User:Genesyz/sandbox

I am not completely sure I understand all the implications of the term move as it applies to renaming articles and/or to directing the results of search terms by readers, so I will address them separately.
 * (1) Whether or not the article for the species (Pan troglodytes) is renamed, I suggest searches by readers using the term chimpanzee be directed to this article for the species instead of to the article for the genus, and that there be a disambiguation of chimpanzee that includes its occasional generalization to encompass both species. I doubt it is contentious to assert that the vast majority of readers searching for an article about the species would search for chimpanzee, not common chimpanzee, and conversely, by far most readers searching with the term chimpanzee would expect to be taken to an article about the species, not the genus. Additionally, the minority of readers looking for the genus when searching with the term chimpanzee would clearly and easily be directed to the desired article by the beginning sentences found within either of the two species' articles. This would be consistent with the way analogous searches for terms like dogs and horses have been handled in Wikipedia. These are also common names for species that are sometimes generalized to refer to higher taxa (canis and equus), but searches using the common names are directed to articles for the species. This would make more sense and reduce unnecessary confusion. If you look through some of the past edits to the article for the genus, you will see that chimpanzee directing people to the genus article has in fact caused confusion. Furthermore, claiming the term chimpanzee is ambiguous is hardly an argument for opposition, since this change would remove all ambiguity and confusion without impeding searches or obscuring information in the slightest.
 * (2) I propose the name of the article for the chimpanzee as a species should be changed from "Common chimpanzee" to "Chimpanzee," for a couple reasons. First, the term common chimpanzee was coined to distinguish this species from another closely related animal that was at the time most commonly referred to as pygmy chimpanzee, but which now is recognized as a separate species and almost exclusively called bonobo. Prior to the discovery of bonobos, chimpanzees as a species were just called chimpanzees. In any event, common chimpanzee is not incorrect, but now its use only makes sense either as a parallel term for pygmy chimpanzee or as a convenience for clarifying some discourse intended to apply to chimpanzees in contrast to bonobos (or vice versa). When talking about just the species Pan troglodytes by itself (as we do with the title of an article about only this species), without specifically speaking of it in relation to the species Pan paniscus, there is no reason to call it common chimpanzee instead of just chimpanzee. Good luck finding a recent scholarly journal article that does. I agree it is worth telling readers that common chimpanzee is another name used for the animal, but it's not the name most commonly used by laypeople or by experts, which is my second main reason for advocating changing the title of the article. Why use it as the title of the article if it's not more accurate and is not even the most common term anyone uses?


 * I did a search on Google Scholar using the search terms: Pan troglodytes research papers, and limited the results to those published since 2015. There was no cherry-picking. Here are the results of the first two pages (20 results), where I stopped:

 Pan paniscus = Bonobos, Pan troglodytes = Chimpanzees  Pan troglodytes = Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii)  Pan Troglodytes = Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii)  Pan troglodytes = Chimpanzees  Pan troglodytes = Chimpanzees  Pan troglodytes = Chimpanzees  Pan troglodytes = chimpanzees  Pan troglodytes = Chimpanzee  Pan troglodytes = Chimpanzee  Pan paniscus = Bonobos, Pan troglodytes = Chimpanzees  Pan troglodytes = Chimpanzees  Pan troglodytes = Chimpanzee  Pan troglodytes = Chimpanzees, Pan paniscus = Bonobos  Note: from this link, followed link to HTML article at nih.gov Pan troglodytes = Chimpanzee, Pan paniscus = Bonobo  Pan troglodytes = Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii)  Pan troglodytes = Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus)  Pan troglodytes = Chimpanzee  Pan troglodytes = Chimpanzee  Pan troglodytes = Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes ellioti)  Pan troglodytes = Chimpanzees

Summary: References to Pan troglodytes as chimpanzee(s) = 20. References to Pan troglodytes as common chimpanzee(s) = 0.

Note: Five of these (2, 3, 15, 16, and 19) were specifically about subspecies of Pan troglodytes, so counting them might not be fair, but none of the 20 articles called Pan troglodytes common chimpanzee(s), not even those articles that also included bonobos, where using it might have been justified for emphasizing some distinction from bonobos. I did not read past the titles and abstracts though, so feel free to dig deeper.

Conclusion: If common chimpanzee is still sometimes used as a name for the species Pan troglodytes in the absence of any mention of Pan paniscus, I do not think it is done very often, and certainly not routinely. It is self-evidently a relative term, and the common is superfluous when referring only to chimpanzees without referring to them in relation to bonobos, or in emphasizing some distinction from bonobos. So this article specifically about the single topic of chimpanzees as a species should just be titled Chimpanzee.

I thought I had saved links to the individual papers. I don't know what I did wrong. :/