Talk:Lepidogalaxias

Article name

This article has been renamed from "Salamanderfish" by User:Cygnis insignis (Talk) without discussion. I reverted the change and once again this editor has renamed the article again without any discussion. This talk page is the appropriate place to discuss such changes before they are made, an edit summary is not a discussion. The article under its original name satisfies point 1(iii) in the naming standard for article titles on Wikipedia:WikiProject Fishes and thus should remain so named. Cygnis insignis needs to provide some valid and compelling reasons for making the change before it should be executed. Unless a suitable rationale is provided here within the next few days, I will again move the article back to its original name. Nick Thorne ^talk 00:13, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

The article is about a species, its name is Lepidogalaxias salamandroides, if reliable sources state otherwise then I would be happy to move. Some sources have attached another name, for whatever reason, the specious and inherently ambiguous salamanderfish.

Other sources thought this lacked something, so they called it the Salamanderfish of Western Australia. Isn't it grand! - this nomenclature has my full my endorsement, but perhaps there were other species named "Salamanderfish" that inspired their unreviewd, unsystematic, and redundant disambiguation. There is no constraint on how or why these 'common names' are presented, this is in stark contrast to the name to which these were appended or reported. Here is another common name for example;

Mudfish, perhaps this is why yet another source gives Lepidogalaxias salamandroides yet another name to its reliable description;

mud minnow, as common a name as one could hope for, but a bit too common

So what is the problem? I made a move in the accordance with the spirit and guidance of the naming conventions. I have previously made modest improvements to the article, I have made additions, with special reference to the vernacular, since the move. This benefits the reader, but cannot inform the non-reading User:

A user has obstructed and reverted a fellow editor without reason, then made demands and summons that s/he be satisfied. There was no reference to guidelines regarding article names, or their basis in WP:NPOV, WP:RS, et al. I attempted to do this with my small contributions to the article, and the related redirects and dabs. The user then gave a directive on my talk page, unnecessarily emblazoning my name across his 'warrant' here, then giving a wikilawyering objection citing 'point 1(iii)' of a wikiproject's page! The project's (sub-project) dictates on naming are unworkable through self contradiction and lack of definition. It bears little resemblance to the named convention for fauna. There is no citation given for the applicable 'institution' in the deviant rule:

Within the area where the species is endemic and/or of commercial importance, only a single common name is used by the relevant legal, conservation, fisheries or local institutions...

and think that it being in more common, reliable, and verifiable usage is highly unlikely. I suggest the editor, who should not attempt to be author or nomenclator, seek to change the consensus at the relevant and current discussions. However, I contend that arguing over stubs and redlinks title is ridiculous; there is no reason to substitute the universally accepted nomenclature outside of Wikipedia, in the real world that we are here to explain.

This article is about a species, its title is its accepted name. cygnis insignis 05:30, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Allan, Midgley & Allen , Field Guide to the Freshwater Fishes of Australia, Museum of Western Australia, Perth Western Australia, 2002, ISBN 0 7307 4586 3, pp.119
Allen, 1989, Freshwater Fish of Australia, T.F.H. Publications, Neptune City N.J., 1989, ISBN 0 86622 939 1, pp.32
Merrick & Schmida, Australian Freshwater Fishes, Griffin Press Ltd, 1984, ISBN 0 9591908 0 5, pp.79
Salamanderfish - Australian Museum Fish Site
Australian Faunal Directory
These authorities all list "Salamanderfish" as the common name or primary common name for this species. Are they not good enough for you, or do you consider yourself to be an expert on fishes with greater authority than these? Additionally, you seem to be ignorant of the lengthy discussions that have occurred within the Wikipedia Fish Project, to which the rule that you are so dismissive of belongs. You are not the person who decides how this project should proceed and you do not determine what the policies are. Unless you are willing to accept the agreed consensus I suggest you may prefer to go and find another area of Wikipedia to work on, one that accepts that your POV. Nick Thorne ^talk 07:45, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Nick, I don't know what the fish project has agreed to; I assume you follow Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna), right? The guts of that convention is

"If there is a most commonly used common name in English, and it is not ambiguous, use that."

So the questions to be answered here are

1. What are the options?
2. Is "Salamanderfish" ambiguous?
3. Is "Salamanderfish" the most commonly used name?

The first question is easily enough answered: the options are "Salamanderfish", 'Lepidogalaxiidae", "Lepidogalaxias" and "Lepidogalaxias salamandroides".

I don't know the answer to #2. Cygnis asserts that "Salamanderfish" is ambiguous; in his edit summary he referred to it as "one of two". From a brief look I couldn't find any other species that the name refers to, but I did notice that some sources refer to this species as the "Australian Salamanderfish" or the "West Australian Salamanderfish", which rather suggests that some other place has a "Salamanderfish" of its own.

As for third question, Allan (1989) and the Australian Museum both use both scientific and common name, giving prominence to the common name. The AFD uses both, giving prominence to the scientific name. I don't have access to the other sources at the moment, but I guess we shouldn't give Gerry two votes here, even if he is God in this field.

I note that "lepidogalaxias" gets more hits than "salamanderfish" in both Google Web and Google Scholar. This is a hint (and not much more than a hint) that that the common name (i.e. vernacular name) may not be the most common name (i.e. most often used by reliable sources).

Hesperian 11:07, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Re Is "Salamanderfish" ambiguous? that common name appears to be an old synonym for "mud fish", of which there appear to be at least 3 separate groups.[1][2][3] Genera referred to as salamanderfish/salamander-fish/salamander fish in various sources now available on Google Books include Lepidogalaxias, Lepidosiren, Dipneusta, Neoceratodus, and Protopterus. --Una Smith (talk) 15:40, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

If salamanderfish is an antiquated name in all these cases, then I think this article would have a claim to the title "Salamanderfish" under WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. The question remains which name is preferred by reliable sources. Hesperian 04:11, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Hah. Usually the recency argument goes the other way: "it is older, therefore it is primary". Google Books has a severe bias toward 19th Century books: no longer protected by copyright but common enough and new enough that at least some libraries will allow them to be checked out. An old common name is likely to be still in use and, more importantly, re-used. Fish called "salamander fish" occur on at least three continents. That means it is easy for many biodiversity inventories to ignore the ambiguity but for a global encyclopedia it is annoyingly difficult to gather all the common names in use. Doesn't picking a primary topic require first rounding up the likely candidates? If the question is which of these taxa has the best claim on the common name "salamanderfish", I would say "Gaak, these common name discussions are so indescribably tedious." In any event, "salamanderfish" is not the primary topic here because it has on order the same frequency of usage as the scientific name; if some instances of "salamanderfish" refer to one of these other species, then the scientific name is a still better choice. --Una Smith (talk) 05:54, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I have been involved in the (Australian) native fish scene here for about 20 years or so. In my experience in Australia, where the taxon in question is endemic, the term salamanderfish refers only to this species. There are several species of mudfish but they are not known as salamanderfish and, as I have also observed with other Australian freshwater species, both ITIS and Fishbase sometimes seems to get Australian taxa mixed up, especially WRT common names and they sometimes ascribe common names to species to which they are never actually used. I do not BTW think this is deliberate, but I suspect it is a function of the fact that Australian fish are not well know outside this country nor indeed in many case inside the country. In the non-technical literature these fish are only ever known as salamanderfish over here, and even in the scientific literature, they are often called by this name within the text, whereas the titles of most scientific papers follow the scientific norm of using systemic names along with the common name. I doubt, however, that many non scientist visitors to Wikipedia would search for the scientific name, and we should remember who our audience is. Thus I would suggest a compromise here and propose that the article should be named "Salamanderfish (Australia) " and that a disambiguation page be created pointing to the other species of "salamanderfish" or "salamander fish" as well. Nick Thorne ^talk 08:45, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, disambiguation page it is. --Una Smith (talk) 06:28, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

No consensus for recent move - reverted

Obviously (per the above discussion), there is no clear consensus supporting the recent bold move (done without discussion or going through WP:RM) of this article from Salamanderfish to Lepidogalaxias salamandroides. So it should be speedily reverted to its long-stable name at Salamanderfish and discussion should proceed with those favoring the move to the new name having the onus to achieve and show consensus for that move. As such, I have just moved it back to Salamanderfish. Potentially controversial moves, like this one obviously is, should be handled through the WP:RM process. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:17, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

None of the editors contributing to this discussion felt it necessary to move the page back to the common name. And per this discussion, the common name is ambiguous and thus not appropriate as a bare page name. So, shall we use WP:RM to move this article to the scientific name? --Una Smith (talk) 00:02, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

It is not true that none of the editors contributing to this discussion felt it necessary to move the page back to the common name. According to the first comment on this page, Nick Thorne did revert the original move back to Salamanderfish, and then that was reverted, which is what apparently started the whole discussion.

In any case, I don't have an opinion on which name is ultimately most appropriate here, and I'm not going to get involved in that, I'm just trying to help enforce the BRD cycle, which calls for reverting bold changes that are questioned, and then discussing; and WP:RM, which discourages moves that are potentially controversial without discussion. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:25, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. Una, please read the first paragraph on this talk page. Nick Thorne ^talk 06:07, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I know what happened prior to this discussion. It was beyond BR and into D, so Born2cycle's revert is actually BRD...R. --Una Smith (talk) 23:54, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

For crying out loud, Una, you wrote "None of the editors contributing to this discussion felt it necessary to move the page back to the common name." That is flat-out false. That's all Nick is trying to say.

Whether my revert was consistent with BRD or not is a separate issue. On that point, it was more like BRRDRD, where my revert was the 3rd R, to restore the effect of Nick's initial R, which was consistent with BRD. Or, if you prefer, it was to revert the 2nd R. In any case, it was consistent with the spirit and intent of BRD - which is revert to the stable version as it was before the "B" change that caused controversy, and to leave it there unless and until consensus is achieved for some change. I hope you have a nice weekend. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:05, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

revert to Salamanderfish from "Salamanderfish of Western Australia"

I just reverted another move of this article (this time it was to Salamanderfish of Western Australia). Obviously there is at least potential controversy associated with moving this article from its current name. As such, please make suggestions and check for consensus before moving the article. Thank you. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:43, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

What was wrong with my rationale? cygnis insignis 00:52, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Cygnis insignis, try to ignore that bait. Given there is disagreement, use WP:RM. You have plenty of evidence to support a request for whatever move you decide is best. I might accept Salamanderfish (Western Australia), or Salamanderfish (Lepidogalaxias) but, given the results of my quick search of reliable sources, my preference would be the scientific name: since it is monotypic, Lepidogalaxias. --Una Smith (talk) 06:22, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the sensible contribution to this discussion. The 'evidence' is in the article's content, where it might be useful. Debate on the specious naming given to their referents, largely unproductive or disruptive, will always becomes mired in trivialities like spacing, cp. mud minnow and mudminnow. I'm trying to focus on editing the sources to include the interesting characteristics not mentioned, the energy and time expended here could have been focused on content, but I will point out that they all use Lepidogalaxias salamandroides or Lepidogalaxiidae as the referent to their version of common name. They nearly all use it for a title. A source without one of these names could not be used, our encyclopedic (stub) article is about a species with a valid name. I suppose in current wikitalk user's parlance this would be called the 'primary' name, the universal name should be the default at the very least. My rationale in my edit summary was found by checking the offline source of the only other recent contribution to the content. I will leave it that editor to explain how p.109 of his source supports his edit, and not his POV. As for wikilawyering sots, with no interest in the articles improvement, using the move function in a broad and unfocused vendetta - well - "so it it goes". I doubt they can be bothered reading an article here or elsewhere, just relentless war mongering. Google helps to find evidence, it is not a nomenclator, how earth would I cite a ghit count? cygnis insignis 07:47, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Salamanderfish is now a dab page? Rationale please.

Una, please explain your rationale for creating a dab page out of Salamanderfish. The other three species listed do not even mention the name on their respective articles. Even if there are some obscure references, clearly Lepidogalaxias salamandroides is the primary usage.

• Results 1 - 10 of about 682 for "Lepidogalaxias salamandroides" +salamanderfish
• Results 1 - 10 of about 76 for "Lepidosiren" +salamanderfish
• Results 1 - 10 of about 94 for "Neoceratodus" +salamanderfish
• Results 1 - 10 of about 92 for "Protopterus" +salamanderfish

All the results for the latter three seem to be lists that refer to both the species in question as well as a salamanderfish, rather than a reference to that species as "salamanderfish". Those citations, if they exist, are needed at Salamanderfish (as I've noted there).

By the way, you're supposed to explain your rationale, make sure there is consensus, then make your change (unless it's a revert to a stable state per BRD). --Born2cycle (talk) 06:55, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

I made the dab page per Nick's agreement (above) that a dab page at that page name would be sensible, and no opinions to the contrary in two days. This species is very unlikely to be the primary topic for Salamanderfish because Lepidogalaxias was described in 1961 and the other three species descriptions are much older. Lepidogalaxias is not a lungfish aka salamanderfish, it just looks and behaves a little like one. I presume that is the reason for the specific epithet salamandroides. A dab page does not need and should not have citations (Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)). The other articles are incomplete; of course, you are welcome to add the common name and the sources I provided or any others that you find. --Una Smith (talk)

The dab page has a total of 5 incoming links that need to be checked and fixed, once it is decided what page name this article will have. --Una Smith (talk) 07:30, 10 January 2009 (UTC)