Talk:African elephant

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 30 August 2021 and 10 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): GK2000GK.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 16:57, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 11 January 2021 and 21 April 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): NTenh02. Peer reviewers: NTenh02.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 13:32, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Discrepancy with elephant cognition

On African elephant, it says "The elephant's brain is similar to a human brain in terms of structure and complexity; the elephant's cortex has as many neurons as that of a human brain,[47] suggesting convergent evolution.[48]". But then on elephant cognition, it says "Although initially estimated to have as many neurons as a human brain,[2] the elephant's cortex has about one-third of the number of neurons as a human brain.[1]". I don't know which one is right but it's contradictory.

RFC Categories

Should African elephant be placed in 'Category:Mammals of Sub-Saharan Africa' or 'Fauna of Sub-Saharan Africa'. LittleJerry (talk) 23:34, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

LittleJerry (talk) has reverted some changes that I made to the Categories in this article. I made those changes based on the principles in WP:CATSPECIFIC. Whilst the editor has provided a semblance of an explanation for this reversion, there is not enough information to remotely understand what the editor is referring to. Could the editor please expand on his reasons and explain how this fits in with the principles in WP:CATSPECIFIC Jameel the Saluki (talk) 11:25, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

No reply from User:LittleJerry so I am repeating my category changes based on WP:CATSPECIFIC, which are: Replace categories 'Fauna of Sub-Saharan Africa' and 'Mammals of Africa' to 'Mammals of Sub-Saharan Africa'

Justification

• All African elephants are mammals
• All African elephants exist only in Sub-Saharan Africa.
• The category 'Mammals of Africa' explicity requests "This is a container category. Due to its scope, it should contain only subcategories."

Jameel the Saluki (talk) 10:23, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

I didn't see this talk. The species African bush elephant is already under the specific category "Mammals of Sub-Saharan Africa". African elephant doesn't need to be under there, especially since it's not a specific species. Broader topics belong in broader categories. LittleJerry (talk) 19:51, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

The guidelines in WP:CATSPECIFIC are reasonably clear. Could you address these guidelines in your response. It is clear from these guidelines that African elephant article does need more specific categorisation than what you are desiring.

Could you also please point to any guidelines which justify your position "Broader topics belong in broader categories". The point of categories is that they allow the user to hone on an article that they may be looking for without using a search function. If this were a guideline how do you determine how broad the categories need to be?

I don't see the relevance of the aritcle on the African bush elephant being in "Mammals of Sub-Saharan Africa". The article African elephant happens to discuss the African bush elephant and there is a wikilink, but it's not a container for the article. The categories are not there as a vague indication that African bush elephant is the species and African elephant is the genus, they exist for the purposes of navigation.

I simply do not follow what you are trying to achieve here, and it appears contrary to guidelines on categories

Could you also please have the decency to not automatically revert my changes without further discussion. I would suggest that you include Talk pages in your trigger. Meanwhile I appear to be forced to revert until you provide an alternative method of alerting you.

Jameel the Saluki (talk) 22:05, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

By your own logic: we could place African elephant in "Category:Mammals of [insert country]". That's more specific. We apply broad categories to broad topics all the time. That why the species leopard is not under the Category:Mammals of India but the subspecies Indian leopard is. LittleJerry (talk) 23:34, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

The current use of geographic categories for species is problematic, because each distruibution of a species is unqiue, they typically don't follow any conventional boundaries, they are always fragmented, they are not uniform in density, they are often speculative, and they change over time. Nevertheless editors are attempting to do so.

Now the nest thing I'll mention is that it isn't my logic, it is the guidelines set out for the use of categories (have you actually read them yet, you've had plenty of time). The key principle is "Apart from certain exceptions (i.e. eponymous categories and non-diffusing subcategories – see below), an article should be categorised under the most specific branch in the category tree possible, without duplication in parent categories above it" (bolding is mine). The use of "the" indicates the intention of single category. "Mammals of Sub-Saharan Africa" is a sub-category of both "Mammals of Africa" and "Fauna of Sub-Saharan Africa". The fact that it is a sub-category is important here. You could resolve the issue by removing "Mammals of Sub-Saharan Africa" as a sub-category from the other two categories and my argument is probably no longer valid, but I'm not sure that's the appropriate solution. The African elephant does live in other countries, but the guidelines state that it is under "the" (singular) most specific branch possible. So putting the article into sub-categories of countries would necessitate putting the article into multiple sub-categories.

"We apply broad categories to broad topics all the time" - who is "we"? What is the evidence for this claim? If these editors do exist should they not amend the guidelines or least come to some explicit agreement? Otherwise are they not simply rogue editors?

The article relating to the leopard species is not found exclusively in India, hence I would not be using this particular sub-category.

Three general points to your discussion

• you keep referring to articles on subjects as if it were the subjects themselves. I don't believe that is helping you understand categorisattion
• you seem to be focussed entirely on categorisation, without considering the concept of sub-categorisation
• you don't seem to be remotely interested in following Wikipedia guidelines

You still haven't addressed the requirement in the "Fauna of Africa" category that "This is a container category. Due to its scope, it should contain only subcategories." Jameel the Saluki (talk) 01:44, 5 December 2022 (UTC)