Talk:Prawn

Pointy edits
Would it be possible to merge this article with the article for Shrimp? It seems to me that that should be done. --Jangodom (talk) 15:42, 16 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Prawn is not a taxon. Please explain your pointy and inaccurate reversions, together with your cryptic comments that the article has to be directed in this strange way because of "incoming" and "uncoming links". --Epipelagic (talk) 07:26, 7 September 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't know where this comment was until recently, but I didn't see it. Do not accuse me of violating WP:POINT unless you have very good reasons for doing so, which you certainly don't have in this case. It is standard practice when moving articles and changing redirects to investigate what articles link to those articles. Many articles which linked to "prawn" when it was used to mean "Dendrobranchiata" should be altered to point to Dendrobranchiata after the move, because that was the topic that was being linked to at the time (i.e. someone inserted a link knowing that the page they were linking to covered Dendrobranchiata specifically, not the vague meaning you prefer). Changing the redirect without first fixing the links undermines all the articles that link to it by silently changing the targets of their links. There were many links leading to this page which I hadn't got around to fixing before the hasty move, and I see no evidence in your edit history that you have been making those changes. That was (one reason) why the move shouldn't have gone ahead so soon. I wasn't trying to stop it happening; I was just trying to make sure that other articles wouldn't be compromised by having it done hastily. Sadly, my efforts were in vain. Again, you failed to assume good faith, and again you got it wrong. It is getting harder and harder not to see your edits as a disruptive influence, whatever your intentions may have been. --Stemonitis (talk) 15:32, 12 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Prawn is not a taxon. You continued to redirect the prawn article to a taxon. That was disruptive, or certainly pointy. It was not disruptive to point that out. I haven't edited the incoming links because you've recently edited many of them in inappropriate ways. I'm at the stage where it seems better to leave them in a mess than be subjected to abuse for correcting them. As far as your accusations go, anyone who examines our interactions at length will see a very different story from the one you present here. I see you continue to remove cited material without discussing the matter on the talk page. Last time I reinstated cited material you had removed without discussion, you said I had "flouted policy in order to reinstate it". The fact is you flouted policy by removing it that way in the first place. As an administrator, you really should have some handle on Wikipedia policies. I appreciate you don't usually read what I say, and there's little point replying. From now, I will no longer respond to comments you make which are abusive and assert unsubstantiated generalities. I will respond to comments which make specific points and are civil. --Epipelagic (talk) 00:37, 13 September 2012 (UTC)


 * You are missing the point. I restored the redirect pending fixes to other articles, which would allow exactly the change you wanted to be made, but made well. If someone has deliberately linked their article to one which explicitly covers Dendrobranchiata (say) and you change things such that that content will no longer be reached from that link, it is expected that you will fix that link so that it continues to link to the content it was intended to reach. Failure to do so alters the meaning of that other article without there being anything in its edit history to show that has happened. This is all entirely separate from any assertions about whether prawns do, or do not, form a taxon; for many people, of course, they do. (The rest of your message is a misrepresentation of the facts; you did not have consensus for adding the material you added, although the onus was on you, as the person adding material to demonstrate that you had consensus for it. That is policy. It is at WP:BURDEN, which is part of the core policy of verifiability.) --Stemonitis (talk) 18:35, 13 September 2012 (UTC)


 * You keep referring to me to WP:BURDEN. I don't know why. Please read it yourself. What it says is: You may remove any material lacking an inline citation to a reliable source. Periodically you peremptorily remove reliability sourced material I have added, instead of discussing the matter on the talk page. That is aggravating. You say I "did not have consensus for adding the material [I] added, although the onus was on [me], as the person adding material to demonstrate that [I] had consensus for it". Where does it say anything like that in verifiability? Nothing much would happen on Wikipedia at all if you had to go some drama board and get consensus every time you wanted to add something to an article. Anyway, can we please stop this unproductive bickering. I don't mind arguing from time to time if it results in useful improvements. If you have improvements in mind, I'm interested, otherwise I'm getting on with other stuff. --Epipelagic (talk) 21:08, 13 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Then please see Talk:Shrimp, where John and I are waiting for you to signal your willingness to enter into a compromise and allow much-needed improvements. --Stemonitis (talk) 04:52, 14 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Really. Surely John is waiting for you to signal your willingness to enter into a compromise. --Epipelagic (talk) 05:08, 14 September 2012 (UTC)


 * I can restate my willingness, if that's what it takes, but it needs you to do so too. --Stemonitis (talk) 05:13, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Canadian usage
The bits in here about 'North American' usage aren't accurate based on my experience. Restaurant usage may be different, but, at least in British Columbia, the term 'prawn' is common when speaking of what are apparently large shrimp. I have also accompanied people bringing up 'prawn' traps on the coast of British Columbia (i.e., in salt water, not fresh). So, neither of the main points about North American usage in the article seem to correctly reflect usage in British Columbia (and possibly other regions of Canada). Maybe it varies by region within North America? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.241.28.27 (talk) 20:53, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

I've removed specific references to Canada in the text. Do you know of any reliable sources that specifically discuss Canadian usage. --Epipelagic (talk) 21:29, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Having lived on the West Coast of the U.S. for all of my life (specifically California and Oregon), I have the same experience. Perhaps it's more of a Pacific Coast terminology than anything else (though I don't know for sure).108.211.35.163 (talk) 09:56, 16 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Then again, the US Term section below seems to indicate that it's that way for the entire U.S.108.211.35.163 (talk) 10:01, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Non-English countries

 * Transferred from User talk:Epipelagic

The ridiculous paragraph you want to add to prawn is of no relevance to the article and must be removed. Why do you think it is important? English has an ambiguous term, and there is no reason to think that other languages would follow suit. You are therefore listing a group of non-synonyms, for no good reason. The article (which also needs to be re-written along the lines of the changes I carried out at shrimp, incidentally) is effectively about a linguistic confusion, which will inevitably be confined to a single language. The contention of that paragraph is that other languages "avoid all this confusion by having a single term". This is WP:OR, and is not cited to a reliable source, even if the non-translations are. --Stemonitis (talk) 07:15, 7 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Well Holthuis discussed the matter at some length, so clearly he disagrees with you, as do I. To me it is quite illuminating to realize that the seeming shrimp/prawn divide is merely an artifice of the way the English language developed, and the problem simply doesn't exist in other languages. There is no original research in that, just a very simple logical conclusion that automatically follows once it has been established that the rest of the world make no such distinctions. I assume you still have a hangover from your earlier insistence that prawns are a special taxon in their own right, quite distinct from shrimp. --Epipelagic (talk) 08:25, 7 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Holthuis is introducing a work in which the (FAO's preferred) names of taxa are given in several different languages, which is why he included a brief (!) discussion of names in other languages. Nowhere does he pretend that they use different names to "avoid the confusion" or any such nonsense. The context of his work in entirely different from the context of this article. He does not state that this is an interesting issue, or one that should be included in a generalist, monolingual, online encyclopaedia. It may seem like an illuminating point to you, but it seems like stating the bleedin' obvious to me. If that is the only point that the paragraph is trying to make, then (a) it is not very clearly written, and (b) it is not worth including. That is only amplified by the fact that Holthuis goes on to discuss ambiguous terms in other languages, undermining the whole point of the paragraph entirely. The only language in which he discusses a term that "causes no problems" is French. Your paragraph also discusses Italian and Norwegian, which Holthuis doesn't mention. There's a lot of original research there, and no value in its inclusion. (I might also add that your translation into Portuguese is incorrect, which is odd, because Holthuis makes the same mistake, but it would be very unlikely for you to base its inclusion solely on a three-word parenthetical statement in a single source.) --Stemonitis (talk) 08:45, 7 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm dimwitted, Stemonitis. Many of the reader of this article will be dimwitted as well, and we need it pointed out to us before it becomes " bleedin' obvious". It is certainly not irrelevant. If you can write it more clearly, then go for it. Giving sourced translations for Italian and Norwegian is not "a lot of original research". In fact it's not original research at all. As far as the incorrect translation to Portuguese goes, it is not only Holthuis and myself that are in error, but also Google translator and this dictionary. Are you just referring to the absence of a tilde? Anyway, if you know it is wrong please fix it. --Epipelagic (talk) 09:26, 7 October 2012 (UTC)


 * No, it is absolutely irrelevant. We don't generally provide a list of translations, even when they are semantically equivalent. We certainly don't include a list of foreign-language terms when they are not equivalent, and I see no reason why this case should be any different. (Both Google Translate and that dictionary correctly include the accent, incidentally, so they are hardly supporting your mis-spelling. The accent is not a minor feature; it is the difference between right and wrong.) There is no need to "write it more clearly", because there is no good reason to include it. That is why I have deleted it twice. But worse than that, it is misleading. Its point appears to be that foreign languages use a single term, and therefore do not suffer from the confusion that some parts of English-language society do, but Holthuis explicitly states that several other lanauges have similarly confusing terms. The whole point of the paragraph is untenable.
 * Your failure to co-operate when faults are pointed out is exceedingly tiresome, and I wish that just for once you would listen to the criticism and improve the article yourself, rather than making a mountain out of a molehill, and forcing third-party input before you will listen. The paragraph is misleading, and the one minor point it is trying to make is so trivial as to be unworthy of inclusion. The solution is simple: delete it. --Stemonitis (talk) 09:46, 7 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Did you not notice which way the consensus of previous third party inputs went? I agree Holthuis doesn't altogether back what is in that small section, and it could do with a bit more work. But trying to develop crustacean articles is not worth this endless unpleasantness and drama. Do look in a mirror sometime and see if you notice something less than friendly. --Epipelagic (talk) 11:42, 7 October 2012 (UTC)


 * You agree that the only reference doesn't back up the paragraph. So remove it, or allow me to remove it. --Stemonitis (talk) 11:45, 7 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Whatever you want. --Epipelagic (talk) 11:48, 7 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you. --Stemonitis (talk) 12:03, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

US Term
Uh, no. Prawns are the largest of shrimp, usually reserved for shrimps 4+ inches or longer. Go to any grocery store in the entire US, and you'll find everything from the smallest 40+ shrimp/pound to very large species are called shrimp, never prawns. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.124.29.17 (talk) 19:20, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
 * As far as I can make out, the article doesn't disagree with you. Larger shrimps are called prawns in Britain. Can you be more specific about what you think is incorrect. --Epipelagic (talk) 20:13, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
 * The point of contention is that the article states that in the US, prawn "indicates small shrimps". This is not true. In US common usage, prawns are larger shrimps. The reference cited for this dates to 1958 and was written by a UK author, not somebody intimately familiar with US usage (a US reference from 1953 is quoted therein, but may have been more concerned with a freshwater/marine distinction). Perhaps usage has evolved in the last 55 years, but presently, in the US, prawns are large shrimps. There's some good discussion of the distinction in the first 4 sentences of the US section, but the last two sentences are wrong. Maybe delete the last two sentences and add this as a source for prawns being larger?Plantdrew (talk) 21:50, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree. Prawn usually implies a larger shrimp. Gohmifune (talk) 02:45, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Shrimp vs prawn
User:Anna Frodesiak pointed out some shrimp oddities at Talk:Shrimp_(food), including the fact that Shrimp had a hatnote of "See also: Prawn versus shrimp"; which linked to Prawn, which had a hatnote of "See also: Shrimp versus prawn" back to the original section. Both sections are largely identical, paragraph-for-paragraph, except that the shrimp article goes into more detail about taxonomic studies.

So I cut the Shrimp article see-also (since it seemed silly to advise the reader to "See also" an abbreviated copy of the same section) and changed the Prawn link to "For more details on this topic, see Shrimp § Shrimp versus prawn" - clarifying that the link is to a subsection of a similar article which has more information, rather than being a standalone language article or a monster movie. I also summarised and unboxed the lengthy L. B. Holthuis quote (as an overview of regional variations, it works much better as an introduction to that section rather than floating at the side where it could be read as applying to the UK section only) and cut a potentially confusing "this is not a prawn" picture of a shrimp, given that this article is about prawns and has only one other image.

A few hours later User:Epipelagic reverted the edits I made to this article saying "can't you find something more constructive to do McGeddon, than resuming your attempts at provocation", and I have no idea what this means. I've never edited either article before. What's the problem here? --McGeddon (talk) 08:49, 19 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Hi McGeddon and Epipelagic. Okay, let's get this sorted out at Talk:Shrimp (food). Anna Frodesiak (talk) 21:39, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

Five characteristics of a prawn
Hi 105.112.210.236 (talk) 21:52, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: English 1101 033
— Assignment last updated by Muzammilmm (talk) 16:21, 17 November 2022 (UTC)