Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cetaceans/Archive 5

Input needed at Talk:Springer (orca)
Hi everyone,

We could really use some community input on the Springer (orca) article. This article was stable until about three weeks ago when a large amount of content that I consider problematic was added to it, by a contributor with a conflict of interest. That contributor has apparently stopped editing, however at present the COI content is mostly still there and we need to deal with it somehow. At question are: processes for dealing with content added with COI, whether to revert to a version of the article that existed before the COI content was added, reliability of sources, due weight, and style issues. Cheers, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 08:23, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement
This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 03:06, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Important WikiProject Notice
Done. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 04:30, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Capitalization - fixing the articles
Talk:Bowhead whale has just been closed, and and I have moved all articles to the sentence-case form. All articles now need to be updated to use the sentence case form. Any volunteers?

Also, there was some disagreement in the RM over whether to use Ganges and Indus River dolphin or Ganges and Indus river dolphin. I moved it to the former title for now. Ucucha 23:59, 15 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Hello, I came across Steller's sea cow reading, of all things, the article about mermaids and was irritated by the format Steller's Sea Cow. Having spent the best part of the afternoon finding the guidelines (caps for birds, sentence case for just about everything else I believe), I have wikified the article to the harmonious use of sentence case everywhere.


 * I tried to move the page to Steller's sea cow (which is apparently only a redirect) but couldn't. I have added my name to the project list as this is the sort of thing I would like to help out with and, apparently, the articles are a bit "all over the place" in terms of consistency in naming conventions.


 * Can someone do this (and explain how to and why the move didn't work?). Thanks.

On another level, this information about capitalization and sentence case is buried on the talk page and took a while to find. Shouldn't it be clearly stated on the project page (and the page wikified to be consistent with sentence case)?  Captain Screebo Parley! 15:18, 17 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Capitalization on project page has been updated now. Earlier discussion is at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cetaceans/Archive 4. Nurg (talk) 02:20, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

River dolphins
As Ucucha noted, there was some uncertainty as to the capitalisation of one dolphin species, the Ganges and Indus River dolphin (current caps). The way I see it, it basically boils down to the question whether one talks about the "Indus River dolphin", or the "Indus river dolphin". The Amazon river dolphin (current caps) should probably have the same capitalisation. Any insights? --Swift (talk) 11:00, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * In the RM, Neil916 noted that usage in the literature was split for Platanista. The same appears to be true for Inia (whose name I had not noticed yet). I do think we should handle these two in the same way, but don't care much which way that is. Ucucha 12:02, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Merge proposal from Anti-whaling
A new article has been created called Anti-whaling. I have proposed a merge, initially to Whaling controversy but also possibly to Marine conservation activism. Please have a look and join in the merge discussion at Talk:Whaling controversy Polargeo (talk) 16:34, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Expansion of whaling history by country
I would submit that, regardless of one's stance on the morality of whaling, that coverage of the history of whaling is useful for better understanding catacean issues. Accordingly, I'm trying to add a few more countries' whaling history to the template, and would appreciate any help in creating stubs, expanding, or even suggestions on which countries would be key to add to round out the "by country" articles. I took a few minutes and created a Whaling in Argentina stub, looking to do Whaling in Madagascar next. Below is the template as it currently stands. MatthewVanitas (talk) 10:51, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Delta and Dawn (Sacramento Delta whales)
Remember Delta and Dawn? I'm passing along this message from my talk page:
 * If you could find a couple of more refs for this article, I'd be glad to nominate it for a DYK. I'd recommend using Scroogle's search engine to find refs. The Sacramento Bee has articles available through Scroogle. You can read about Scroogle and how I use it at User:Morenooso. moreno oso (talk) 05:32, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:46, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Cetacea articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release
Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Cetacea articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (&diams;) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Sunday, November 14th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of November, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

If you have already provided feedback, we deeply appreciate it. For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 16:31, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

RfC: Cetartiodactyla
Please head on over to Template talk:Automatic taxobox, where we're requesting the input from people who know a little something about this strange and alien taxon. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 00:42, 3 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I agree with the idea of Cetartiodactyla. Biological Science: A Custom Edition for Western Washington University by Scott Freeman, Pearson Books, Inc. (2011), page 477-479, carefully describes the DNA and fossil evidence that shows that the hippopotamuses are the sister group to hippopotamuses; that is, the hippos are the group of living organisms that are most closely related to whales, and vice versa. Next most closely related are ruminants (cattle, sheep, goats, deer, giraffes); then pigs and peccaries; then camels and allies. Therefore artiodactyls are not a monophyletic (or natural) group unless whales (incl. dolphins and porpoises) are included, and as I have explained on other talk pages, such as Collodictyon, the consensus among biologists is that only monophyletic groups can be valid taxa. Therefore Cetacea must be declared part of the order Artiodactyla, or Artiodactyla must be split into four orders. Aforementioned book was the textbook for Biology 204, a class I took at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington.


 * The claim that hippos are more closely related to whales than to other Artiodactyls, is supported by “World Book Encyclopedia”, 2001, article “Hippopotamus”.


 * For the article Blue whale, I changed the rankings on “Cetacea” and “Mysticeti” from order and suborder respectively, to “unranked” (both). The same changes should be made to the other Cetacea articles, to reflect the fact that whales are even-toed hoofed animals.--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 02:22, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Exploding whale &mdash; Featured Article Review
nominated Exploding whale for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here.

RFC at Talk:Copulation
You may want to participate in the RFC at Talk:Copulation --Philcha (talk) 13:44, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia Signpost
Would someone in this project like to request a Signpost interview? I write for the WikiProject report on the "Post" and I'm not allowed to request and then take that request. So just add your request here and I'll take care of that ASAP! Respond back! Beluga boy ''cup of tea? 22:11, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Amazon river dolphin
I was doing my regular watchlist policing today, and for once I actually bothered to read the lead paragraph of the article on Amazon river dolphins. It's a page I visit frequently when I police my watchlist, but it wasn't until today I realized how poorly the article flows. This popular article would make a good cleanup project if someone has the time. Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 17:38, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Factual mistake on False Killer Whale map
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cetacea_range_map_False_Killer_Whale.PNG There are no false killer whales in the Baltic Sea. A sighting or two has been made but it's described as "extralimital". http://www.iucnredlist.org/apps/redlist/details/18596/0 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 126.109.231.37 (talk) 15:29, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
 * That doesn't seem to be the only problem compared to the IUCN map—there are also no Pseudorca in the Black Sea, apparently, and they do occur on the east coast of South America and around Madagascar. Ucucha (talk) 15:51, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't know that the map including the Baltic within the false killer whale range is a mistake. IUCN regards such sightings as "extralimital" but the fact that such sightings exist make it legitimate to include the Baltic within the range.  What do other sources say about false killer whales in the Baltic?  Of course, if there the map needs updating, and there are sources to support the update (such as IUCN), then there is no reason not to do so. Rlendog (talk) 16:07, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Task Force
Do you think that quite possibly this actually could become a task force of WP:MAMMAL? It could work, yet cetaceans are such a big scope. Shall we start a consensus? If not, then tell me. Beluga boy ''cup of tea? 01:41, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Transitional Fossil peer-review

 * Peer_review/Transitional_fossil/archive1
 * Transitional fossil

It is a very important subject, and I wish to take it to GA/FA status in the future. Ambulocetus, which is involved in the evolution of cetaceans is a large section of the article. Input from members of this wikiproject would be highly valued. --Harizotoh9 (talk) 00:38, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi I am peony ,I am a P.4 student. Would I ask you. Did you love dolphins or other sea animals ?

In the news: Korea considers research whaling

 * Korean government exploring the possibility of starting "research whaling" a la Japan.(e.g., ).


 * Korea currently does not condone open commercial whaling, but accidentally netted whales are considered fair game to be sold for consumption.


 * An article reports price of whale meat was double what it was the year before at an auction in Ulsan. Ulsan there are twenty whale meat specialty restaurants. Korea imposed "distribution certificate" requirements in January 2011 to clamp down on illegal (poached or smuggled) meat. The catch of cetaceans caught by nets in Korea were 656 in 2009, 656 in 2010, and 1098 in 2011. --Kiyoweap (talk) 20:46, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Japan whaling perspective (2011-2012)

 * In 2011 research whaling received questionable 2.28 billion yen (US$30 million) funding out of the Tsunami recovery budget
 * : If "30.4 percent of the minke whales, 81.2 percent of the Bryde's whales and 78.2 percent of the sei whales" is correct, that means only 10% of the catch tonnage is minke while 90% is either sei or Bryde whales which are more vulnerable species.
 * A waste fish oil tank painted to resemble a giant canned whale-meat (yamato-ni style) will be demolished ( ).
 * I wouldn't be so sure about real downturn in consumption. Fact is, Japan has been receiving large supplies of fin whale in the past 2-3 years from fiscally distressed Iceland, and that is the species of whale that is acutally most sought after. I was browsing a blog on an unrelated subject, hosted by the major online purveyor Rakuten and saw ads for the fin whale meat, "available for the first time in 30 years," etc. Also if you check out the webstite of the "giant whale meat can company", they offer cans of fin whale meat (limited suppy). --Kiyoweap (talk) 22:31, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Whale oil
The whale oil article's rating should be revised given the updates done to it.Kurzon (talk) 19:27, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

See alsos
User:7partparadigm has added a "See also" section to around 70 cetacean articles. Apart from containing an error of punctuation (Marine Biology instead of Marine biology), the entries this user is keen to add contain a reference to the Cetacean Conservation Center, a Chilean organisation with a regional remit. The user has become very annoyed that I went through and modified their mass aditions, taking out the Cetacean Conservation Center link, and correcting the marine biology link. I thought I would raise it here (as perhaps 7partparadigm ought to have before mass-adding these links) to see what oter editors in this area thought. Shouldn't "See also" sections just be a kind of holding zone for links that aren't yet incorporated in the article, per WP:SEEALSO, rather than using them in lieu of navigational templates or categories? Thanks in advance for looking at this. --MarchOrDie (talk) 06:23, 10 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I am in no way shape or from associated with the organizations I was linking, I'm just a guy who loves cetaceans and am trying to make info about them easier to get access to when people are approaching the species' pages one at a time. I think that MarchOrDie raises a valid point that needs to be addressed. The links I added were all appropriate to the pages I was contributing to, but some of them might be redundant. This is an example of the link I was contributing in the "see also" section on the pages in question:


 * Cetacean Conservation Center
 * List of whale and dolphin species
 * Marine biology -  see, fixed the "b".

I think that these are valid, important links to be contributing to these pages, which encourage people to do more research, and provide an easy, obvious link to these relevant topics and lists. I think that it should be up to the community at large whether they get used. What are people's thought's, what is redundant and what is not?

I have no problem with you MarchOrDie. I am annoyed with you because you took it upon yourself to undo hours of my work, which I feel reasonably improves traffic flow of this part of wikipedia. I'm just trying to make this topic better, that's my only goal here. I feel that the pages would be improved with the "see also" links that I added. Like I said, please everyone, tell me what you think about the redundancy of these links. --7partparadigm (talk) 07:27, 10 December 2012 (UTC)


 * What about adding a link *The Cove (film) to the "see also" section of dolphins which exist in Japanese coastal waters. The film discusses some issues very important and relevant to the survival of these species. I added it to Common bottlenose dolphin, but won't for any additional ones that this pertains to without discussion from the community. --7partparadigm (talk) 07:37, 10 December 2012 (UTC)


 * You mean like you did here, on Baiji, an extinct species of freshwater dolphin that was only found in the Yangtze River in China?  I can't possibly see how that would be related any more than if I were to add Flipper's New Adventure to the see also section.   You also added the marine life portal and marine biology to this non-marine animal article.   The Cetacean Conservation Center link also needs to go.  Thank you for your help, 7partparadigm, but I fear you are spending a considerable amount of time making contributions that are not as helpful as you intended.  On the Amazon river dolphin‎ you made simiar errors in addition to removing helpful links to Wikipedia Commons and WIkispecies.   Neil916 (Talk) 20:41, 10 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't think we want the link to The Cove. See Also should include only material that we would want to talk about in the article itself, and I don't think the article needs to mention it. I can see having a balanced discussion of conservation/hunting, but I'm not sure this film is significant enough to include there. I might be wrong. In any case, though, it seems suboptimal to just have that link sitting there in the see also section. If it does belong, it probably only belongs in the relevant species' articles, not in Baiji. —ErikHaugen 2620:0:1000:3003:B6B5:2FFF:FEB8:147E (talk) 22:22, 10 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Alright, thank you for the feedback. And yes marine biology does not need to go with the river dolphins, I apologize for that oversight. And I never removed links, I'm not sure what you mean by that Neil. So, "The Cove" won't go in. How about the portals, where they are necessary, and the list of Cetaceans? I was just trying to help, looks like I'm just making everyone mad. If those are deemed unnecessary, I'll just leave the issue alone and remove the links. I'll make sure to discuss edits like this with the community in the future. The reason why I wanted to include The Cove, was because it shows footage of dolphins getting systematically slaughtered for meat in Japan. The film, I think, portrays a very real threat to all dolphins in Japanese coastal waters. The reason why it was linked in Baiji is because the Baiji is another kind of dolphin which was majorly impacted by human involvement. I'm seeing that I should have talked with people about this before before taking action. My apologizes everyone. 7partparadigm (talk • contribs) 04:01, 11 December 2012
 * This was the edit on the Amazon river dolphin‎ article I was referring to. There are plenty of ways to help out, but just remember that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and should remain as neutral, rather than advocating for one side on an issue over another (in this case conservation vs. exploitation).   It's fine to identify that such issues exist and identify the viewpoints of each party involved if it is directly relevant to that particular article, but when you add a bunch of links to anti-whaling films and conservation to all of the whale articles, it adds a distinct bias to the articles which we are trying to avoid.  The WP:NPOV policy page may help you identify ways of identifying conflicts in a neutral tone.  One more note, I believe that our average customer (wikipedia reader) is already aware of the concept of whaling, and should be able to easily navigate to the appropriate whaling, Whaling controversy, History of whaling, Dolphin drive hunting, etc., article, which in most cases will already be linked from the cetacean species articles that are affected by such practices. Neil916 (Talk) 20:42, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Two articles about Bryde's Whale, redundant?
There are two articles about Bryde's Whale that don't reference each other: Bryde%27s whale and Balaenoptera brydei. The second one seems internationally accepted with many languages linked, the first one has no other languages. However, the first article has much more content. I have no background in cetaceans and if there is a legitimate reason for having two articles, but as a reader it seems uncoordinated to have these parallel articles and/or not link them. AlexInWikiland (talk) 07:03, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure how that came about. The first mainly talks about B. brydei (assuming that is the larger described form), while the latter is just a mess. As far as I know no split was agreed to. If we were to create separate articles for B. brydei and B. edeni, the latter would just be a stub and someone would have to sort through all the sources that refer to "pygmy Bryde's" that formerly referred to B. edeni but now refer to B. omurai. In fact, there may only be a taxonomy section for B. edeni if that is the case. SHFW70 (talk) 17:49, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Looking at the history of the latter, it was created several years ago after a split & dab proposal sat out there unanswered. Does look like things need to be cleaned up, either merging any relevant info back into the multi-species article, or the multi-species article should be split into the three potential articles. (I note that Omura's whale article exists as well, the third species in the species group.) It seems that the taxonomy is still poorly understood. I think the best thing to do is to merge those two articles and remove B. omurai from the taxobox. But before that, we should tag the articles for merger and see who else joins the conversation. - UtherSRG (talk) 18:00, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Most of it appears to be pretty redundant. The taxonomy section of the Bryde's whale article already includes both B. brydei and B. edeni. It may need to be expanded and updated though. Same goes for the distribution section, which barely mentions the supposed distribution of B. edeni-type Bryde's (it could be referring to B. omurai). SHFW70 (talk) 18:59, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
 * On a fairly superficial check it looks like a merge per UtherSRG (above) would be appropriate. &bull; &bull; &bull; Peter (Southwood) (talk): 08:09, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Ok. Well I'll try to expand the Bryde's whale article, particularly with more info on the B. edeni-type and it's range, size, etc. SHFW70 (talk) 16:27, 3 September 2013 (UTC)
 * The Balaenoptera brydei article can be deleted now. The only things to add to the Bryde's whale article are the taxonomic history up to the mid-2000s, a brief mention of the largest known B. edeni specimens in the description section, and maybe a few other things. The mention of "intermediate forms" between sei and Bryde's probably refers to the Australian specimens from the late 1950s and early 1960s, the larger of which may actually be misidentified sei. SHFW70 (talk) 18:54, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

MERGE: Is this project still active? If it is I would think it time to merge the two articles as was proposed, agreed upon, acted upon to prepare for merger, AND then apparently forgotten. Otr500 (talk) 00:34, 14 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Done: I found the time to merge Balaenoptera brydei (redirected) into Bryde's whale. There was so much redundant information, either directly or reworded, that I mostly redirected the page. If someone wants (or feels the need) to glean any pertinent information (content or references) from the history for inclusion in Bryde's whale that should clean up anything I might have over-looked. Otr500 (talk) 15:12, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Please help evaluate Old Tom (Killer Whale) article
I'm a university student working on the article of Old tom and would highly appreciate some feedback and comments! Thanks in advance, Soph :)

help evaluate my article
Hey hey, I'm a university student working on Old Tom and would appreciate some help with reviewing and evaluating it, so I can improve if as much as possible! Thanks so much in advance! :) supsoph — Preceding undated comment added 03:34, 25 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Hi . Thanks for your work on this article! It looks like you've done some great work there. I haven't had time to give it an in-depth review, and unfortunately this Wikiproject talk page is pretty quiet. If you would like further feedback, you might want to ask at Talk:Killer whale. BTW, the convention at Wikipedia is to start new discussions at the bottom of a Talk page, not the top. Take care, Clayoquot (talk &#124; contribs) 05:43, 30 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your time and advice, I will do that! :))