Talk:Sphinx (genus)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Moved. DavidLeighEllis (talk) 01:33, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Sphinx (moth) → Sphinx (genus) – WikiProject Lepidoptera typically uses (moth) to disambiguate moth genera when necessary. But this can be misleading. This case in particular falls under WP:INCDAB. Sphinx (moth) implies a moth known as Sphinx. Here, there are other moths known by this name, such as Fabulous Green Sphinx Moth. While my personal recommendation would be for the project to move to standardized (genus) disambiguation, for now let's just focus on this one case that's problematic under the current naming conventions (and of course, there are instances where (genus) isn't specific enough as well). After fixing incoming links, the current title should redirect to Sphingidae. BDD (talk) 21:07, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Strong support. I absolutely would have assumed that Sphinx was a specific species of moth, or perhaps one particularly notable moth, not a genus. I am neutral on the redirect change. Red Slash 01:54, 14 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Support. (genus) is a less ambiguous dab term in this case. However, I'm wary of standardizing use (genus) of as the disambiguator. Genus names are often ambiguous because there a genus in another kingdom with the same name. Looking at Lepidoptera articles |using (moth) I see that lep genera tend to avoid the pattern of many organisms in having genus names as polysyllabic Greek/Latin compounds, or just tacking a Latinate suffix on to a decidely non-Latin term (when I saw Stephensia (moth) I immediately and correctly suspected it would be ambiguous with another genus). Lepidoptera might be able to use (genus) fairly consistently as a dab term, but (genus) doesn't work very well across the tree of life. The single largest source of ambiguity for plant genera on Wikipedia is animal genera. Clearly the converse doesn't hold (as there are more genera of animals than plants, any single animal genus is less likely to have a counterpart among the plants (or bacterium) than vice versa). I've looked into dab terms across various organismal WikiProjects before, and it seems to me that the de facto standard is to use a term a common name that corresponds closely to a Tree of Life subproject scope (e.g. (plant), (fish), (gastropod)) although (genus) is also a popular dab term. For Lepidoptera there are 848 articles with (moth), 196 with (butterfly), 129 at (genus), and 5 at (animal)/(insect). Plantdrew (talk) 05:38, 14 March 2014 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Possible move
I've gradually changed the disambiguators on Lepidoptera genus articles from "genus" to "butterfly" or "moth". That was the majority when I started working with Lepidoptera on Wikipedia and now I don't think there are any more "(genus)" disambiguators, except this one. I understand the arguments above, because there are other meanings for "sphinx" as a moth. Rather than boldly make the change, I thought I'd bring it up here; what would you think of changing this to Sphinx (moth genus)? It's important to me, because I like things to be in order, but I'd like some other opinions. Thanks, SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨ 00:46, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
 * It sounds like you're in agreement that "Sphinx (moth)" is problematic, but I don't understand the argument for "Sphinx (moth genus)". Unless I did my searching wrong, "moth genus" would be a totally novel qualifier. WP:ATDAB says to "use only as much additional detail as necessary", noting that "This may lead to some acceptable inconsistency". (The latter point is probably moot, since we're talking about acceptable inconsistency either way.) Put another way, I think I understand what you value here (having things in order), but not how your proposed move serves that. --BDD (talk) 16:26, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I won't oppose (moth genus) if there's an RM for it. I'm keen to continue to move away from (genus) disambiguators (actually I've had a tab open for several days now with a search for all articles that have a (genus) disambiguator); the single biggest source of ambiguity for the scientific name of a genus is another genus named under a different nomenclatural code, so (genus) is often not sufficient to disambiguate. However, I think that (genus) may be a good disambiguator in a few cases. Stevia, asparagus and vanilla cover plant products derived from a single species in the eponymous genera; Stevia (genus), Asparagus (genus), and Vanilla (genus). A (plant) disambiguator in these examples could potentially be interpreted as applying to the species that provides these products. The article title criterion relevant here is WP:CONSISTENT. I don't really have a strong opinion whether it is more consistent to have a single Lepidoptera genus using the disambiguator (genus) (also used for a few articles on non-Lepidoptera genera, but no other Lepidoptera) or to have (moth genus) (used in no other articles, but consistent with many other Lepidoptera disambiguators that start with (moth...).) (moth genus) is also less WP:CONCISE than (genus) here. I'll note that Calamus (palm) also uses a one-off disambiguator that isn't consistent with any other plant article. Calamus (plant genus) is a redirect there. The most significant meaning of Calamus in a plant context is arguably Acorus calamus, which is commonly called calamus when used as an herbal medicine, so the (plant) disambiguator isn't a great chocie (and there is an animal genus, Calamus (fish) that prevents using Calamus (genus) for the palm genus). (moth genus) might be an improvement here, if so, I'd reconsider (palm) vs. (plant genus) for calamus. Plantdrew (talk) 02:36, 22 June 2020 (UTC)