Talk:Dosima fascicularis

A fact from Dosima fascicularis appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 5 December 2009 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the floating barnacle Dosima fascicularis sometimes grows on turtles and even sea snakes?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2009/December.

Wikipedia

More Concise or Less Precise

Being precise leaves no room for interpretation. The reference states Often stranded on south and west coasts of British Isles, and west coasts of France, Spain, and Portugal. This is not the same as the current text of "as well as westerly beaches further south in Europe". Lots of European countries have westerly beaches - Italy, Croatia, Greece, etc. It's hardly a huge leap in conciseness to substitute one word for three, and lose accuracy. --HighKing (talk) 16:17, 11 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In context, it is perfectly clear that Mediterranean coasts are irrelevant. The next sentence explains it. I see no compelling reason for making the edit, and in the absence of a consensus for change, it's best if we both leave the article alone. I will not be drawn into another wasteful discussion on the basis of this canard; I disagree with you, and I see little chance of your changing my mind. We can both be more productive if we simply agree to disagree and walk away. --Stemonitis (talk) 16:22, 11 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ah right. This is what you meant by "seeking consensus" - just gives you the chance to make more distasteful personal comments. So the suggestion is a "canard" now? How utterly condescending. Please stop with that aspect of your supposed "seeking consensus" - it is against policy and it has gone on for long enough.

It is *not* clear that "Mediterranean coasts are irrelevant". Why irrelevant? What makes them seem irrelevant to you? The next sentence states that It is not normally found in the Mediterranean Sea which is true - but we're talking about of phenomena of Dosima being "washed up" in the preceding sentence, which is different. And a living specimen of Dosima was found washed ashore at Ġnejna Bay in Malta in 2004. Why not clarify the sentence to list countries, thereby eliminating any possible confusion? --HighKing (talk) 16:39, 11 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Dosima has also been found stranded in the Faeroe Islands and southern Norway[1], and washed ashore at the island of Schiermonnikoog (The Netherlands) or Søndervig (Denmark)[2] --HighKing (talk) 20:11, 11 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

We don't need to list everywhere it has ever been recorded; that is not our purpose. The useful information for the reader is where, generally, it tends to wash up. --Stemonitis (talk) 06:36, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, "generally" it would then wash up on any Western European beaches, from Norway to Portugal. And "of note" is how it is suspected to pass Gibraltar and enter the Med area to wash up in what is otherwise an enclosed area. --HighKing (talk) 10:32, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree: I don't think occasional stranding in more peripheral areas is comparable to frequent stranding on beaches in a more restricted area. I don't think the "introduction" to the Mediterranean is particularly surprising for a passive member of the pleuston, either, and the authors of the Maltese paper don't suggest any mechanism, so I don't think we can say much about that. --Stemonitis (talk) 10:39, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nobody is saying that occasional stranding is comparable with frequent stranding. But from reading this version of the article, there's no mention of any infrequent strandings, and no mention of examples being washed ashore in the Med. Nor do I see references dismissing the importance or notability of occasional strandings. Anecdotal evidence suggests that it is washed up wherever the Atlantic ocean's currents take it, which explains why it has been found off the coast of Belgium, Germany/Denmark, and Norway, and Southern France[3][4][5]. The authors of the Maltese paper indicate that they include D.fascicularis with "some reserve" as they "cannot exclude the possibility" that is was washed into the Med from the Atlantic via Gibraltar as not that the possibility of it being a "natural extension of its range".

All in all, these aren't likely to be one-off rare events preciptated by a freak natural event such as a Tsunami, and as such at least deserve a mention as per WP:NPOV. --HighKing (talk) 14:21, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The peripheral area of occasional stranding could be included, if we had a good idea of where its limits were (if any). It would also need to be clear to the reader where strandings are frequent (and they really can be quite frequent in some places, in my experience), and where they are rare. From your synopsis of the Maltese paper, it doesn't sound like they've got a clue either way, which is probably fair but not especially useful to us. We need to be careful to avoid performing our own original synthesis of observation data. I haven't seen a good source for the full extent of occasional strandings, and certainly not a secondary source, but if anyone knows of one, I'd be happy for it to be appropriately included. I don't think NPOV really comes into play here; there aren't two opposing schools of thought publishing contradictory papers on the range of Dosima strandings across Europe. This is more an issue of finding reliable sources and avoiding making a novel synthesis. --Stemonitis (talk) 15:01, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think your description above is pretty good for inclusion. Easy enough to state that it's not clear where the delineation between frequent landings and occasional landing is, but landing have occurred from X to Y, etc. I mentioned NPOV above because to be properly neutral, we should have a minimal amount of interpretation of the sources - and the ones I've mentioned above show landings have occurred, are documented and referenced, but are not being included in the article for a reason I don't fully understand. --HighKing (talk) 14:18, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As I say, we would need a good [secondary] reference for a description of the full geographical range of strandings. Listing [only] observations that we are aware of is dangerously close to original research. It is not our job to synthesise those records into a distribution. --Stemonitis (talk) 18:21, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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