Talk:Cell (biology)

Requested move 13 July 2024
– This is the clear primary topic since the dab page says that is the most common term for the page. Interstellarity (talk) 20:23, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Cell (biology) → Cell
 * Cell → Cell (disambiguation)


 * Oppose – do you have any solid backing for this rather than what another editor added to a DAB page? Remsense  诉  20:35, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Support per some combination of WP:SURPRISE and WP:NWFCTM. If you say 'cell' when you mean cell phone and I don't know what you mean by 'cell', you will clarify "cell phone". If you say 'cell' when you mean prison cell and I don't know what you mean by 'cell', you will clarify 'prison cell'. If you say 'cell' when you mean the biological unit and I don't know what you mean, you will assume I don't have a high school education and draw me a diagram of a cell. I should think end users of the site would expect about as much when using the searchbar of this website. I think the current dab is a diplomatic nicety or compromise as I'm sure WP has significant representation of individuals specializing in at least two or the three topics, which is why I mention WP:NWFCTM and the examples it gives as something to immediately consider in tandem. AVNOJ1989 (talk) 22:00, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
 * "Cell phone" is not the incisive example here: there are many things referred to primarily as "cell", as it a word used in general to characterize discrete units with like contents and biological cells are not clearly primary among them. Remsense  诉  22:09, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm not denying 'cell' is unique to 'cell'. Again, I explicitly mention WP:NWFCTM for a reason. Identifying a city in Bulgaria as a PTOPIC is not to say there aren't hundreds of thousands of people who have that same word as their name, but to adjust a portion of the site to accomodate for what users are most likely to expect when they type 'Sofia' into a search bar. Think of any search engine. If I type 'cell' into Bing or Google or any other search engine of choice, I am mostly being met with pages about the biological unit. If I want prison cell, I immediately know what to type in to get more relevant results. If I want cell phone, I immediately know what to type in to get more relevant results. I would be annoyed (re:SURPRISED) if I was searching for the biological unit and wasn't getting those results. Excel cells, cell towers, geometric cells, etc... I would be curious to find out what you consider to be the incisive example that overrides the cell and actually challenges the point I'm articulating. AVNOJ1989 (talk) 22:21, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Oppose While Cell (biology) has a plurality of pageviews on, it does not have anywhere near a majority, so it fails WP:PTOPIC on the usage criterion: "much more likely than any other single topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined". On long-term significance, we can downweight some entries like Cell (film), but other general science entries like Electrochemical cell and its subtopics (e.g. Fuel cell) are just as important, so it does not have substantially more long-term significance than everything else combined. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:58, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Would you be able to clarify how pages like Electrochemical cell would be in contention for PTOPIC of 'cell'? The PTOPIC of Star is currently determined to be the astronomical object, but, for example, the Dallas Stars would appear to have the plurality of pageviews when analyzing the Stars disambiguation . I don't mean to 'what about' here but try and understand the logic. How many of these general science entries – which I don't disagree are just as important – are you actually proposing could get away with only being titled 'Cell', and if they're not, are they still relevant to the argument as you're suggesting? AVNOJ1989 (talk) 01:59, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * It's very easy for me to use "cell" by itself in that context. Remsense  诉  02:29, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I think WP:NWFCTM speaks to that when it talks about partial title matches, no? AVNOJ1989 (talk) 02:51, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Oppose, and I did a biology degree. Phrases like "The cell is..." or "Cells and organisms" are unambiguous, phrases like "a cell" suggest biology but not conclusively so ("He spent the night in a cell"). I'd like this to be the definite primary topic but to the general public it's at best only weakly so, and the arguments in this thread already demonstrate where this is headed — nowhere. We might as well stop now really, but I guess we'll have to endure a week of it before it undeniably runs into the ground. Chiswick Chap (talk) 05:19, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Weak oppose while it seems the most common use it doesn't appear to be primary.  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 17:08, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Support for no other reason than that the dab page is such an awful place to land that I refuse to even scroll down to see where the important articles are. I'm a regular Wikipedia editor since 2005 and dab pages like this stop me in my tracks. Srnec (talk) 18:53, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't that be a good reason to improve the DAB page, not create an even more ambiguous situation? Remsense  诉  18:54, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Unless I watchlist the dab page, how can I be sure any improvements won't be rolled back? Srnec (talk) 19:00, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * While admitting I personally have a very extensive watchlist: I'm not sure why you wouldn't do precisely that? Remsense  诉  19:19, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Strong support, clear primary topic by historical importance, so much so as to blow all of the others out of the water. BD2412  T 17:40, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, BD2412, that's easily asserted, but the evidence is that the biological cell is not so far ahead.
 * Historically,
 * the monastic/prison varieties are much the oldest (early medieval).
 * Hooke saw biological cells in 1665, but they only became important much later.
 * The electrochemical cell dates from 1790.
 * Cell phones date from 1973.
 * By usage, biological cells are 2nd by Ghits, 1st by Scholar hits (research papers):
 * Type Ghits --- Scholar
 * Tele cell -- 3.2 Bn -- 5.1 M
 * Biol cell -- 1.3 Bn -- 8.6 M
 * Elec cell -- 1.1 Bn -- 6.7 M
 * Pris cell -- 0.5 Bn -- 1.1 M
 * It's not easy (even for a biologist) to assert that the biological cell usage "blows all the others out of the water"; instead, it mixes punches with the best of 'em in the fight, and might come out on top, or not, according to taste. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:18, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
 * How are you getting these numbers? I have read any number of biology papers which do not specify that the cell they are talking about is a "biol[ogical] cell". They are very likely to specify the species or lineage of the cell(s) but rarely stop to specify they are biological cells, which made me wonder how such head-to-head information would be obtained from Google Scholar or otherwise. AVNOJ1989 (talk) 20:30, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I am not saying that the biological cell is more important in terms of usage of the word "cell" to describe it. That would be the Boston, Lincolnshire over Boston argument. I am saying that it is by far the most important topic on Earth, and probably in the universe, called a "cell". BD2412  T 04:15, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * And so far you haven't really provided quantitative evidence for this opinion. What else are we supposed to be going off of here? Remsense  诉  04:17, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Here is something quantitative: there are perhaps tens of millions of prison cells and monastic cells combined on this planet, and perhaps eight billion cell phones. Now look at your thumb. There are more biological cells in your thumb, alone, than there are all other kinds of "cells" put together. There are an estimated 30 trillion cells in every human body, and comparable ratios of cells in every living animal and plant on the planet. Do you have wooden furniture? It's made of biological cells. Eggs and toast for breakfast? A mixture of animal and plant cells. Prison cells don't exist in nature, and cell phones are a recent introduction. Every school child is taught about our bodies being made of cells, not about the other kinds. On the time scale of the Earth, if the history of life was compressed into a one-hour clock, man-made buildings (cells included) appear late in the very last second, and cell phones appear in a tiny fraction of that last second. BD2412  T 15:53, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * No. On that logic, Rock would certainly have the primary meaning of geological rock as it's way older than all the other uses. But that's not how Wikipedia works, see the link for what actually happens (this is not a WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS argument, just an illustration of how we work round here). Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:16, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * This has absolutely no grounding in site policy.  Remsense  诉  19:51, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm talking about importance, not age. Rock (geology) and Rock music are both level-3 Vital articles, so there is no measure of relative importance. Cell (biology) is a level-2 Vital article, and the only meaning of "cell" at that level. If this is not a signifier of substantially greater historical importance, then why do we have a historical importance prong in title policy at all? BD2412  T 20:05, 18 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Oppose - the biological uses of the term are far predated by several other uses; cf. cell. --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 04:11, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Oppose. How on earth is the biological term more notable than Prison cell? -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:30, 16 July 2024 (UTC)


 * The data shows that the use of "cell" in the context of prisons is minimal compared to the use of the term in biology. As an example, the Wikinav data shows 737 outgoing links for biological cells and only 42 links for Prison cell. Sunrise (talk) 13:04, 19 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Per WP:DPT, let's have a look at https://wikinav.toolforge.org/?language=en&title=Cell where we can see meta:Research:Wikipedia clickstream which said for May that 2.2k readers viewed this list, and we could identify 749 clicks to the proposed primary topic, which is just over a third. Based on clickstream-enwiki-2024-05.tsv, there were a total of 1593 identified clickstreams that month, so it's not really over half of even that (the clickstreams have anonymization so the long tail is invisible). For June it said 1.8k views, 737 clicks to biology, 1439 identifiable total, so the pattern is similar (~34% / ~47% and ~40% / ~51%).
 * It's long been sorted on top into the common section. Although, the latter doesn't have a section heading - we have in other cases noticed some effect from changing this, but it's unclear that it would contribute a lot. It's unlikely it would push the ratios from a third/half to e.g. >80%.
 * So the readers are telling us there is no primary topic by usage. If we want to make a move, it would need to be based rather on long-term significance. Ideally this kind of an argument would be well fleshed out, because we risk badly navigating half the readers. --Joy (talk) 07:39, 17 July 2024 (UTC)


 * The PTOPIC usage criterion is "more likely than all the other topics combined" which is a requirement for 50%, not 80%. There is also "much more likely than any other single topic", but that is easily met since the outgoing pageviews are ~5x the next highest candidate.
 * In addition, the denominator for the Wikinav calculation is the total number of outgoing clicks, not the total number of views of the list. If someone views the page and then closes the window, that doesn't give us any information on the relative prominence of the different topics. So the larger numbers you cite are the correct ones: 47% for May, and 51% for June. Sunrise (talk) 13:04, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * No, that criterion being hard 50% is not documented as such anywhere, nor would that be valid, because that'd be rather weird. If a single topic commands the interest of one half of the readers, and everything else commands the interest of the other half, that means choosing that topic as primary would lead to half the readers getting navigated inefficiently.
 * Likewise, our measurements are never precise enough to be able to say with certainty that we really know what a 50% means, which is why we should really have some buffer to be sure.
 * In turn, the WikiNav calculation, by which I assume you mean the outgoing graph near the bottom, is a design choice of people who wrote that app, and not the be-all and end-all interpretation mechanism. Both because the same people gave us the top graph, which does correlate the incoming traffic with the outgoing one, and because of common sense - we just don't know if the lack of clickthrough is the result of such a simple scenario only.
 * If you're interested in reading more about what can be observed from clickstreams and page views and how they change over time, please feel free to have a look at WT:D where I've been trying to document this topic for some time now. TIA. --Joy (talk) 13:20, 19 July 2024 (UTC)


 * 50% is simply the logical meaning of the phrase "more likely than all other topics combined". If we are dividing 100 items among multiple groups, the number in one group becomes greater than the number in all other groups combined when the number is greater than 50.
 * In addition, that description of efficiency of navigation doesn't account for all people. For example, suppose 51 out of 100 people are searching for biological cells. Then, if everyone lands on the dab page first, 51 people will require one extra click (targeting Cell (biology) from the list) compared to the alternative. In contrast, if everyone lands on Cell (biology) first, only 49 people will require one extra click (in the hatnote, to get back to the dab page) compared to the alternative. Again, 50% is the relevant threshold for inconveniencing the fewest people.
 * With regards to WikiNav, naturally I acknowledge that data has uncertainties, that the exact measurement can be affected by the exact design choices used in the calculation, etc. However, assuming I'm not misunderstanding something, using the number of total views as the calculation's denominator rather than the number of known clickthroughs is just an error in interpretation. Using example numbers: suppose there are 2000 views of the dab page, 1500 clickthroughs to another page are identified, and 1000 of the clickthroughs navigated to Cell (biology). In this case the best estimate for the fraction of people searching for biological cells is 67% (1000/1500), not 50% (1000/2000). As you pointed out, we don't know what those additional 500 signify. Using the latter calculation is the same as assuming that all 500 uncategorized views of the dab page were searching for any page except Cell (biology). The problem isn't unique to biological cells - the latter calculation will systematically underestimate every measurement that it's used for. Another way to explain this is that if we don't have any information on those 500 additional views, then the best estimate we have is that they have the same distribution as the views we do have information on, or in other words we would estimate that 2/3 of the 500 additional views were also looking for biological cells (and mathematically, the overall estimate would still be 2/3). <b style="color:#F60;font-family:Times New Roman">Sunrise</b> <i style="font-size:11px">(talk)</i> 23:32, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * The problem with "more than all others combined" is that it doesn't say how much more. If we're teetering around the edge, that's not useful, because both of the groups are basically the same size.
 * The levels of inconvenience are also not straightforward. If you make people look at a short MOS:DABCOMMON list, and they're able to quickly go through where they typically want to go, that is inconveniencing all of them but still reasonably efficient and obviously fair to all. If you make half the people click the hatnote, where they have to parse a new navigation list again, that group is perhaps unreasonably inconvenienced. We have observed in various examples that adding more clicks to a navigation page makes an observable amount of people drop off. Also, the scenario where readers give up on our navigation in frustration and go back to an external search engine to get to what they were looking for - is definitely a failure of our navigation, yet completely undetectable by our stats.
 * In the example, if there are 25% missing clickthroughs at a disambiguation list, the characteristics of those can vary significantly. It could be people who wanted the most popular topic but couldn't find it even if it was listed at #1, or it could be people who wanted another topic but couldn't find it in section #5 at item #14. At the same time, it could also be:
 * people who wanted a dictionary definition and they clicked the wiktionary link in the top right box - we can't track these at the moment
 * those who wanted to check the spread of meanings of a term because they already knew it was ambiguous - and these would in turn be more likely to produce more outgoing clicks than 1, thereby screwing with our interpretation in general
 * those who wanted an undocumented topic, who will necessarily fail to navigate
 * wrongly detected crawler bots, that possibly also malfunctioned and didn't follow (m)any links?
 * The idea that in the remaining 25% traffic the ratio of people looking for the most popular topic is also 67% - just doesn't make sense to me. Because they're the largest contingent of readers, these are the requests that are the least likely to get anonymized out. Because the most popular topic is listed first, it's least probable that people missed it. We have recently had some cases of possibly measurable lack-of-heading blindness, cf. Talk:King Charles, but even in such a large sample it was just ~4% of the total so in our example that would be ~16% of the rest, which is a far cry from 67%.
 * --Joy (talk) 08:14, 20 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Oppose. Too many meanings here. None that primary. Cfls (talk) 03:39, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Oppose. I do not think the biological term is the primary topic over other usages of the word "cell". Aoba47 (talk) 02:19, 19 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Support. Only one of the two PTOPIC criteria needs to be met. Criterion 1, the navigation data, is perhaps debatable. However, criterion 2 (long-term significance) is indisputable: cells (the biological term) are a foundational unit of the natural world. They have existed for billions of years, and will most likely continue to exist for billions more. And, noting that PTOPIC 2 specifically calls out educational value, they are widely viewed as a central topic in a basic education, being a primary component of a core subject. This is analogous to the previous debates where it was claimed The Big Bang Theory was comparable to the Big Bang (and in fact, movies and other pop culture topics are among the closest competitors in usage in this case as well).


 * Some editors above are referring to other uses (prison cell, electrochemical cell, etc) as if they're obviously comparable, but the data (e.g. WikiNav) shows that their relative prominence is actually extremely one-sided. These other topics are generally historically contingent, with their importance being transient on a scale of decades or less. Even prison cells, while fairly long-lasting as a concept, have generally only been used by specific cultures during specific periods in history, and their use was often limited compared to other punishments (e.g. see ).


 * Finally, WP:TITLEPTM applies since unlike biological cells, other uses are frequently given qualifiers (prison cell, cell phone, etc) with "cell" only being a shorthand used in specific contexts, meaning that they're only partial matches. Often, they are commonly known by entirely different names instead (phone/smartphone, battery, etc), such that even if the word "cell" is used in reference to those topics, people are much less likely to use "cell" when searching for them. <b style="color:#F60;font-family:Times New Roman">Sunrise</b> <i style="font-size:11px">(talk)</i> 13:04, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid the partial match argument is completely irrelevant. The fact is that when people refer to prison cells they are more than likely to simply refer to them as cells. We just use "prison cell" as natural disambiguation. As to long-term significance, yes, of course biological cells have been around for much longer, but that's not really a trump factor for long-term significance. Otherwise pretty much every topic referring to the natural world should be seen as primary topic over anything man-made and that's clearly not the case. So, actually, neither criterion has been met for a primary topic grab. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:19, 19 July 2024 (UTC)


 * The fact that people will leave out disambiguating terms once the context is clear applies to everything, regardless of how niche a topic may be. If we were talking about Cell (American band), nobody is likely to repeatedly say "the band Cell" over just "Cell" once the topic of discussion is established. The point is that biological cells are generally described as simply cells with no disambiguation required at all. (Ignoring unique cases like right now, since this is a meta-discussion about how the word itself is used).
 * Long-term significance will naturally mean different things to different people, but PTOPIC has a specific emphasis on encyclopedic value. I'm not claiming there is a "trump factor", but rather I've provided several lines of argument: centrality to the natural world, length of existence, and centrality in basic education. Other examples, given by another editor above, include the number of instances of the topic that exist, ubiquity in human-used/consumed objects, and the topic's Vital Article status. None of these are necessarily the end of the discussion, but when they are combined together it is clear that none of the competing topics can make any type of comparable argument. <b style="color:#F60;font-family:Times New Roman">Sunrise</b> <i style="font-size:11px">(talk)</i> 23:32, 19 July 2024 (UTC)


 * I don't think the reading of the guideline as "only one of the two criteria needs to be met" is accurate. The guideline needs to be read as a coherent story, which should in turn make consensus-building discussions easier. If we're going to be zeroing in on particular parts of guideline text without examining it judiciously, that's unlikely to lead to good outcomes. --Joy (talk) 13:24, 19 July 2024 (UTC)


 * As I said, I would argue it meets both criteria. However, breaking down the grammar of the the relevant section:
 * 1. [X is true] if [criterion 1].
 * 2. [X is true] if [criterion 2].
 * As long as both of these statements are valid, the logical meaning is that "X is true" (the topic is primary) occurs if either criterion is met. It's clear from other parts that this isn't intended as a hard rule, but the plain meaning of this section of PTOPIC is that either criterion is sufficient. The text then goes on to identify an edge case (Apple, Inc. and Apple) where the two criteria each identify a different primary topic, leading to a conflict, which wouldn't really make sense if primacy couldn't be established by a single criterion. <b style="color:#F60;font-family:Times New Roman">Sunrise</b> <i style="font-size:11px">(talk)</i> 23:32, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I see where you're coming from because it's usually me engaging in this level of pedantry, but I'm not sure how this is contributing to building a consensus :) --Joy (talk) 08:29, 20 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Yes, I would have expected WP:PTOPIC to say explicitly either that BOTH criteria must be met, or that ONE OF the criteria must be met, but it does neither: it says "While Wikipedia has no single criterion for defining a primary topic, two major aspects that editors commonly consider are these: [wrt usage] ... [wrt long-term significance]". It adds that "in most cases" the two give the same answer, but if they don't, "consensus may be useful". That is pretty woolly, but it's what it says.
 * I'll also note that "long-term significance" means "signifies to people", as only sapient beings can discern significance. This means that age from the origin of life doesn't make any difference, it's age since people started talking about "cells" that is relevant in this case. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:38, 19 July 2024 (UTC)


 * I've addressed most of this in my other replies, but I would also add that "signifies to people" is not the only interpretation, except in the anthropic sense that all observations require observers. For instance, "length of human awareness of existence" is certainly a valid argument, but I would argue that it's inherently not as fundamental of a concept as simply "length of existence", let alone any of the other arguments that I listed. Each of us (as the observers) can decide what type of significance we value, which doesn't have to be only significance to humans. <b style="color:#F60;font-family:Times New Roman">Sunrise</b> <i style="font-size:11px">(talk)</i> 23:32, 19 July 2024 (UTC)


 * To add on to this a bit, the argument about cell not being the PTOPIC by page views seems ridiculous to me, since not everything linked on the dab page is seriously proposing to be in competition for a title simply titled "cell". The example you've provided – the absurd idea of the TV show The Big Bang Theory being comparable to Big Bang – aligns with a couple questions I've asked earlier in this request that have so far not been directly spoken to. When you look at the dab stats and remove the pages which wouldn't actually be in contention – nobody is suggesting a movie titled The Cell is competing with cells to be the PTOPIC of "cell", an anime character isn't more notable than cells (not at this time, anyway), and while we can all agree "prison cell" or "cell phone" are both often reduced to 'cell', nobody seems to be suggesting that because of this they are in direct competition to be the PTOPIC of just "cell" – there's nothing really left. Nothing else is actually an alternate that is vying to be the subject of a Wikipedia article simply titled cell. The Opposes outnumber the Supports here, but I'm not seeing any Oppose arguments that make much sense to me. AVNOJ1989 (talk) 16:46, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Er, the only mention of "big bang" was by a supporter, not an opponent of this move. Your indentation makes it appear you are trying to reply to User:Sunrise, perhaps: if so, why? Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:55, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I was likening it to the oppose arguments in this request on the basis of something like a "prison cell". Is anyone seriously suggesting "prison cell" be the PTOPIC of "cell"? AVNOJ1989 (talk) 18:41, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * An odd way to do that, attacking a support argument, setting up WP:STRAWMAN opponents, creating incorrect summaries, and ignoring the serious and considered arguments that have actually been made to oppose this move. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:11, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Where is the strawman? People in this conversation have been saying that cell can't be PTOPIC because it's in direct competition with prison cell et al. Also, I must say that you are confused if you read my comment (which began To add on to this a bit...) as attacking a support comment. I'd encourage you to try and read it again and ask clarifying questions if you're stuck on something. I'm happy to answer them to the best of my ability. AVNOJ1989 (talk) 19:43, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I told you already, the 'big bang' thing has been suggested only by Support folks, so I'm not confused in the slightest, though you seem to be. You have further been avoiding all my questions, including who you were actually addressing with the word "you" above, was it User:Sunrise as I asked above, or who? Basically, if you want to move towards consensus, you need to persuade the floating voters, and I'd remind you of my first comments, which indicated that I' actually prefer to be on the support side but thought it doubtful that a proper case could be made for it. The goal, as Joy has rightly said above, is to obtain consensus if that's at all possible. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:50, 20 July 2024 (UTC)