Talk:Dendrolagus notatus

Article name

Is there any reason why this article is at the scientific name and not the common name? - UtherSRG (talk) 23:47, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

@Plantdrew: - Ah, you did it. IUCN says "Ifola" is the common name, as does Palm Oil Detectives. iNaturalist has "Ifola Tree-Kangaroo" (I note here they use my preferred capitalization. *grins*) and Tenkile (a conservation organization) has "Ifola Tree Kangaroo". Can we move this back as being confirmed common names? - UtherSRG (talk) 23:57, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

@UtherSRG:, move to what? You've just presented three different common names. Which of them are you suggesting for the title of the article, and why? The article seems to be getting more views with the current title. Plantdrew (talk) 00:50, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Fair enough. :) I'm partial to "Ifola". It's what IUCN has, and it's how the species is listed on the genus page. Interesting data... but what does it mean? Did it start getting more views because of the name, or because it was moved regardless of what it was named? - UtherSRG (talk) 01:02, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

I don't think I would've moved it if it had been titled "Ifola". I was concerned that reliable sources (IUCN and Mammal Diversity Database) didn't mention the name that Wikipedia was using at a title ("Ifola tree-kangaroo"). The article was created at the scientific name title and was moved 2 years later with the rationale "English name as other related". Related species have "tree-kangaroo" titles (with hyphen). It is not Wikipedia's place to select poorly attested common names of organisms as titles in the interest of consistency. WP:CONSISTENCY is one title criterion. WP:RECOGNIZABILITY is another, with WP:COMMONNAME double-dipping recognizability. Common name is a term of art in organismal biology. COMMONNAME is also a term of art in Wikipedia. COMMONNAME does not suggest that any non-scientific name is automatically a better title for a organism than the scientific name. Readers are badly served by Wikipedia using an arbitrary common name for an organism as a title without Wikipedia editors making an effort to determineg which common names are most commonly used. I suspect the recent increase in page views stem from my creation of redirects for Ifola, Ifola tree kangaroo and Ifola Tree Kangaroo (although actual page views for these redirects are basically nonexistent, I think they are indexed by search engines). If there is a single common name for an organism that is appropriate as an article title, readers are still served by creating redirects from other common names. Moving a page from the scientific name to an arbitrary common name without creating other relevant redirects is bad.Plantdrew (talk) 02:36, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

(So is that a "Yes, move it to "Ifola"? You didn't quite say.) I'm totally on the side of having redirects. They make it easier for users to find the articles they need. I suspect you are correct that the increase in readership has more to do with the redirects that you made than that you moved it to the sci name. What we don't get from the raw pageview count is "who" the readers are. Are they science minded? Are the conservation minded? Did they see an article in their newspaper and wanted to google the critter to see what more info there was? But, we have those redirects now, so the access question seems to be answered: Can the reader find the article. So, let's address the policies you called out.

• CONSISTENCY - None of the other tree-kangaroo articles are placed at the sci name. They either have a single-word name that is based on the local term for the animal, or is in the form "X tree-kangaroo", or has both as alternate common names. Of the ones that use a local term for the article placement, none have the "X tree-kangaroo" as a common name where X is the single-word term. ("Tenkile", but "Scott's tree-kangaroo".) So while moving it to "Ifola" wouldn't be 100% consistent, it wouldn't be far off the mark. An argument can be made that "Ifola tree-kangaroo" is more consistent. (On that point, "no hyphen" would be less consistent than with the hyphen.)
• RECOGNIZABILITY - I dare say that most non-scientists would recognize many scientific names. If the reader is at the point where they can recognize D. notatus as the Ifola, they are probably already know everything we have in the one-paragraph article. Again, an argument can be made that "Ifola tree-kangaroo" would also be more recognizable.
• COMMONNAME - Ghits numbers can be misleading, but can also be enlightening. I suspect the higher bump for the hypenated version may be because that's where we had the article at previously, and many websites copy us or follow our lead.
  • Dendrolagus notatus - 1k
  • Ifola - 100k
  • Ifola tree kangaroo - 276k
  • Ifola tree-kangaroo - 286k

That last thought leads me to another consideration, that of our influence on other websites and search engines. Should we take into account the influence our article titles have on the rest of the electronic world? All that said... I think I convinced myself that "Ifola tree-kangaroo" is best, though "Ifola" is good, too. If we do choose the longer name, I'd likely examine the inbound links and see which articles would merit a change. Tops would be changing the listing in the genus page. UtherSRG (talk) 11:24, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

PS. MDD uses "Ifola Tree Kangaroo". - UtherSRG (talk) 11:58, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia definitely influences other websites. I've keep notes on the number of reported GHits at the time Wikipedia adopted some "common name" titles that I thought were dubious. Hog-nosed catfish had 6 hits on 8/1/2016 (If I recall correctly these were all in reference to a different species). It was moved from Hog-nosed brochis on the grounds that it was longer placed in Brochis (but sources used by Wikipedia for common names often have names that are based on outdated generic placement). There was no source provided for the name "hog-nosed catfish", but Google now reports 341 results. Pleistocene New Zealand sea lion had 10 reported GHits on 7/10/16. It now has 869. The article was moved back to the scientific name on 8/22/21. The phrase "Pleistocene New Zealand sea lion" does appear in a source used as a Wikipedia reference, but I think it was intended as a description, and not really as a common name. Sri Lanka tree crab had 4 GHits o 6/5/2016, and now has 184. No source was given for the supposed common name. I could dig up a couple more examples.

However, GHits are very unreliable, especially when a multi-word search isn't enclosed in quotes. It should set off some red flags seeing the number of reported GHits more than double when you added "tree kangaroo" or "tree-kangaroo" to "ifola". Surely adding more search terms should reduce the number of hits? I'm not sure exactly how the algorithm comes up with it's numbers, but at some levels it's based on how frequently words are used. "Tree" and "kangaroo" are more frequently used words than "ifola". If you search for ifola with "Obama" or "Trump", reported GHits are in the millions. I doubt there are any pages on the internet that mention ifola in conjunction with a US president, but the names of the presidents are very frequently used on the internet. Reported Ghits also vary somewhat from search to search with no clear pattern. With quotes, the reported Ghits I get are:

"Dendrolagus notatus" 928

"Ifola tree kangaroo" 1,940

"Ifola tree-kangaroo" 2,020 (includes results which don't actually have a hyphen, e.g. this Wikipedia article)

"Ifola" 87,400 (includes results for a place in Mali and a surname)

I don't think there are any websites that would be considered reliable sources of information about this animal that don't mention the scientific name at all. But potentially reliable sources vary in what vernacular name is given. Ifola isn't very recognizable; most English speakers have never heard of this animal under any name, and Ifola might as well be the name of a town in Mali for all most people know. Many people would at least recognize Dendrolagus notatus as the scientific name of an organism (and definitely not a town in Mali). Adding "tree kangaroo" does a lot to enhance recognizability. So why not add "tree kangaroo" to tenkile and dingiso as well? Some sources do. "Tree-kangaroo" doesn't do much for recognizability over "tree kangaroo"; presumably the hyphen is intended to denote that it isn't a "true kangaroo"; but the only people who are likely to why it is hyphenated are scientists who are aware that Dendrolagus is a different genus than Macropus and Osphranter.

There are multiple common names. Reliable sources (per WP:COMMONNAME) all mention Dendrolagus notatus. How do you pick which of several common names to use for the article title. Is there any evidence that using the scientific name given in reliable sources as the title (with redirects from common names) is making it more difficult for readers to find this subject? For the most part, Wikipedia just went with whatever single common name was listed in MSW3 for the titles of mammal articles with zero consideration over whether the MSW3 name was actually the most commonly used (cf. Pallas's cat/manul). In some cases, I believe Wikipedia's choice of a common name for a title is making it more difficult for readers to find the information they want (the existence of cardinal (bird) makes it more difficult to find the article northern cardinal) Plantdrew (talk) 21:24, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

That was probably way more than I needed. I'll just start a move request and let the people decide... - UtherSRG (talk) 23:27, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 6 October 2022

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. Participants in the discussion were unconvinced that the proposed title would be preferable. (non-admin closure) ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 19:29, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

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Dendrolagus notatus → Ifola tree-kangaroo – WP:CONSISTENCY, WP:RECOGNIZABILITY, and WP:COMMONNAME. All of the other species of Dendrolagus are placed at a common name. Most are of the form "X tree-kangaroo" and none are at "X tree kangaroo", so "Ifola tree kangaroo" would not be an acceptable alternative. However, "Ifola" on its own would be. UtherSRG (talk) 23:32, 6 October 2022 (UTC)— Relisting. —usernamekiran (talk) 16:29, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Mammals has been notified of this discussion. UtherSRG (talk) 23:32, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

• OpposeComment: Two common names, why have you chosen the one you have? YorkshireExpat (talk) 19:34, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

  I should have said more explicitly, but the conversation just above this request was what drove me to start the request. Of the two common names, the one I selected gives the article more recognizability: "I don't know what 'Ifola' is, but I can see that 'Ifola tree-kangaroo' must be something like a kangaroo. Oh, there's a group of animals called tree-kangaroos? This must be one of them." So while moving away from the scientific name addresses the Consistency and Commonname issues, choosing this specific common name addresses the Recognizability factor. - UtherSRG (talk) 21:33, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

  Ok. I may row back slightly. YorkshireExpat (talk) 19:41, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME ("the name that is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in a significant majority of independent, reliable English-language sources)". Reliable English-language sources invariably mention the scientific name. COMMONNAME is not a mandate to avoid scientific name titles for species. Common name is a term of art related to species, and COMMONNME is a term of art in Wikipedia. This is an animal that hasn't been widely recognized as a distinct species until quite recently. It does not have a widely established English vernacular name. It is not Wikipedia's place to promote a single vernacular name as a title for an organism that doesn't have a well-established single vernacular name. Plantdrew (talk) 03:24, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Note: Wikipedia:WikiProject Monotremes and Marsupials has been notified of this discussion. UtherSRG (talk) 23:32, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

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.

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