Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Acuminatus


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete as WP:PTM and impediment to search results. No analogous entry in the list Tristis now redirects to. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:40, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Acuminatus

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This is a dab page that lists some of the species whose systematic name has acuminatus as a species epithet. Such a list has no encyclopedic relevance, and it serves no disambiguation purpose as none of the species is referred to using just the epithet. See also Articles for deletion/Tristis (2nd nomination) for an extended discussion of a similar case. – Uanfala (talk) 15:13, 15 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep Useful in my opinion to have such a list. Can be expanded. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 15:27, 15 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Disambiguations-related deletion discussions. North America1000 15:32, 15 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Organisms-related deletion discussions. North America1000 15:32, 15 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Redirect Quoting from the AfD linked above: It's as if we said that because there are organisms called "greenfinch", "green woodpecker", "green crayfish" and "green spider flower", we should have an article at "Green" that disambiguated them. Not a realistic search term, no functional relationship between species with this name, no encyclopedic use of this list. As with Tristis, redirecting this to an entry at List of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names should do fine. -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 19:56, 15 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Redirect as per my earlier view and the point made by : not an encyclopedic term, WP:NOTDICT. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:02, 15 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep Dab pages listing scientific names are definitely useful for readers. — Sago tree spirit  (talk) 22:32, 15 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Nom comment. I'd have thought redirecting to List of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names would be obviously off the table: that list – which is already pretty big, and probably bigger than it needs to be – does not contain an entry for acuminatus, or any of the large number of similar shape-based epithets like acicularis or attenuatus. – Uanfala (talk) 01:55, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
 * What's the objection to adding a new entry? If nothing else, the number of entries at Acuminatus shows that it's a common species name. -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 02:23, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
 * It is a relatively common species epithet, but so are acicularis, attenuatus, and many more. Generally, I don't like the idea of adding a random entry into a monstrous list just so some dab page could be redirected instead of deleted, though if the people who look after that list are happy to integrate this and similar entries, then I won't get in the way. But even then, just look from the point of view of a reader. If this page is deleted, then anyone who searches for this term will see the search results (where all the articles with this as a species epithet are at the top of the list), and a prominent link pointing to the wiktionary entry, which has relevant information about the Latin word. If on the other hand this page is not deleted but kept as a redirect, then that reader will be cut off from the search results and just sent to a list item that provides a local copy of a dictionary definition. Which one is better? – Uanfala (talk) 03:15, 16 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep. As someone who encounters taxonomic names regularly, I think it's useful to have a freestanding list of different organisms that share a specific name. A reader might well be familiar enough with a species to know the name, but hazy about the genus it belongs to—and as the list demonstrates, many genera can share the same descriptive name among their species.  A Wiktionary entry will only tell you what the specific name means, unless you already know the generic name—so if you've forgotten it, you may as well not bother looking.  You won't find it.  This is a disambiguation page by another name, and would benefit from more information—for instance, grouping by taxonomic hierarchy, with common names and descriptions sufficient to help readers sort out what each entry refers to.  I can't see any benefit to deleting it.
 * With respect to Elmidae's point, this isn't like listing "organisms with 'green' in the name". This is like listing "organisms with 'finch' in the name".  Sure, most of them will be birds, unless there are some "finch plants"—and readers could easily be directed to a list of notable people named "Finch" with a hatnote.  But different kinds of birds are called finches, not all of them closely related, and some of them have multiple names—so an article listing different "finch" names and identifying which each refers to would be useful to readers.  This article lists mostly—perhaps entirely—plants, and unless you're a botanist, and probably a very good one, you won't be familiar with all of them, or be able to distinguish between them all based solely on their generic names.  So I'd say it serves a very useful purpose, and would be much more useful if expanded along the lines that I suggested.  P Aculeius (talk) 13:34, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
 * The finches are not analogous at all: any one of the many different species involved can be called a "finch", whereas none of the species whose systematic name has "acuminatus" in it are normally called just that. "Acuminatus" here functions exactly like "Green" in the example quoted by Elmidae. Still, could it be that some reader might only remember that the species they're looking for has a name ending in "acuminatus"? Sure! But that's precisely what the search engine is there for. Having a page that blocks the search results and currently only lists half of the relevant species is worse than nothing. – Uanfala (talk) 14:07, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
 * It's quite like the word "finch" in the sense that there are a limited number of things that could belong in this list, and all or nearly all of them belong to a particular category: taxonomic nomenclature. Lots of things can be acuminate, just as they can be green.  But only a limited range of things is so named.  It's not practical or useful to list everything that's called green in a single article; but it is practical and useful to list organisms formally named acuminatus.  But I think the more important point is that the page doesn't so much "block search results" as it acts as a page that can collect relevant results in one place, rather than the user hoping to find all of the relevant search results in a linear fashion, and perhaps having to search—if, as you say, this article only lists half of the relevant species—fifty-eight separate articles (and that's assuming that they just happen to be the first fifty-eight results in a search) spread across six or ten pages of search results, and then wondering if still more searching is needed.  If, as you say, this article is half the size it needs to be to include the relevant topics, then the solution is to find the others and add them to it, not to delete it.  And obviously it would be more useful if the entries provided more information than "a species of tree", "a species of beetle".  But again, there's a straightforward way of doing that: adding the relevant information—not deleting the page.  P Aculeius (talk) 14:43, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Keep this Disambig page meets our requirements for WP:D Lightburst (talk) 17:47, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep It fulfils the part of WP:D. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 00:02, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete This page does not serve to usefully disambiguate anything. Instead, it sends readers searching for a binomial name containing the specific epithet 'acuminatus' up a blind alley; they would, as has been suggested above, be better served by simply seeing these more numerous search results to appreciate the magnitude of their task. I fully agree, that 'acuminatus' is equivalent to looking up 'green' (see viridis) - or simply looking up the name 'John' to find the person you want. It is nothing whatsoever like looking up 'finch', which is mostly a discrete group worthy of separating. A random, unsorted list of a few species names which happen to be so named with that specific epithet because they have some acuminate (i.e. pointed) feature to them seems to serve no encyclopaedic purpose.  Here are 278 plant species and subpecies with 'acuminatus' in them from the IPNI database, alone. That's a lot of 'Johns'. I would take a different view were we discussing a DAB page for a genus name, and not a species name, where there is a function served by listing similar genera (e.g. Prunella), but certainly not every vulgaris. A redirect to 'acuminate' would not serve a useful purpose, as it would actually prevent the broader Wikipedia search results being returned. Nick Moyes (talk) 00:44, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, —  Newslinger  talk   06:06, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete per the arguments by here. userdude 06:37, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete per Nick Moyes: this page actively inhibits Search. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 19:07, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete. WP:Partial title match explicitly rules out all the entries herein from dab pages. Or in the age of Trump, is black the new white? Clarityfiend (talk) 06:56, 25 March 2020 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.