Talk:Tasmanian nativehen

citation
This article currently uses two inline citation styles. Any preferences for standardising it? Sabine's Sunbird  talk  08:21, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The one with the numbers which seems to be the general wiki standard. Noodle snacks (talk) 08:31, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Interestting that the length is mentioned, but would not the height be more relevant? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.42.81.138 (talk) 12:51, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

File:Gallinula mortierii 1.jpg to appear as POTD soon
Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:Gallinula mortierii 1.jpg will be appearing as picture of the day on November 1, 2010. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2010-11-01. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page so Wikipedia doesn't look bad. :) Thanks!  howcheng  {chat} 08:48, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Nomenclature

 * 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. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: not moved. It is difficult to balance usage in reliable sources against a consistent style, since both concerns are very important. The consensus here, though, seems clear. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:23, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Tasmanian Nativehen → Tasmanian Native-hen – FelixWilson (talk) 23:59, 26 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Tasmanian Native-hen redirect to Tasmanian nativehen should be reverted please and the original article moved back to Tasmanian native-hen.Further infromation about the correct name for this bird is listed on the talk page for the article, including multiple sources cited.

This change was based on the IOC checklist. However this name is not widely used outside this particular list it rarely appears, and not in any Australian sources of bird taxonomy. Birdlife international uses Tasmanian Native-hen. Birds Australia's official list uses Native-hen, as do all Australian field guides to birds. The research literature referenced in the article uses either native-hen or native hen, none of these sources use nativehen as a single word. FelixWilson (talk) 23:48, 26 July 2011 (UTC) FelixWilson (talk) 21:35, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
 * This article was recently changed from Tasmanian Native-hen to Tasmanian nativehen. I have reverted these changes based on the following:
 * thanks for your support. I am not fully aware of all the background to these rules in Wikipedia, but I would think that the principle in naming the article should be based on a consensus among significant sources rather than a single list which seems to have it's own homogenising agenda for names.
 * Oppose Yeah good point. We made a rule to use IOC unless there was a good reason not to, and this seems one of those instances. I will double check with others on the birds wikiproject and we might make a log of exceptions. I was going to support, but Steve Pryor;s observations on the unhyphenated names of other gallinules. Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:09, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Support. Can see why WP:BIRDS have their rule to follow the IOC, but I think this should be an exception. The large majority of RS's hyphenate and, to be honest, it just looks odd without a hyphen. Jenks24 (talk) 17:13, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Contra. Le raison d'etrè of the IOC initiative speaks precisely to the long-standing desire for homologation of English Common Names for birds.  The reasons above that would perorate the cause of making an exception in this case are precisely the same that have been invoked for many, many birds during this initiative.  There is no essential reason why this should be made an exception, and others that also enjoyed the same conditions, i.e., use on regional lists, regional guide books, etc., were not.  Further, if we look at the common names of the related genera Porphyrio, and Gallinula, we see such names as Swamphen, Woodhen, Moorhen already holding sway, without hyphenization!Steve Pryor (talk) 07:49, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: WikiProject Birds has been notified of this discussion.   A rbitrarily 0    ( talk ) 19:39, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose, per Steve's reasoning. Sabine's Sunbird  talk  20:02, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose, otherwise thousands of names will be fought over. We have chosen a standard; let's stick with it. Maias (talk) 00:22, 3 August 2011 (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. No further edits should be made to this section.

Nomenclature, continued (or resurrected with a small difference)
"Swamphen", "woodhen" and "moorhen", per Steve Pryor's argument above, differ dramatically from "nativehen" in that "native" doesn't describe a type of habitat. "Native" is referring to Tasmania, and "Tasmanian Native" is acting as a compound modifier (or adjective) of (for) "hen". "Swamphen" (etc) describes a hen of the swamp (etc). By that logic, "nativehen" indicates that this is a hen of "the native" and (still following the swamphen etc logic) this bird's full name should be rendered "Tasmaniannativehen", as it's a hen of not just any old native but of Tasmanian native (this is the type of grammar the current standard leads us into). This is one of those cases where an exception to WP's current chosen standard needs to be made, on the grounds of both usage and of grammatical logic.

I therefore propose "Tasmanian Native Hen", per the following sources:
 * Avibase - the world bird database (all 3 spellings of TNH appear)
 * The Tasmanian Parks & Wildlife Service
 * The University of Queensland
 * The Derwent Estuary Program
 * The following documents from Birdlife Australia:, ,

(Regarding the hyphenated form, "Tasmanian Native-hen": grammatically, no hyphen is actually needed, and using one hyphen begs the question "in that case, why not two?" i.e. "Tasmanian-Native-Hen")

-- Ty rS  02:31, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Tasmanian nativehen. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20061002000954/http://www.zoo.utas.edu.au/tfprofiles/tasanimals/nativehen2.htm to http://www.zoo.utas.edu.au/tfprofiles/tasanimals/nativehen2.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 08:12, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

"Tasmanian Native Hen"
Please find below an updated list of citations & a book reference supporting my move request to Tasmanian Native Hen and the use of "Tasmanian native hen" in the article.


 * The University of Tasmania
 * The University of Queensland
 * Birdlife Australia:  http://www.birdlife.org.au/images/uploads/branches/documents/TAS-Bruny_endemics.pdf
 * The Tasmanian Parks & Wildlife Service
 * The Derwent Estuary Program
 * Cayley, Neville W. (1971). What Bird is That? (5th, revised ed.). Sydney: Angus & Robertson. p. 251. ISBN 0207941300.

--Philologia (talk) 15:53, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Requested move 15 November 2018

 * The following is a closed 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 after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Not moved. (non-admin closure) Steel1943  (talk) 05:45, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Tasmanian nativehen → Tasmanian Native Hen – 99% of sources use "Tasmanian Native Hen" (please see the | post above for five web citations - 2 from Australian universities - & a book reference; also talk page post dated 18 Nov 2011, to which no-one has responded for three years, suggesting that the move should be uncontroversial). Moreover, "nativehen" is not a word (full argument re this at Nov 2011 post). Philologia (talk) 15:32, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
 * This is a contested technical request (permalink). Philologia (talk) 16:53, 15 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Oppose, per my comment in the previous discussion (2 Aug 2011, above) on this issue. Maias (talk) 00:17, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose - per expediency; in this case I'd rather have consistency and reliable system for naming within WP than by-the-numbers following of usage preponderance. But, honestly, not bothered too much either way. -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 08:33, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Note (1) I meant, but forgot, to mention that the 18 Nov 2011 post was mine, made under my previous name.
 * (2) The main WP policy bases for my move proposal are WP:RF (this article should be named & written for general readers, not for ornithology experts who happen to subscribe to the dictates of the IOC) and WP:TITLE, lede, 2nd paragraph (my inserted letters for clarification):
 * "Generally, article titles are based on what the subject is called in reliable sources. [The other] principles [are]: the ideal article title
 * [a] precisely identifies the subject;
 * it is [b] short,
 * [c] natural,
 * [d] distinguishable and
 * [e] recognizable;
 * and [f] resembles titles for similar articles."
 * "Tasmanian native hen" unequivocally ticks boxes a (precise identification), c (natural) (unlike "Tasmanian nativehen") and f (boxes b, d and e aren't applicable). I don't think that concerns over what might happen with other articles names (box 6, presumably? If arguing that "resemblance" should be interpreted as "orthographically identical per IOC practice") should override the fact that academic and other sources overwhelmingly use "Tasmanian native hen" and that "Tasmanian nativehen" is not used by academic sources [main principle a] and is extremely unnatural (in terms of the grammatical logic).--Philologia (talk) 16:21, 16 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Comment - the bird project was forced to decapitalise all bird names after an unfortunate RFC years ago (see WP:BIRDCON, where it was imposed on the bird project by people unfamiliar with bird literature, leading to many bird editors leaving Wikipedia for good), so it is not going to happen. Whichever way we choose, we should be consistent across articles. You could suggest capitalising all articles again, that would get you further, but probably not by much. FunkMonk (talk) 08:49, 22 November 2018 (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.

spelling within the article
As the overwhelmingly most common way to render "native hen" is "native hen" (see 8 citations below), and "nativehen" is only used in a few specialist sources, I propose that the article use "native hen" and the first sentence be edited as follows: "The Tasmanian native hen [here citing the 8 citations below] (also Tasmanian native-hen or, in specialist sources, [here citing eBird & IOC] Tasmanian nativehen)..." --Philologia (talk) 13:39, 20 November 2018 (UTC)


 * "native hen"
 * The University of Tasmania
 * The University of Queensland
 * Birdlife Australia:  http://www.birdlife.org.au/images/uploads/branches/documents/TAS-Bruny_endemics.pdf
 * |The Oxford English Dictionary
 * |The Merriam-Webster Dictionary
 * The Tasmanian Parks & Wildlife Service
 * The Derwent Estuary Program
 * Cayley, Neville W. (1971). What Bird is That? (5th, revised ed.). Sydney: Angus & Robertson. p. 251. ISBN 0207941300.


 * "nativehen"
 * ebird https://ebird.org/news/taxonomy-update-for-2017/
 * IOC https://www.worldbirdnames.org/updates/archives/taxonomy-version-2/
 * ...don't bung that stuff in the lede, man... that's what the "nomenclature" section is for. The lede is ideally FREE of references, we definitely don't want half a dozen in there just to make a pedantic point. -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 17:36, 22 November 2018 (UTC)