are named by the scientific name, then why not use the scientific names in the text.

I do not think this is a good argument, for exactly the same reasons Jaap has mentioned. And there is another good argument for scientific names: many species do NOT have a "common" name,  because:
a) they have been recently discovered
b) they went extinct before anyone existed to give them a "common" name (e.g. Tyranossaurus rex)
c) there is a huge number of species referred to by the same "common" name (e.g. "mushroom" can refer to many different species...)

[Kim van der Linde]

You can pipe category names with the name you want to see. It would be a good idea to add both latin and common names to a category using that system.

[Jaap Winius]

Piping category names? Interesting. How does that work?

[Kim van der Linde]

Piping category names? Interesting. How does that work?

[[Category:Amazon parrots|*]]

[Jaap Winius]

[[Category:Amazon parrots|*]]

Um, I tried that out over at WP, but it doesn't seem to work.

In an article titled ABC, I changed the category tag for [[Category:123]] to [[Category:123|DEF]], but the only thing that changed was that, in the overview for category 123, the same article showed up under the D instead of the A. The name, however, was still ABC.

Or is this a trick that only works at CZ?

[Kim van der Linde]

Yup, my mistake. You have to add the category to the redirect page, that works, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:True_vipers and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_night_adder

[Zachary Pruckowski]

[[Category:Amazon parrots|*]]

Um, I tried that out over at WP, but it doesn't seem to work.

In an article titled ABC, I changed the category tag for [[Category:123]] to [[Category:123|DEF]], but the only thing that changed was that, in the overview for category 123, the same article showed up under the D instead of the A. The name, however, was still ABC.

Or is this a trick that only works at CZ?

That's for moving something on the category page.  For instance, an article about "The Fray" (a popular American pop/rock band) could be linked as [[Category:Rock Bands|Fray, The]] to have them on the page as an F instead of a T.

[Jaap Winius]

My experiment suggests that [[Category:Rock Bands|F]] would be enough to move the band to the "F" section, but that the system ignores anything beyond that and does not actually change the name.

Anyway, the idea of adding category tags to common name redirects is interesting. This could be used to create parallel categories for common name redirects -- and not just one common name for each species, but perhaps several or even many. After all, many books have indexes for both scientific and common names. On the other hand, this could lead to rather large catetegories: a collection of 50 valid scientific names could lead a parallel category of several hundred common names.

If we were to do something like this, it would be nice if a link for the parallel category could be made to appear at the bottom of the page next to the traditional category, but otherwise it could be in the See also section, for example.

[Zachary Pruckowski]

My experiment suggests that [[Category:Rock Bands|F]] would be enough to move the band to the "F" section, but that the system ignores anything beyond that and does not actually change the name.

Yeah, up until someone adds an article on Fall Out Boy (who are also a rock band) or Five for Fighting (who are really more alternative than rock, but the same has been said about The Fray).  It's better to fill out the whole name.  That's why I'm listed as [[Category:CZ Authors|Pruckowski, Zachary]], just in case a Pruitt shows up.

Anyway, the idea of adding category tags to common name redirects is interesting. This could be used to create parallel categories for common name redirects -- and not just one common name for each species, but perhaps several or even many. After all, many books have indexes for both scientific and common names. On the other hand, this could lead to rather large catetegories: a collection of 50 valid scientific names could lead a parallel category of several hundred common names.

If we were to do something like this, it would be nice if a link for the parallel category could be made to appear at the bottom of the page next to the traditional category, but otherwise it could be in the See also section, for example.

Ultimately, we're looking to restrict categories to administrative functions (workgroups, editor/author lists, etc.).  So suggestions for a new system to replace it would be appreciated.  Your idea sounds interesting.