Talk:Durrell's vontsira

Needs a picture
As the heading says, the article could really use a picture. What does this new species look like? —Lowellian (reply) 01:33, 3 August 2010 (UTC)
 * No picture of the actual animal is available as far as I know; the description only has pictures of the feet, skull, and teeth and not of the whole animal. I would have put in a picture of Salanoia concolor to give an idea, but none seem to be available on Wikipedia either. Ucucha 05:03, 3 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Found one of the brown-tailed after all. Not a good one, but it should give some idea. Ucucha 20:23, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Plain English
I hate to sound like a broken record, but as a lay person I find the very first sentence confusing and off-putting. Why is it necessary to hit the reader with the odd-sounding word "carnivoran" which does not mean what it appears to, instead of writing a longer sentence that explains in plain language? We discussed this same problem in re Saadanius (see Talk:Saadanius). I see exactly the same problems here, though not to the same degree. Zaslav (talk) 17:12, 3 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I tried to write this article as comprehensibly as possible—but as I said before, it's not always easy to anticipate what people not well-versed in the subject would think. What do you suggest? Perhaps "is a species of mammal in the family Eupleridae of the order Carnivora"? I'm afraid there are few plain-English labels that are really applicable to this species. Ucucha 17:19, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

The problem is the silly notion that one has to periodically reform all common terms in English usage based upon either new ideologies (cladism) or the idea that layman are irredemably stupid. Try calling it a starfish. People will freak out. You have to call it a seastar or they might think it has gills, fins and a backbone!!! (Not to mention that they are not stars, and the the term sea is not rigorously defined.) So now we have the silly idea that if we call Carnivores "Carnivores" people might get confused and think we only mean "carnivores." So we have to call them carnivorans, a silly, ugly term which too should be capitalized, and which makes the beasts sound like leather workers of the Austrian Alps. The obvious answer is to call the animals Euplerid Carnivores of the genus Salanoia, distinguished from the brown-tailed mongoose by (appropriate morphological trait). That would be both logically sound and readable plain English. And it would call down upon us the wrath of the reformist Jihad.μηδείς (talk) 23:26, 3 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Reformist you say? "Carnivore" is also an accurate description of this animal (well, it probably is), but I think we should define species on where their affinities lay, not what they happen to eat. Ucucha 05:32, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
 * No. Pay attention.  Pandas are Carnivores, and so are these Euplerids, no matter what they eat.  Referring to Carnivores as carnivorans whether they be carnivores or not is a sad and arrogantly ignorant linguistic barbarity.  It is based on the reformer's false assumption that there is always someone stupider than he is in the room whom he needs to mistake from confusing carnassial bearing mammals with meat-eating organisms.  No amount of neologism will ever solve or prevent human stupidity, it only makes the educated suffer on behalf of the couldn't-care-less.μηδείς (talk) 06:12, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Do you realize that this "neologism" was first used in 1858 (and probably earlier)? "Carnivoran" and "carnivore" are two different words with different meanings that happen to be similar. The giant panda is a herbivore, and the thylacine was a carnivore, but the panda is a carnivoran, and the thylacine was not. Ucucha 06:17, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
 * You are reading quite a bit into people's intentions, I would advise against that. I use carnivoran when referring to pandas and carnivore when referring to crocodiles in order to be precise, not because I think my audience is stupid. ErikHaugen (talk) 19:10, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I never said the Thylacine was a Carnivore, nor the Panda a carnivore. Raro que vas a decirme como hablar "Plain English." En ingles hay diferencia entre mayúsculas y minúsculas, y lo que importan, aunque no lo sabes.μηδείς (talk) 06:39, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I can understand Spanish perfectly well, thank you, but I prefer to use English here. "Carnivore", in English, is capitalized only when it is at the beginning of a sentence. Ucucha 06:43, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Depending on context, if necessary, one can use capitalization to distinguish a word used to describe members of a specific defined collective group under a proper name such as Carnivores (members of class carnivora) or Democrats (members of the US political party) from carnivores (meat eaters) or democrats (believers in majority rule). This notion that we cannot accept two different senses for a word because the laymen might become confused is itself quite confused, and always arbitrary in its application.  The word primate, for example, has a much longer history in English of referring to the head of the Church of England.  Should we edit the article Primate and change the word to primatan because people might become confused and think we are referring to bishops as apes, or apes as bishops?  Do we rename the metal element Mercurium and the planet Mercuria so that they cannot be confused, god forbid, with the god Mercury?  Unfortunately, wikipedia has chosen a policy of not distinguishing between subjects by use of capitalization.  Even then, the use of the word carnivore to refer to members of the order even without capitalization is widespread and long established in English.  There would be no harm, for the sake of readability, in calling this animal a Euplerid carnivore.μηδείς (talk) 18:12, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
 * But those are different things. As far as I am aware, the literature never distinguishes between "Carnivores" = "members of Carnivora" and "carnivores" = "meat-eaters". As I am sure you understand, there is a much higher potential for confusion between "meat-eating animal" and "member of Carnivora" than there is between "high-ranking church official" and "member of Primates".
 * I'm not strongly opposed to using the construction you suggest; I noticed that the OED gives "member of Carnivora" as part of the definition of "carnivore" and the first volume of the Handbook of Mammals of the World, which covers the Carnivora, is titled "Carnivores". But "carnivoran" is also a commonly used term (see ISBN 9780521735865, for example), and it has been in use for some time (I cited an 1858 use above)—and it has the advantage that it is unambiguous. Ucucha 18:32, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Frankly, I don't even see the differentiation of the terms by capitalization as necessary. One can usually tell from context which meaning is meant, and even if choosing to use capitalization to differentiate senses is counter to wikipedia policy (a flawed policy I do not expect to overturn), there is always the use of linking to Carnivora. In general, wikipedia policy supports the use of the more widely used term. The word carnivore in the sense of member of the order carnivora is much more widespread than is the use of the term carnivoran.

If we limit ourselves to the lead sentence, I would suggest something along the lines of what I said above:

Salanoia durrelli is a Euplerid carnivore, distinguished from the congeneric brown-tailed mongoose, Salanoia concolor, by (appropriate morphological trait).

I think this is much better English. The question then becomes, what is the distinguishing trait?μηδείς (talk) 21:41, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think you're really getting to "plain English" by introducing the word "congeneric", or by simply stating "euplerid" (which shouldn't be capitalized anyway) without clarifying that it is a family. As for the trait: read the article. Ucucha 22:04, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I should think Euplerid, since it refers to a clade, and is not native English, would indeed be capitalized. My concern is not plain but well written and smoothly flowing English: a sentence that doesn't make you pause half-way thru and ask, "what?" The problem with the distinguishing trait is that the article lists several vague ones, and I don't simply want to pick one or two myself arbitrarily. Forced to do so I suppose I would pick the larger teeth and foot pads.μηδείς (talk) 01:04, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
 * As for distinguishing traits, in many cases, distinct species often differ in many little ways, and not by any one key identifying feature. The world is not all cows, pigs, horses, dogs, and cats... contrary to what the general public might like to think.  The problem here is that this is a technical article about a species of animal that most people don't even know exist.  When I give tours to the public and try to explain that a Fossa (another euplerid) is kind of like a civet or mongoose, the next question that invariably follows is: "What are civets or mongooses?"  The lesson here is that when writing for the general public, particularly on a technical topic, either prepare to misrepresent the facts (like Encyclopedia Britannica does) by being too general, or go into extra detail that frustrates both layman and expert alike.  I brought this discussion up at WT:FAC not too long ago.  Anyway, how would this alternate work for the two of you?


 * Salanoia durrelli is a species of predatory mammal native to Madagascar belonging to the family Eupleridae within the order Carnivora, and is found only around the area of Lac Alaotra. It is one of two species in the genus Salanoia. –  VisionHolder  « talk » 01:29, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, VisionHolder. I am a huge fan of Ernst Mayr and know that species are not defined phenetically, but since there are phenetic differences, most readers would want to know how they might attempt to tell the two species apart, however unlikely their having the chance to do so. I think we can assume that likely readers for this article will at least have heard of civets and mongooses. I like your suggested wording. The only problem being that it doesn't differentiate it very much from concolor.
 * Then add something about it to the second sentence about it to the second sentence, if possible. "It is one of two species in the genus Salanoia, distinguished from S. concolor by..." –  VisionHolder « talk » 03:41, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
 * That seems reasonable. However, the lead already says what it eats, a few sentences down, so I see no need for "predatory", and the second paragraph also lists distinguishing features. I have rewritten the first paragraph of the lead, hopefully in a satisfactory manner. Ucucha 06:23, 5 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and so it is our policy that "A Wikipedia article should not be presented on the assumption that the reader is well versed in the topic's field. Introductory language in the lead and initial sections of the article should be written in plain terms and concepts that can be understood by any literate reader of Wikipedia without any knowledge in the given field before advancing to more detailed explanations of the topic.". The lead of this article seems generally to be written in too technical a style and so we should make it more accessible.  To make a start, I shall amend the word in question as suggested. Colonel Warden (talk) 08:44, 16 October 2010 (UTC)