Talk:Amazonian manatee

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Your additions to the Behavior and Biology section were insightful and definitely improved the section. But, you may want to consider improving some of the other under-informed sections as well such as Ecology, Predation, Conservation, and Taxonomy. The other section could be rewritten too to make the sentences flow better since there are a lot of stand alone sentences on this page. And, the page is definitely in need of some pictures if there are any available; finding public domain photos is difficult. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mjhohl (talk • contribs) 03:02, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Great section on its biology

The section you added about its biology and behavior was definitely needed. I'm glad you provided the necessary information about its breathing strategy so that people do not assume that it is a fish. You also did a great job cleaning up some citations. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hduppal (talk • contribs) 04:15, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Dwarf manatee heading change?

Would it make sense to change the heading of the Dwarf manatee section to something like "Possible subspecies"? I feel like the near consensus that the Dwarf manatee is really an Amazonian manatee should be emphasized more, and it would make it fit better with the rest of the article, but I really don't know much about taxonomy, and I'm not sure what would be the best way to word it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ilikemycorner (talk • contribs) 01:13, 17 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

As mentioned previously, you should follow WP:MERGE if you want to merge pages. This means that you should start a discussion first, including merge tags on the article pages themselves (this often attracts comments). Your argument that a single 3-year-old comment without any replies (or tags on article pages to attract replies) means that you are exempt from discussion is not valid. Following your recent revert, I was tempted to add a warning template on your talk page, but I'll assume good faith. You also seem to be under the mistaken impression that having a wiki article means that we accept it as a valid species; that is not the case. Many cryptoids have their own articles and very few believe they're valid species! We also have articles for pseudoscientific ideas like Intelligent design (or more comical: Flat Earth and Flying Spaghetti Monster). This is unproblematic as long as the articles describe the highly questionable validity and this is already done clearly in the dwarf manatee article (the main difference between Roosmalen's manatee and standard cryptoids is that the former had a scientific description and was well-covered as a valid species by the general media, providing a level of WP:V). If you provide a good argument for merging the pages (why it is better to have 1 instead of 2 articles) I may well support it too, but I will definitely not support a unilateral move without any discussion.

Regardless, note that your suggestion of calling it a subspecies (even if only "possible") is WP:OR. Many have suggested it is a junior synonym and the published evidence supports this (it was a nomen nudum until the 2015 publication in Biodiversity Journal), but I'm not aware of anyone believing it is a subspecies. Again it seems like you are under the mistaken impression that even having a subheading with the name means supported its validity. Please take care when changing taxonomic information when you, to use your own words, "really don't know much about taxonomy".

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80.62.116.216 (talk) 20:33, 18 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]