Talk:Elk/Archive 2

elkburger image removal
An image I added of patties fo ground elk has been removed, apparently solely because it interfered with some new formatting in the ref section. I am not aware of any policy that could possibly be used to support the removal of relevant content in the interest of formatting. That seems entirely backwards to me and I don't see any real improvement to the ref section due to this formatting tweak. I also note that merely resizing the image does not seem to have been tried, it was simply removed altogether in the interest of formatting the section below the one it was posted in. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:25, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Your right i should have moved it not just removed it....I have added it back in a normal place. PS i would suggest you try Firefox or Google chrome ..as they give you much more options in editing wiki and layout styles options that can be seen. In other words Internet explore is old and does not have all the options available to be seen by Wikipidia like File:Wikipediareflistoverlap.gif and File:Col-2 template problem.png. Firefox is free  here Moxy (talk) 03:09, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

With all due respect, I can't see how the elk patties pic does anything to help the article...they look pretty much like hamburger patties...nor is it easy to identify the fat content just looking at the image. The image of the elk droppings doesn't add either, what with that hiking boot in the view...--MONGO 07:36, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I worked in foodservice for a long time, maybe its more obvious to the trained eye. The meat is also much darker than beef usually is... @Moxy: I'm not using IE, I'm using Safari. I've tried Firefox and Chrome, neither of them mesh as well with the gadgets and scripts I am used to using. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:49, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
 * So we're stuck with the image then...no offense, but I protest...I do not think it adds much to the article...I can compromise...can you get an image of just one burger as a close up...maybe some backlighting on it?...the image as it is just doesn't make the article better IMHO.--MONGO 00:16, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Update needed
I've been updating various deer articles, as there were a fair level of misunderstandings and alike. I'll leave the update of this article to others, but a few things whoever deal with it might consider (especially as this is a featured article): Most of these should be fairly easy to deal with based on the info already present in the taxonomic section of the Cervus article. 212.10.94.175 (talk) 01:43, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * 1) The genetic evidence for the split of the elk and the red deer is based on several articles, not just the one (as claimed in both lead and taxonomy section). See two more among references in Cervus (Pitraa et al. 2004 and Randi et al. 2001). If needed, there are others – if not familar with them → google scholar.
 * 2) With the "mixed taxonomic treatment" used in this article, it should also include the Asian subspecies wallichii, kansuensis and macneilli, which are not mentioned at all (and indeed their ranges aren't included on the map either).
 * 3) If following Ludt et al 2004 (as presently done for species level taxonomy in the article), most of the subspecies are invalid: The only valid are canadensis (including all North American populations), wallichii (with kansuensis and macneilli as junior synonyms), and xanthopygus (with alashanicus as a junior synonym). This drastic reduction in subspecies is not without opposition however, and consequently it is probably sensible to keep the many subspecies; just mention that perhaps only three subspecies are valid and the rest are junior synonyms.
 * 4) Two (xanthopygus and alashanicus) of the four subspecies presently listed for Asia in the subspecies section may represent a separate species. The same is the case for the wallichii group mentioned above. See Pitraa et al. 2004 for details.
 * 5) The placement of the taxon hanglu ("Kashmir Stag") is still not clear, and it could potentially be an elk.

Thank you for your suggestion. When you believe an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the  link at the top. The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). --Walter Siegmund (talk) 21:17, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes...and the jury is still out as to exactly how the DNA associates the various species and subspecies...I'll research this issue more and see if there there is now more general agreement amongst the scientific community.--MONGO 23:52, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Name
Could the article not be called "North American Elk" or "Wapiti" as just titling it "Elk" is confusing for Europeans, to whom an "elk" is what North Americans would call a moose. Could "Elk" then redirect to the disambiguation page? --Lemonade100 20:39, 24 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Please see Talk:Elk/Archive_1 for the most recent name change discussion. You can find several earlier discussions, also. All have failed to reach consensus. Walter Siegmund (talk) 21:20, 24 March 2011 (UTC)


 * While "elk" being a dab page would be best for global users, it would confuse Americans. DuncanHill (talk) 23:00, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
 * How many native English speakers misunderstand this?--MONGO 23:50, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
 * It shouldn't be too confusing to anyone. If you can't tell from the hatnote and the picture, you have problems. Having a dab page won't make things any easier for anyone. Instead of having some people (who are either non-native English speakers or from someplace without either animal) not at the page they're looking for, you'd make it so nobody ends up at the page they expect. LRT24 (talk) 04:13, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

European elk or Moose (Alces alces) - this is the primary meaning of Elk in English.
Miscategorized. European elk or Moose (Alces alces) - this is the primary meaning of Elk in English.

Is there a map for the distribution of European species or are we still forced to use the American map?

Do not Americanize European elk or Moose (Alces alces) - this is the primary meaning of Elk in English! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.75.78.130 (talk) 11:22, 23 May 2011 (UTC)


 * The primary meaning? On what basis? Like it or not, the US/Canada combine for about 3/4 of the world's native English speakers. And those are the only primarily English-speaking countries where moose or elk live.LRT24 (talk) 01:00, 26 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Please review the criteria of WP:TITLE and the archives of these discussions before proposing a change. --Walter Siegmund (talk) 05:00, 26 May 2011 (UTC)


 * The word "elk" does not have a clear primary meaning - in North American English it means the wapiti, in British English it means Alces alces. As the most active Wikipedians on this page are North American and don't care that the bad titling is highly likely to lead to incorrect linking, we are stuck with a badly titled page. DuncanHill (talk) 12:29, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Another way of putting it would be that we have discussed this multiple times before and there seemed to be a consensus that the words used by people who actually live in the countries where these animals are might be the way to go, employing hatnotes to direct those confused by it to the correct article. If you have a better idea bring it forward, but you should probably check the archives of this page for much, much more discussion on the subject. That people are linking to this page without bothering to make sure they are lnking to the correct page is a problem, but I don't see how re-titling this could prevent it. The best solution is to check new incoming links on a regular basis to make sure they are properly directed. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:31, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you for volunteering to check the links. I had a much better idea which was to use the binomials, removing the confusion altogether. Having elk as a dab page makes it really easy to check and correct incoming links, much easier than having a hatnote. DuncanHill (talk) 10:30, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Duncan...how many elk and moose live naturally in the UK?MONGO 19:33, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Elk have historically lived in the UK, and many British & Commonwealth people will have encountered elk around the world and written about them. I've eaten elk, and jolly nice it was too. Unfortunately, the imposition of American English on the word makes it much harder to ensure correct linking. DuncanHill (talk) 10:30, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
 * We don't generally use binomials when there is a common name. I'm sorry you feel slighted by this, but the fact is that the topic is clearly more related to North America and therefore American English is used in the articles. The ironic twist being that it was British explorers of North America who had never seen en Elk before who mis-identified the "wapati" as the same animal. This is such a lame dispute. I realize you didn't bring it up this time and that it is inevitable that it will come up again in the future, but seriously Duncan, you need to let it go. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:29, 27 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I do appreciate that correct linking and a respect for different national varieties of English are regarded as lame by most editors, that's been clear for a long time. The common name of this animal may well be elk, but elk is also the common name of Alces alces, so the word elk is ambiguous. DuncanHill (talk) 20:03, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Inventory of past discussions
Unless the purpose of the archiving is to conceal them, the references made to them on other talk pages mean editors deserve some help. (Altho this would work better with a surer means of keeping the Inventory from being archived!) --Jerzy•t 08:09, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

The dates preceding the section titles are for first (&, where applicable, last) dates per section.
 * Archive 1
 * 2006 Dec 08 - --- 16th 1 Cervidae
 * 2006 Dec 15 - 2 Contradictory statement, clarification needed
 *  2007 Sep 20 - (Headingless new topic, separated only by its lack of indentation - effectively, request for hatnote)
 * 2007 Mar 08 - 3 Protection from predators
 * 2007 Mar 25 - Nov. 3rd 4 Map of the elk's range
 * 2007 May 07 - 5 More to-do stuff
 * 2007 May 07 - 9th 6 Okay-
 * 2007 Jun 04 - 5th 7 Recommendations for improvement (minimal requirements for FA)
 * 2007 Jun 05 - 8 Reversion of User:Fluri's edits
 * 2007 Jun 05 - 9 My suggestions for the introduction, but without the brutal looking capitalized Elk.
 * 2007 Jun 12 - 10 Capitals
 * 2007 Jun 15 - 11 "confusingly"
 * 2007 Aug 16 - --- 19th 12 The Recent Edits
 * 2007 Aug 26 - 13 Subspecies
 * 2007 Sep 12 - (Headingless new topic; various Asian deer (wapiti?): Gansu (presumably kansuensis) and Shou (perh xanthopygus?)
 * 2007 Nov 02 - Dec. 7th 14 Classification
 * 2007 Dec 28 - '08Oct.6 15 Elk Ivory
 * 2009 Jul 30 - 16 Range
 * 2008 Jul 13 - --- 16th 17 Article title
 * 2008 Oct 06 - --- 11th 18 Elk OR Red Deer in New Zealand?
 * 2008 Dec 07 - --- 13th 19 Page move
 * 2009 Jan 08 - --- 25th 20 Key missing information
 * 2009 Mar 01 - 21 Raised importance rating
 * 2009 Mar 14 - 22 Wapiti - Cree or Shawnee?
 * 2010 Dec 03 - 4th 23 Main page
 * 2010 Dec 14 - 24 Elk -vs- Moose -vs- European Elk -vs- Wapati
 * 2009 Jan 17 - --- 28th 25 Moose/Elk - Question
 * 2010 Dec 14 - 26 map appears to be inaccurate
 * 2010 Dec 15 - --- 22nd 27 Requested move
 * (Archive full)

(More to come ' including Archive 2's so-far, and ? maybe i'll get to the table-formatting part ; it's tiring work .)--Jerzy•t 08:09 & 22:16, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Archive 2
 * 2011 Jan 20 - Mar. 3rd 1 elkburger image removal
 * 2011 Mar 11 - --- 25th 2 Update needed
 * 2011 Mar 24 - Apr 18th 3 Name
 * 2011 May 23 - --- 27th 4 European elk or Moose (Alces alces) - this is the primary meaning of Elk in English.
 * 5 etc (Archive not yet full)


 * Uh, what? Are you proposing that we keep an exhaustive list of every single conversation that has ever taken place here so that users will not have to look at all of two archives to find them? Many of those section headers provide no clue as to what is being discussed, I don't see how duplicating them here is any more helpful than having them in the TOC of the archive pages. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:30, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

--Jerzy•t 09:27, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Please see WP:TALK for talk page guidance. An archive search tool exists, but, as Beeblebrox suggests, it hardly seems necessary for this article. Many articles have 10 or more archived discussions, e.g., Talk:September 11 attacks; for them, the tool is helpful. --Walter Siegmund (talk) 02:42, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I hope you don't mind, but I've collapsed it. Beeblebrox (talk) 03:52, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Good move; i should add that to my own bag of tricks.


 * Walter, are you saying there is a point on WP:TALK that will clear up some misconception on my part?
 * If so, please at least mention a (sub)section title.
 * If not, my working assumption is that
 * you infer
 * from your inability to see the value of the inventory
 * that i don't understand the value of the automated ToC and some sort of search engine (which i can imagine, and consider no substitute for the ability to walk thru the history of a discussion, seeing it pretty much as its participants did)
 * and thus
 * that you think you know something about talk pages that i don't,
 * but you can't tell what it is.
 * But i've got a pretty good idea what i know, and you don't, about the purpose of the inventory, so
 * i'm pretty confident that there's no harm in ignoring your suggestion about WP:TALK
 * -- unless, of course, you do have something specific in mind, and you'd just rather not make the effort to be specific.
 * --Jerzy•t 11:14, 28 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Above, you said that "Unless the purpose of the archiving is to conceal them, the references made to them on other talk pages mean editors deserve some help." That suggested to me that you did not understand the purpose of archiving discussions. The purpose is not to conceal discussions. WP:ARCHIVENOTDELETE explains that "[l]arge talk pages become difficult to read and strain the limits of older browsers. Also loading time becomes an issue for slow internet connections. It is helpful to archive or refactor a page either when it exceeds 50 KB, or has more than 10 main sections." Currently, a section of this page is archived automatically after it has been inactive for 31 days by User:MiszaBot. Archiving was set up by who has made no other edits to this talk page or article. I think that the archiving of this page is consistent with the guidance of WP:TALK. --Walter Siegmund (talk) 22:21, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
 * For an admin, you have a very bizarre style of communicating with other users. Your overly elaborate personal talk page is, frankly, a confusing mess with piles of irrelevant information, and I'd hate to see you bringing that style out into article space. I have never seen what you are proposing before. You need to acknowledge that you are proposing a change, something new, and not following long established procedures regarding talk page archiving. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:43, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Ahh, I think I understand what is really going on here now, this is all about bots and archive links. That is hardly a problem limited to this one page, I suggest you seek a more comprehensive solution that does not involve adding cumbersome lists to any talk page that has ever been linked to. In fact there already is such a solution, to archive using ClueBot III, which will automatically update section links when performing archiving actions, avoiding linkrot. See Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship. I would add that it would have saved a lot of wondering exactly you were trying to do here if you had been more straightforward about it in the first place. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:51, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

FAQ
Talk:Elk/FAQ has had only one edit, and (unless i haven't yet found some section where its content was hashed out) may reflect only one editor's answer to the question. At the least, i would hope for it to acknowledge that the title has long been controversial, and, if relevant, point to whatever would correct my impression that there has probably never been a durable consensus on the primary topic of "elk". --Jerzy•t 08:32, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

"Unfortunately an error was made" and "mistakenly believed" are not the same as the article's phrase "thought that the larger North American animal looked like a moose". Nor is anything of those three sorts supported by the only plausibly relevantly placed ref in the article. It is a fact that "Elk" has long been broad enough (BTW, per AmHerDict, the Proto-Germanic root meant colors that apparently span red and brown) to be extended from Alces alces to the Irish elk (it may be i who added it to Elk (disambiguation)), suggesting that the core understanding of "elk" (as applied to mammals) was already "huge deer-like critter", and, in the absence of their testimony to the contrary, that those who called the North American wapiti "elk" may even have been aware that wapiti are distinguishable from both Alces alces and Irish elk, and thus in no sense mistaken. (In fact, statements by zoologists that they were "mistaken" should be disregarded except to the extent that said zoologists are shown to have spoken on the basis of solid peer-reviewed testimony of historian-linguist collaborations: only such collaborations know enuf about whether the "explorers" in question could have reconciled the zoologists' concepts of genome, species, and F1 hybrids with what the explorers knew and believed about the "essence" of a mule.) "Since both of these animals live in North America..." does not represent the portions of the reasoning that i have taken note of. It also discounts the stable guideline WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, and if it is going to do so, there should at least be a FAQ entry for "Why doesn't WP:PRIMARYTOPIC apply here?". I note that a discussion i read, comparing G-searches of "elk" co-occurring with genus names, seemed oblivious of "much more likely than any other ..., and more likely than all the other[s] combined" and "significantly greater enduring notability and educational value than any other" before moving on to no change w/o consensus. IMO, a FAQ is desirable, but the current one is worse than none. I'm removing the existing FAQ tag, and hope i've opened a discussion that can end in a better one. --Jerzy•t 01:04, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Currently the question reads
 * This article is not about the animal that many English speakers know as as an Elk. Why?
 * and the answer
 * Unfortunately an error was made by some explorers a long time ago. They mistakenly believed that the animal also known as a wapati was the same thing as an elk. Since both of these animals live in North America, the North American usage of the terms is used in the article names. For the animal known in Europe as an elk, see moose.
 * I won't speculate about why the question is so stated, but it is neither in the spirit of the posts i've seen start such the discussions, nor well responded to by the answer the same editor coupled it to.


 * I suppose as the person who crafted the FAQ page I should respond to this. This has been discussed to death, and in the end consensus has come down each time on the side of leaving "Elk" here and using hatnotes and the article text itself to point those confused by it in the right direction. The FAQ was merely intended to supplement that so that we don't have to have yet another tedious argument about the word "elk." If you think you can update the wording of the FAQ to make it easier to understand or whatever, be my guest, but it is indeed relevant and reflected in past conversations that we have chosen to use the words that North Americans use as opposed to the UK. Not because of any anti-UK prejudice, but rather because these animals actually live in North America and are not present in the UK, which would appear to be what got us into this mess in the first place. I'm not even sure what it is you are proposing to do other than adding another FAQ about why we are supposedly ignoring PRIMARYTOPIC, which to my recollection is not a frequently asked question. Perhaps I am mistaken, but I was under the impression that FAQ pages were to intended to prevent the same discussion replicating themselves over and over, not to engage in policy wonkery that will be of little help to a newbie trying to figure out why our article on the elk is not about the similar animal also known as a moose. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:26, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Beeblebrox is correct...I really don't know where this is heading....I'm confused by what you want to do here Jerzy--MONGO 02:32, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Please see Talk:Elk/Archive_2 for the most recent name-change discussion and review the criteria of WP:TITLE before proposing a change. --Walter Siegmund (talk) 02:49, 28 September 2011 (UTC)


 * I see you have now drafted some changes to the faq: . I can only say that if your goal was to make it easier to understand I would consider this attempt a failure. My version was simple and to the point. This new version is convoluted and seems to have been done with an agenda in mind. Calling alces alces the "true elk" is  not helpful at all. This new version is more likely to confuse someone further than to resolve their confusion in my opinion. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:11, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I rewrote it...I don't know if the term "unfortunately" was needed, so I removed it. Additionally, in Europe, the "elk" is known as the "moose" in North America, and the species commonly called the "elk" in North America is not found naturally in Europe, so I tried to clean that issue up.--MONGO 04:52, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Could we not call the Page "North American Elk" and have "Elk" go to a disambiguation page.128.240.231.56 (talk) 20:29, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
 * We could. If you feel strongly about it I suggest you file a WP:RM here and present your case for moving it. However I would be remiss if I did not mention that our naming conventions tell us to use the most common name. Obviously, what that is the crux of the whole problem here, but "North American Elk" is not the most common name for Cervus canadensis. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:02, 18 October 2011 (UTC)