Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cetaceans/Archive 4

FAR

U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.

Proposed change to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna)

There is a current proposal to change an animal-related naming convention, which directly effects the the Manual of Style guideline, and the naming conventions policy. If you are interested, your input would be appreciated. Justin ^chat 06:32, 15 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move: Orca → Killer Whale

Please provide input at Talk:Orca#Requested_move regarding proposal to use MSW3 common name of "Killer Whale". Rgrds. --Tombstone (talk) 14:10, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move: Bottlenose Dolphin → Bottlenose dolphin

Please provide input at Talk:Bottlenose Dolphin#Requested_move (2). Cheers, Jack (talk) 14:45, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Done. It needs copyeditting now... I started, but my eyes were glazing over.... - UtherSRG (talk) 17:05, 21 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Review Request: Australodelphis

I just put up the article, Australodelphis, I have been working up for the last couple of days. Would several people review the article before I put it up for DYK. Thanks --Kevmin (talk) 21:38, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Australodelphus was a DYK on March 7. It does still need to be assessed though.--Kevmin (talk) 19:44, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Coordinators' working group

Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. — Delievered by §hepBot (Disable) on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 05:05, 28 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Article alerts

This is a notice to let you know about Article alerts, a fully-automated subscription-based news delivery system designed to notify WikiProjects and Taskforces when articles are entering Articles for deletion, Requests for comment, Peer review and other workflows (full list). The reports are updated on a daily basis, and provide brief summaries of what happened, with relevant links to discussion or results when possible. A certain degree of customization is available; WikiProjects and Taskforces can choose which workflows to include, have individual reports generated for each workflow, have deletion discussion transcluded on the reports, and so on. An example of a customized report can be found here.

If you are already subscribed to Article Alerts, it is now easier to report bugs and request new features. We are also in the process of implementing a "news system", which would let projects know about ongoing discussions on a wikipedia-wide level, and other things of interest. The developers also note that some subscribing WikiProjects and Taskforces use the display=none parameter, but forget to give a link to their alert page. Your alert page should be located at "Wikipedia:PROJECT-OR-TASKFORCE-HOMEPAGE/Article alerts". Questions and feedback should be left at Wikipedia talk:Article alerts.

Message sent by User:Addbot to all active wiki projects per request, Comments on the message and bot are welcome here.

Thanks. — Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 08:56, 15 March, 2009 (UTC)

Pageview stats

After a recent request on my talk page, I added the Cetaceans project to the list of projects to compile monthly pageview stats for. The data is the same used by http://stats.grok.se/en/ but the program is different, and includes the aggregate views from all redirects to each page. The stats are at Wikipedia:WikiProject Cetaceans/Popular pages.

The page will be updated monthly with new data. The edits aren't marked as bot edits, so they will show up in watchlists. I can also provide the full data for any project covered by the bot if requested, though I normally don't keep it for much longer than a week after the list is generated. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know. Thanks! (note that there is an encoding issue with some non-ascii titles, this will be fixed in the next update). Mr.Z-man 19:09, 5 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Right Whales article needs prompt attention

NOAA hears North Atlantic Right Whales

Someone should make use of the following news about North Atlantic Right Whales:

NOAA (2009-05-21). "NOAA Expedition Hears Endangered North Atlantic Right Whales off Greenland". National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrration. Retrieved 2009-05-21.--DThomsen8 (talk) 01:44, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Inia

In 2005 a study was done which isolated the Bolivian River Dolphin as a new species. I've separated it from Amazon River Dolphin and further separated Inia, but it's a rather sloppy job, since I'm pressed for time lately. Can someone clean the three articles up? Thanks. It should be noted that most of the facts regarding the Amazon River Dolphin likely apply to the entire genus, and the map has been moved to the genus page, since it was created without the knowledge of the division. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:26, 27 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Whale song - featured article review

I have nominated Whale song 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 "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Tom B (talk) 21:00, 6 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Changes to popular pages lists

There are a few important changes to the popular pages system. A quick summary:

The "importance" ranking (for projects that use it) will be included in the lists along with assessment.
The default list size has been lowered to 500 entries (from 1000)
I've set up a project on the Toolserver for the popular pages - tools:~alexz/pop/.
- This includes a page to view the results for projects, including the in-progress results from the current month. Currently this can only show the results from a single project in one month. Features to see multiple projects or multiple months may be added later.
- This includes a new interface for making requests to add a new project to the list.
- There is also a form to request a change to the configuration for a project. Currently the configurable options are the size of the on-wiki list and the project subpage used for the list.
The on-wiki list should be generated and posted in a more timely and consistent manner than before.
The data is now retained indefinitely.
The script used to generate the pages has changed. The output should be the same. Please report any apparent inconsistencies (see below).
Bugs and feature requests should be reported using the Toolserver's bug tracker for "alexz's tools" - [1]

-- Mr.Z-man 23:53, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

GA reassessment of Dolphinarium

I have conducted a reassessment of the above article as part of the GA Sweeps process. I have found some concerns which you can see at Talk:Dolphinarium/GA1. I have placed the article on hold whilst these are fixed. Thanks. Jezhotwells (talk) 21:26, 15 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sperm Whale?

This is ridiculous. Since when does WP dictate English usage? Usual usage is no caps. Leave it. TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 00:05, 21 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think you were trying to link to the "Move?" section of that article's talk page, not to the article itself. Neil916 (Talk) 04:16, 21 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A handy link to that section: Talk:Sperm_whale#Move.3F. The section was a move request from sentence case to title case. The discussion has been closed with the result "not moved". --Swift (talk) 03:09, 5 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Capitalisation

Moved from project page --Swift (talk) 22:08, 4 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Capitalization: There was once a long debate about the capitalization of bird species on Wikipedia. The debate was backed by lots of research on both sides, but also became quite acrimonious. Call me a great wet lettuce (or Lettuce) but I for one hope to avoid repeating that debate, and get on with article-writing. Thus I propose we just borrow the convention from the bird project and then not worry about it too much. That is, capitalize species names when you write them in articles, e.g.

The blow of a Blue Whale is 9m high.

and when you create an article for the species, create it with caps in the title and then immediately create a redirect from the lower-case version of the same name. (N.B.: I didn't take part in the original debate and don't particularly care what the standard is, but standards are often useful and many people want standards, so I am proposing this one).

You are right IMO, and anyone who objects to importing the standard should know enough about the birds discussion to explain why cetaceans should be different, or else undertake to show why it should be changed at least for both, and preferably for vertebrates (or for some higher taxon that includes both).

And therefore someone who will be more active in this project than Jerzy should propose, at Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life or its talk page, that there be a general standard (currently, capitalize all English species names, but of course subject to reconsideration) either

1. for all species, or

2. for all children of an independent (not redirected) Wikipedia:WikiProject Animals, where (in either additional project) the standard can be considered and promulgated without stepping on the toes of botanists (and perhaps microbiologists), whose realm(s) are the most likely ones to have conflicting naming or spelling standards in place.

One wrinkle: it is common practice in the cetacean literature to shorten e.g 'Southern Right Whales have no dorsal fin' to 'Southern Rights have no dorsal fin' i.e. drop 'Whale' as obvious. Two heavyweight books in the area are the Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals (which does this) and the National Audubon Society Guide to Marine Mammals of the World (which doesn't). I propose we allow (but not require) the shortening... it is better to avoid being unnecessarily prescriptive, and having two choices should make for less repetitious prose.

Spellings in taxonomy ( 'i' or 'ii', '-i' or 'es'): This seems to be inconsistent within the literature. Maybe we should have all article names in English, and make all common spellings of the Scientific version redirect to the English. I am thinking about sub-orders and families here; e.g. Mysticeti redirects to baleen whale.

I don't want to open a can of worms here, but I think the bird species discussion isn't necessarily being applied consistently here. I've taken an interest in bottlenose dolphin and I think the capitalization should be Bottlenose dolphin, without a capital D on the dolphin. For reference, see Wikipedia:WikiProject_Birds#Bird names and article titles, which states:

The name of a group of species is not capitalised; birds, thrush family, kingfishers, turtle doves, marsh harriers.

From this, I infer that the correct reference would be "Bottlenose dolphin" or just "Bottlenose." In support of this, I'd add that a dog's species is capitalized, but not the word "dog," as in "Rottweiler" but not a "Rottweiler Dog" or "Great Dane" instead of "Great Dane Dog."

Any thoughts? Isaacsf (talk) 23:46, 15 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think so. If we are capitalizing it should be Bottlenose Dolphin. Even if we follow the bird convention the bird discussion is pretty clear that it is "Bald Eagle", not "Bald eagle" or "King Penguin" not "King penguin". Penguin and eagle would correspond to dolphin here.Rlendog (talk) 00:40, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ummm.... what's wrong with referring to the literature? I just did a search on Google Scholar for (as an example) "blue whale" [2]. EVERY SINGLE ONE of the first ten articles (didn't bother looking beyond the first page) use lower case letters. In accordance with both wikipedia tradition and the scientific literature, the article should be "blue whale," NOT "Blue Whale". Venture to guess the same is true of other whale species. Don't care enough to fight about it though. Rracecarr (talk) 19:11, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

End of moved text

It seems there never was any consensus on this. I'm not sure how wise it is to rely on sister projects for standards on cetaceans. Nor should we come up with our own interpretations of what is useful, aesthetically pleasing, or good in some other way.

One argument for title casing is that it is less ambiguous. Establishing a useful standard casing scheme is, however, not within the scope of Wikipedia. It could be, but isn't any more than refining definitions. The task is to reflect usage. For this, we should see if there is any consensus for the use of these species names in the expert community. Rracecarr provides a good link above. Expanding on that methodology:

blue whale — First 50 results are sentence case.
gray whale — First 50 results are sentence case.
fin whale — First 50 results are sentence case.
sei whale — First 50 results are sentence case.
beluga — One in first 50 results uses title case (but refers to the same species as "white whale" in sentence case).
sperm whale — First 50 results are sentence case.
minke whale — One in first 50 results uses title case.

I didn't bother going any further as the trend seems clear (348 vs. 2). I can't really think of an argument for going up against the scientific community but would be happy to hear any suggestions. --Swift (talk) 22:08, 4 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

An argument in favor of capitalization is that many books and other compilations of common names (such as the Red List and MSW 3) do use capitalization. However, you are right that this is quite unusual in the journal literature (not only for whales, by the way--you'd probably find the same results for most if not all other mammals). There was previously no consensus either way (as evidenced by the repeated discussions and page moves), but consensus may have changed. I don't care much about the issue. Ucucha 23:41, 4 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The Red List does use species names in title case in entry titles, but in the entries themselves, sentence case is used. See for example the Balaena mysticetus entry. The same applies to the MSW3. The common names are given in the entry fields in title case, but in comments they are all in sentence case. Take for example the order pages on Afrosoricida and Scandentia that mention a few species in their comments — all in sentence case.

There has indeed never been a consensus on this subject amongst Wikipedians. I do stress however that we shouldn't be forming opinions on what we think is the best practice, but unearthing what is actual practice. If it is, indeed, a fact that science literature and other authoritative sources use sentence case, then we should be able to agree that so should we. --Swift (talk) 03:02, 5 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see any species mentioned in the MSW3 links ("golden mole" and "treeshrew" refer to families, if those are what you had in mind). You are right about the Red List (though the B. mysticetus page does use "Bowhead Whale" in the taxonomy section). Similar inconsistencies appear elsewhere in the Red List (Panthera leo, for example, which actually uses "Lion" regularly at the start but then turns into consistent use of "lion", and Delphinus delphis, which is similar to B. mysticetus).

The two I mentioned are not the only sources which use uppercase; so do Kays and Wilson's Mammals of North America (including in sentences), Gardner's Mammals of South America, Duff and Lawson's Mammals of the World: A Checklist (including in sentences), and probably some others (no doubt you'll find extensive lists in some of the previous discussions). I gather that there is a style split between usage in a heading or list, as in most of the books, and in running prose, as in most of the Scholar articles you cited. I would think that usage on Wikipedia would usually be more similar to that in the latter.

As I said before, I'm neutral on this. The previous discussions are not reappearing because most of the proponents of capitalization are no longer as active on mammals pages as they were previously. Ucucha 03:40, 5 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You're right, there are no species mentioned in the comments (yes, I was referring to those families). Thanks for the title case sources. Do you have any sense of where the style split is between title and sentence case in running prose? I'll have a look at what works I can find. --Swift (talk) 04:05, 5 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The prose in Kays and Wilson where title case is used is mostly in comparisons ("Differs from White-footed Deermouse by having a consistently bicolored tail..."). Presumably, this is functional, as it makes the species names stand out, which is important for a field guide. They carry the title case convention over to other parts of the book where there is no such need, as in the introduction ("A Moose crosses the road"), perhaps for consistency.

But I think we should avoid getting too deeply immersed in details of usage, although it's an interesting linguistic topic. There's a ton of Wikipedia pages with titles that could be directly influenced by this discussion. These titles are regulated by WP:MOS#Animals, plants, and other organisms, a notoriously (and, of course, deliberately) vague text. Ucucha 04:32, 5 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I figure the MOS is well complimented by the fauna naming conventions. It states that sentence case should be used unless the WikiProject has decided otherwise. I admit that I simply assumed it logical that the body wouldn't contain title case if the title was not. Since no consensus exists within this project, the guideline applies. Still, it is only a guideline and there may well be a case for making a special guideline for cetaceans. As Wikipedia is not for scholarly papers, one could argue that field guides are useful for establishing common usage.

As for other on-line encyclopedias, both encyclopedia.com (compiled from the Columbia Encyclopedia) and Encyclopædia Britannica seem to use sentence case in their blue whale articles (see: CE EB). Field guides off Amazon with previews use: FGttHW,FGtWPaS,FGttGW: sentence; PFGtMoNA: title. I'll have a look later at the library, too. --Swift (talk) 12:04, 5 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Two of those "field guides" are guides to a single species, so that the motivation to use title case I mentioned for Kays and Wilson doesn't really apply. The other also seems to be more of a prose guide than Kays and Wilson, with several pages per species. So I do think those are consistent with my hypothesis about the style split between title and sentence case (sentence case mostly used in running prose, title case in lists and shorthand prose): although titled field guides, they use the names mainly in running prose. Ucucha 16:05, 5 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I finally had a quick look at the 599.5 shelf in my local library. I only found just under a shelf-metre of books in English, but thereof most of them used sentence case. The two field guides used title case, but another couple of books on whale watching (no detailed species descriptions) had sentence case. There were a couple of large volumes that used title case, but the majority of books (including the most extensive ones) were sentence cased. Unfortunately I didn't have time to note the titles, but if anyone is interested, I could do that (or they could give a list of the books they have access to).

I'm now satisfied that while the use of title case is common or prevalent in field guides, the majority of encyclopedic works on cetaceans and just about every single article uses sentence case. I therefore believe that we should follow that convention. If there are any comments or objections, please make them below. Otherwise I think we should start enforcing this. --Swift (talk) 22:28, 11 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There seem to be exceedingly few people who take the time to comment here, certainly. There may be some coming, but it doesn't seem that likely, as this has been here for over a month now. However, you may still get people up in the curtains if something like Killer Whale, Sperm Whale, or Blue Whale gets moved. I believe the best way to go around here may be to start requested moves at some high-profile pages and if those confirm that consensus is in favor of moving to sentence case, start moving other pages a little more boldly. But that's just my advice; it's your choice how to proceed. Ucucha 22:58, 11 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I have little interest in getting anyone up in the curtains, so I figured it'd be best to just change the article text first with a link to this discussion in the edit summary. It might rub some people the wrong way if they only find out about this after a few pages have been moved, as well as if there are whole-sale move requests that will only scatter discussion. --Swift (talk) 23:43, 11 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good to me. I think that the work you've done to put a finger on this issue should make this change uncontroversial. Neil916 (Talk) 02:47, 12 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm in favour of sentence case. However whoever moves an article should either make the text within the article consistent with the title, or make sure there is a volunteer willing to do it before the article is moved. I really like Swift's plan for going about it. BTW any find-and-replace jobs have to be done with a lot of care, otherwise you can accidentally change things like book titles. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:21, 12 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'll start working on the text at some point. For this sort of editing, I use an external editor (vim with ee.pl to talk to the wiki) that has syntax highlighting which make these replacements easier. --Swift (talk) 06:10, 12 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Good luck :) Maybe start with some of the lower-profile articles and see how it goes? And just for fun, read the part about Cougar and Cheetah here: Wikipedia:Lame#Spelling. I couldn't make this stuff up. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 06:16, 12 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The surprising thing is really that there are not more entries on this there, as it was really bad a few years ago. See here for a list, including even a request for arbitration.

I would actually prefer for the article title to be consistent with usage in the article at all times. Ucucha 08:32, 12 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Would you prefer a tag on the talk pages of the articles in question, notifying them of this discussion? I guess that could be an even less forceful approach. I'll make a list of these articles and come up with a message that we can post if people agree it's the wisest move. --Swift (talk) 16:45, 12 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This discussion has been linked from the Featured article review for Killer Whale. The review had already landed on the topic of the title, mainly due to the use of scientific literature using sentence case. It could be used as a test-case, with a requested move? DigitalC (talk) 14:56, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've put up an overview at User:Swift/CETA and notice on User:Swift/CETA-case that can be easily subst-ed onto talk pages. Please feel free to edit either. --Swift (talk) 22:20, 12 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. I came here from Wikipedia:Featured article review/Killer Whale/archive1. As someone who does not know anything about cetaceans (until now I didn't know even how to spell "cetacean"!) I found the weird use of title-case in Killer Whale to be off-putting: it gave the article a pompous air, with the implication that this kind of animal is more important than anything else the reader might be interested in. The scholarly literature (as indicated by Google Scholar) uniformly says "killer whale" instead of "Killer Whale". If a few guides, for their own reasons, want to say "Killer Whale" that shouldn't overturn the mainstream consensus. I don't know why the bird folks decided otherwise but that's not our problem here. Eubulides (talk) 16:31, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Swift, that looks good. Eubulides, I agree that usage of sentence case is overwhelming in the relevant literature and that that is our single best argument in favor of using sentence case. DigitalC, that might be a good idea. We're now also discussing this at WT:RODENT#Capitalization. Ucucha 18:37, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I'll try to post the notices soon. We can leave them for a week to see if anyone wants to discuss it further. --Swift (talk) 03:38, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Done Whew! --Swift (talk) 22:12, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Rationale

For busy contributors wanting a quick summary of the discussion above: The majority of Cetacean species articles use title case for the species names. The majority of literature on the topic, however, uses sentence case. The exception seems to be in field guides but this is the vast minority. Encyclopedic content predominantly uses sentence case as do scientific journals near-universally. See the discussion above for examples and feel free to join the discussion or add your comments below. --Swift (talk) 20:18, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

It's pretty obvious this is a cross-WP problem, not just this project, 'cause it seems like every bird article I've seen & numerous mammal & plant pages do, too. And (as said above, despite the wrong link ;p) it's a ridiculous idea. Outside WP (& perhaps a small scientific minority), who does this? Stop, already. TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 00:01, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Birds use capitalization consistently per WP:BIRD guidelines; I believe this is in keeping with general usage in the literature for that group. Ucucha 07:46, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Seeing Swift's comment above that species in comments fields in MSW3 are in sentence case, I looked up Blue Whale to check, and the species mentioned in the comments are in title case. Wiki articles on many mammal groups (not just cetaceans) have been in title case for ages. While the issue of capitalisation itself may not have consensus either way, one might argue that any benefit of changing from the status quo would be minor at best, and would not offset the impact on articles. Gimmetrow 18:09, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The bird issue should be separate, but this issue does impact pretty much all mammal articles, not just cetacean and rodent articles. This issue has also been discussed within the Mammal Wikiproject several times and the result of those discussions has been the current situation. Since the rodent and cetacean projects are subprojects of the mammal project, if there is a desire to change the current practice for some or all mammals it should be discussed there. Rlendog (talk) 02:46, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion here does not impact other mammal articles as the literature referred to is restricted to Cetaceans. It doesn't bear on rodent articles either. The many WP:MAMMAL capitalisation discussions have not resulted in much at all. It seems that it is too wide a topic to result in consensus. Here at WP:CETA we seem to have a small enough a topic and consistent enough a literature to manage. --Swift (talk) 11:55, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have a feeling this issue will very shortly be discussed on WikiProject Mammals so maybe we should settle this issue once and for all and get it made into a policy any ideas on how to go about this??? Zoo Pro 12:31, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have a feeling that discussion won't go far. We should be focusing on the arguments for this project for now. --Swift (talk) 15:57, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Mass move request

Now that killer whale has been moved, all cetacean talk pages tagged to gain as wide an audience as possible and consensus has been reached, I've requested a mass move over at Talk:Bowhead_Whale#Requested_move. Things are moving slowly but surely. --Swift (talk) 01:33, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good if you need a hand moving any pages let me know. ZooPro 03:18, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've moved those that don't have redirects pointing from the sentence cased page. The rest needs to be done by an admin. --Swift (talk) 04:12, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Already thought the list was a little short. I've offered my services to do the moves over at the RM, but it'll first need to be closed by an uninvolved admin. Ucucha 04:17, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject Merge Suggestion

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Not done No Merge lack of consensus or interest. ZooPro 03:21, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I wish to suggest a merge between WikiProject Mammals and WikiProject Cetaceans to combine resources, members, task groups and ensure both groups remain as active as possible, It has been a very common problem of late that alot of WikiProjects are falling into dire straights and becoming inactive, Myself and a number of other users have in the past months rescued a number of projects. Just something to think about. I have created this page to allow for a complete discussion and vote if need be. Zoo Pro 06:12, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Project co-ordination

A few days ago, Belugaboy535136 (talk · contribs), a rather new user (fourty edits in three days at the time) labeled himself "Project Coordinator". I and later ZooPro noted that it was a bit out of the ordinary. Then, three days later, he told ZooPro that he had, in fact, been voted as co-ordinator, adding that "It was a one day vote that you probably didn't catch."

I've not noticed such a vote, am curious as to where it is to have taken place, how that could have happened without even a mention on this talk page, how a single day may have sufficed and how any Wikipedian can reasonably have judged Belugaboy535136's abilities in his short time since signing up. Rather than prejudge his intentions on these missing pieces, I figured I'd give Belugaboy535136 a chance to clarify these points. --Swift (talk) 20:42, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am also curious. Regardless, I feel that this project could go without a co-ordinator until it gains more activity, sufficient to select and promote one. Zoo Fari 21:26, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

sigh... --Swift (talk) 00:55, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Now this explains what Belugaboy535136 is talking about on my talk page. My only concern was his experience and did the project need a coordinator. I was aware that a vote didnt take place (contrary to what he told me), however i left this unchecked as i was wanting to see how it played out. As i did mention to another editor I would have stepped in and stopped any actions that would have harmed the project as i had been keeping a close eye on Belugaboy. Never a dull moment thats for sure. Oh and just as a tagalong to my above suggestion of a merge i have no intention of converting anyone or stuff like that i am more after opinions and such as it will help scope out how active the projects are. Zoo Pro 06:47, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Update

Nice to see the updating Swift. Zoo Pro 21:07, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Let's hope it'll be of some use. --Swift (talk) 19:09, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]