Talk:Batodonoides vanhouteni

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Merge to genus

As with the large majority of articles on extinct species the amount of information which is different for the two species recognized, Batodonoides vanhouteni and Batodonoides powayensis is small and technical, the two should be treated as others under the wp Paleontology banner and described in the genus article with the species as redirects there. --Kevmin (talk) 17:47, 16 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree. Instead, write an article on other members of the genus. Wikipedia:Don't demolish the house while it's still being built. Abductive (reasoning) 01:31, 17 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support for merging relevant content to the genus Batodonoides. I agree with Kevmin, it is generally agreed upon in WP:PAL that genus-level articles are the limit unless they cover a recently extinct species where information is plentiful or they are an extinct species belonging to an extant genus. -- Spotty ¹¹²²² 07:38, 17 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Except Batodonoides vanhouteni is the smallest mammal that has lived in the past 200 million years, and Batodonoides powayensis is the type specimen. Each deserves their own article. As for this being the "generally agreed upon", there are counterexamples, such as Castoroides and Megalonyx. Finally, I note that the initiator of this merge discussion first moved the article under the incorrect rational that the genus was monotypic, and is now targeting this article rather than "lose" to another editor. Abductive (reasoning) 08:51, 17 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And yet there is a merge tag on Castoroides to move those two small articles to the genus page. They could easily be incorporated into the article, allowing readers to quickly get a grasp of the animal without going through too many links. And Megalonyx jeffersonii is quite a well established article. If you would have cared to to read the discussions on the talk page I listed, and briefly mentioned here, it would state that much more information is known regarding recently extinct species, and that if this is the case, they should be given their own article. See for example Australopithecus afarensis. Another example, which you brought up, is M. jeffersonii, is known from more complete specimens, and hence, more is known about the species, and the article is comprehensive. The same applies to the species of Castoroides. -- Spotty ¹¹²²² 09:51, 17 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I created a user sub-page of what the merged article may look like. Please comment and suggest any ideas. User:Spotty11222/Batodonoides -- Spotty ¹¹²²² 10:01, 17 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Abductive, I would ask that you please AGF. As a user how works almost entirely on extinct taxa and other fossil related articles, my merge proposal is based on my experience working with these topics and has nothing to do with "winning" anything. If three articles are maintained for these taxa, in all likelihood they will all remain stubs, by merging and treating all three at the genus level, a longer comprehensive article is created without having the inherent large volume of information duplication that would be found in three separate articles. --Kevmin (talk) 05:00, 18 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry about that. Anyway, I have commented at WikiProject Palaeontology's chat about "generally agreed upon" that genus-level articles are the limit, and with my voice added to Hesperian's and J. Spencer's, there is no consensus anymore. Abductive (reasoning) 21:27, 18 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]