Talk:Coral reef fish

Reef fish?
Ii has been suggested that the name of this article should be "Coral reef fish" rather than "Reef fish". It would be good to have a discussion on this. If we are to have an article on "Coral reef fish", then parhaps another article is needed to cover "Rocky reef fish". My initial impulse is to retain the current title, "Reef fish", but to cover both types in the same article. Is there not a significant overlap in species which inhabit both types of reefs, with some inhabitants commuting between the two? And a section contrasting what the differences between the two habitats mean for fish might be quite interesting. --Epipelagic (talk) 21:26, 24 January 2010 (UTC)


 * The relationship between "coral reef fishes" and "reef fishes" is essentially that the latter consist of species derived from the former. Coral reef fishes by nature are generally specialized to succeed in physically complex habitats - a relative rarity in the oceans,  A relative few families of such fishes that originally evolved in coral reef habitats were able to make the necessary physiological and other adjustments to tolerate much cooler waters than coral refs can survive in, and thereby become quite successful in temperate reef habitats.  The most notable of these are the damselfishes, wrassess, kyphosids, and a few others.  Temperate reef fish assemblages are far less diverse than coral reef fish assemblages, and have no species in common.  Therefore, if the decision is made to make this article about "reef fishes" in general, it should downplay the coral reef aspects and emphasize the general adaptations of fishes for life in complex environments such as coral reefs and rock kelp forests.  If, on the other hand, it is deemed more appropriate to emphasize the role of coral reef fishes in coral reef ecology, the article should be called "coral reef fishes" and perhaps simply mention that some of the groups discussed secondarily adapted to other reef habitats.  My preference is the latter, because "coral reef fishes" is a much broader and more searched topic than "reef fishes", and the Wikipedia article on "Coral Reefs" has very little information on fishes, and some of what is there is simply inaccurate. 2ocean7 (talk) 17:55, 25 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, I haven't yet got to the section on Biodiverity in the article on "Coral Reefs". I think the stuff there on fish should be replaced with more stuff on inverebrates, and the reader can be directed to this article for the fish.
 * If we name this article "Coral reef fish", would "Rocky reef fish" be a suitable title for an article that pretty much covers other types of reef fish? Or would "Tropical reef fish", contrasted with "Temperate reef fish", be a better way to go?
 * Google gives some surprising results.
 * {| class="wikitable"

! ! google.com (common usage) ! google scholar (academic usage) ! google books
 * Coral reef fish
 * align=center| 150,000
 * align=center| 10,200
 * align=center| 890
 * Rocky reef fish
 * align=center| 227,000
 * align=center| 653
 * align=center| 275
 * Tropical reef fish
 * align=center| 1,030,000
 * align=center| 1,340
 * align=center| 646
 * Temperate reef fish
 * align=center| 129,000
 * align=center| 1,130
 * align=center| 449
 * Aquarium fish
 * align=center| 1,410,000
 * align=center| 5,980
 * align=center| 819
 * }
 * Common usage decisively favours "Tropical reef fish", while academic usage decisively favours "Coral reef fish". And it seems that book authors sit in the middle, not really favouring one side over the other. In general, an article title in Wikipedia should reflect common usage, which clearly puts "Tropical reef fish" in the hot seat. On the other hand, the guideline explicitly states; "In determining what this name is, we follow the usage of reliable sources, such as those used as references for the article", which basically means following the usage in google scholar and google books. Together these give the nod to "Coral reef fish". I suspect the public are interested in "Tropical reef fish" because they associate them with "Aquarium fish". Apart from google scholar, the usage for these terms has the same pattern. But the article we are writing should be aimed at explaining how fish behave in coral reefs, rather than their virtues as aquarium fish. What are your thoughts?
 * align=center| 1,410,000
 * align=center| 5,980
 * align=center| 819
 * }
 * Common usage decisively favours "Tropical reef fish", while academic usage decisively favours "Coral reef fish". And it seems that book authors sit in the middle, not really favouring one side over the other. In general, an article title in Wikipedia should reflect common usage, which clearly puts "Tropical reef fish" in the hot seat. On the other hand, the guideline explicitly states; "In determining what this name is, we follow the usage of reliable sources, such as those used as references for the article", which basically means following the usage in google scholar and google books. Together these give the nod to "Coral reef fish". I suspect the public are interested in "Tropical reef fish" because they associate them with "Aquarium fish". Apart from google scholar, the usage for these terms has the same pattern. But the article we are writing should be aimed at explaining how fish behave in coral reefs, rather than their virtues as aquarium fish. What are your thoughts?


 * As an aside, at the moment I am dumping various factoids into the article. They can be organised or deleted later when we settle on a structure for the article. --Epipelagic (talk) 21:48, 25 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I totally agree that the surprisingly large numbers for "tropical reef fish" (and aquarium fish obviously) are generated by the many marine aquarists out there rather than the public at large or student's of all levels seeking info on coral reef fishes. I also strongly suggest we use the title "coral reef fishes" rather than "coral reef fish".  From an academic point of view, the term "fishes" refers to a variety of species (the focus of the article), while the term "fish" when used in the plural sense refers to many individuals of the same species.  The only downside to that strategy is that many more people will actually search for "coral reef fish" than "coral reef fishes" - but Google does not seem to differentiate the two much in terms of search results.2ocean7 (talk) 23:58, 25 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Okay. I've made the name change. If you notice things that should be fixed or you want to make additions or changes, please feel free, be bold and charge ahead. If I have issue with edits, I will bring it to the talk page, and vica versa, you can do likewise. --Epipelagic (talk) 03:34, 26 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Actually, the article title needs to be singular. It's not our decision, since it's a Wikipedia naming convention. You will find this convention applies everywhere in the fish articles, fish not fishes, butterflyfish not butterflyfishes, pelagic fish not pelagic fishes, and so on. If it's any consolation, Google scholar records more hits for "coral reef fish" then "coral reef fishes". --Epipelagic (talk) 10:28, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Inappropriate removal of an external link
Jamie: On what basis do you suggest that the link you removed (http://www.coral-reef-info.com/coral-reef-fishes.html) does not conform to the established guidelines for adding external links? These guidelines state (Under "What should be linked"):

"Sites that contain neutral and accurate material that is relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject and cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article due to copyright issues..."

The link that you removed certainly conforms with the above. I am the author and sole copyright holder of that material, reworded from material originally published in my book "Pisces Guide to Caribbean Reef Ecology" published in 1994 and referenced numerous times in this article (ref #13). The page to which you removed the link definitely fits the Wikipedia criteria "contain neutral and accurate material that is relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject and cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article due to copyright issues". The material is also not readily available to most Wikipedia users as the book is out of print.

As a former Professor of Marine Biology who spent over 30 years researching coral reef fishes and published over 30 peer-reviewed articles on that topic in international journals, I find it incredibly surprising that you took it upon yourself to make such a change to this article, which I helped to develop over the last 6 months. Surely, you can find more appropriate ways to spend your time as part of the Wikipedia "spam police". All you are accomplishing here is to discourage contributions from qualified authorities.2ocean7 (talk) 16:49, 7 June 2010 (UTC)'
 * Canvassing links to your own site on various pages is a violation of our conflict of interest and spam policies, regardless of your credentials. We have plenty of excellent contributors who don't promote their own websites. OhNo itsJamie Talk 20:16, 7 June 2010 (UTC)


 * It is not a "conflict of interest" or "spam" to cite work (even your own) that is relevant and not otherwise available. Do you see any adsense on my pages (other than the search box which is there for the visitor's convenience and does not make me enough to buy a cup of coffee each month).  I spent some time correcting factual inaccuracies and omissions originally placed in this article by your other "plenty of excellent contributors who don't promote their own websites".  The referred link was approved and reinserted by the topic editor (Epipelagic) after discussion with me.  If you want to play "spam cop" and edit articles in technical fields about which you know nothing, so be it. If this is allowed to stand, I will waste no more time writing or editing for Wikipedia. Over and out. 2ocean7 (talk) 03:30, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Another opinion: Not sure why there's a 3O for this page given that there are three editors active here, but I agree with those who removed the spam. This is not the place for self-promotion, and as such, adding a link to that coral reef site is uancceptable. —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 03:42, 8 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Well the content of the website seems fine, but what we'd rather have a link from a recognizable authority. But if you have a link from a reliable publisher you might as well use it as a source for the article rather than just a plain link. Add the link to the Open Directory Project. That's a good solution. Dawnseeker2000   03:49, 8 June 2010 (UTC)


 * In fact the guidelines for identifying reliable sources state that self-published material is acceptable providing it is not used as a third-party source about living persons and it is "produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications." That is precisely the situation here. Accordingly I have reinstated the link. It is hard to understand how Ohnoitsjamie, who specialises in this area of Wikipedia, would not know this, and raises questions about whether he withheld this information and why he then further hounded this valuable editor till he left Wikipedia. --Epipelagic (talk) 23:36, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
 * It is erroneous to believe that all reliable sources that deal with a topic have a place in its "external links" section, as your edit summary on the article implies. Our page on reliable sources only identifies pages fit for referencing, not for placement in external links sections.  The correct policy page for this is not WP:RS, but WP:EL.  Them  From  Space  00:14, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I didn't get involved with this originally, but I'm going to come down now on the side of agreeing with Epipelagic's restoration of the link. I've looked at the history of this, and I'm very confident that editors on both sides of this disagreement have been acting in good faith. Including Jamie: it is well within acceptable administrative conduct to be careful about allowing excessive external links as well as WP:COI. But in this case, I've looked at the link, and it strikes me as a non-spammy informative one of the sort that is helpful to our readers. It comes down to a content decision more than a policy one. So I think it should stay, and we should, in this case, set aside the issues of who first put the link on the page. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:30, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Copyright Question
Hi, i don't know where to mention this and don't think it really matters, but: Today i watched a Lets Play on Youtube featuring the online game CounterStrike:Global Offensive.

There is a Zoo Map with an Aquarium which obviously includes textures with texts from this article on them.

Heres my source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJzb3rzWAPA, Time: 2:56

Is this use case covered in any way by the lizense?

(More asking because of personal interest but anything else)

--78.53.212.68 (talk) 22:03, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
 * As long as the Youtube person copied the material from Wikipedia, and not the other way around, yes, it's permissible. Strictly speaking, the one requirement Wikipedia does set it that Youtube should acknowledge that they took the content from here (I didn't spend the time to watch the entire video). But everything on Wikipedia may be used by anyone else, for any purpose, even commercial, with attribution. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:28, 16 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Well, i didn't mean the use in the Youtube video, but the use by the Game Developer (Valve). Its an official map, and i thought it might be required to link to the source in any way. --78.53.209.203 (talk) 21:32, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I see. Even commercial use by the game developer is permitted, although strictly speaking they need to acknowledge the source in some way, not limited to a link, but some sort of attribution, perhaps in their documentation materials. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:59, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Coral reef fish. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100204201329/http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/groups/niehs/science/ciguatera.htm to http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/groups/niehs/science/ciguatera.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 01:51, 13 August 2017 (UTC)