Talk:Melaleuca lasiandra

Name derivation

Ok, you are both claiming that Brophy supports your preferred derivation for the binomial. Can one or both of you quote precisely what Brophy says on this matter so we can settle this. The source can't agree with both derivations. Thanks. Mark Marathon (talk) 08:27, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Wimpus you did indeed make an edit which cited Brophy as the source for your derivation. Regardless of what you may think that andros means, Brophy is RS and you are not. If Brophy says it means "small and pink" then that is what goes into the article unless you can find another reliable source that says otherwise. And even then we just put both versions into the article and let the reader decide. You can not remove reliably sources material regardless of how wrong you believe it to be. If you believe that Brophy is not RS, then discuss it on the article talk page and get consensus or take it to the RS noticeboard and get consensus there. It matters not one whit whether you believe this is a genitive case, a book case or an open-and-shut case. If it is supported by a reliable source, it stays in the article. If your derivation is not supported by a RS it can't go into the article. That's the whole story.Mark Marathon (talk) 09:23, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

I did not use Brophy. I reverted back to an earlier version. @Gderrin, can you verbatim quote Brophy? (Or is the current wording a verbatim quote?) In the first version of this lemma, you used a combination of Wiktionary and Brophy (The specific epithet (lasiandra) is from the Ancient Greek λάσιος (lásios), meaning "hairy" and ἀνδρός (andrós) "male", "in reference to the hairy staminal filaments) In the version of Wiktionary you referred to, I can read: From Ancient Greek ἀνδρός (andrós), genitive of ἀνήρ (anḗr). So, is this Wiktionary-reference compatible with Brophy (as Brophy seems to indicate that andros is a nominative case (given his translation: male and not of a male), while Wiktionary considers andros as genitive)? In this edit you replaced the Wiktionary-source by a reference to p. 509 of Brown's The Composition of Scientific Words. Brown p. 509 writes: Gr. aner, andros, m. man, male; The translation man, male is for the first form aner in Brown, as Brown explains on p. 5: The genitives of nouns are given only when they help to clarify the spelling of the root-stem or combining base. For this reason the genitives in -ae of Latin first and in -i of second declension nouns, and those in -on of Greek nouns, are omitted. Is Brown in this case compatible with Brophy? In case, these sources would not be compatible, could we still be assured that Brophy is a reliable source for etymological information? Please elaborate.Wimpus (talk) 10:11, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

OK, let's get some things straight.

Firstly, nobody gives a flying fig about Brown. unless Brown uses the exact words "Melaleuca lasiandra" in that exact order, it's a complete irrelevance.

Secondly, nobody gives a flying fig what you know to be true, what you believe to be true or what you assert to be true. If you can't find a reliable source that agrees with you and that uses the exact words "Melaleuca lasiandra" in that exact order, it's a complete irrelevance.

Thirdly, you most certainly did use Brophy. You made an edit at 15:17, 13 July 2019‎ that read "The specific epithet (lasiandra) is from the Ancient Greek λάσιος (lásios), meaning "hairy"[5]:391and ἀνήρ (anḗr) meaning "male"[5]:509 "in reference to the hairy staminal filaments".[1]" the [1] is referenced to " Brophy, Joseph J.; Craven, Lyndley A.; Doran, John C. (2013). Melaleucas : their botany, essential oils and uses. Canberra: Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research. p. 214. ISBN 9781922137517." SO yes, you most certainly did use Brophy to back your claim pertaining to the derivation and your edit directly states that uses that derivation to refer to the hairy staminal filaments according to Brophy. At best you are engaging in synthesis by combining what Brophy says with what Brown to synthesise a new etymology. At worst you are misrepresenting Brophy, a source which it appears you have never read. Neither action is giving me much faith in your reliability and credibility..

Wimpus, a word to the wise. If you continue to behave as you have been, you are very likely to have your account suspended, and all your edits will rapidly be reverted. If you actually care passionately about this subject, then it would behoove you to familiarise yourself with Wikipedia's policies. Failing to do so is not likely to achieve whatever it is you wish to achieve.Mark Marathon (talk) 10:49, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

I have only reverted back to a version of Gderrin. Maybe, I should not have done that. Maybe you can ask HIM why he put it that way. So, you are completely ignoring the massive SYNTH-violation by Gderrin. There are hundreds of edits of Gderrin waiting for you to be reverted based on SYNTH-violation.Wimpus (talk) 10:59, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

@Mark Marathon, as I am apparently completely unaware of Wikipedia's policies, maybe you could check whether the following edits (in which I have removed possible SYNTH-edits of Gderrin) are correct (1, 2,3, 4,5,6) In case my edits are correct, other SYNTH-edits of Gderrin could equally be removed. Wimpus (talk) 11:21, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

@Mark Marathon: Hello Mark and thank you for your intervention. The use of Wikipedia as an etymological source was a mistake I have not made for several years. I now rely only on a botanist's etymology, or where I can't find one, on Roland Wilbur Brown. When a botanist gives an etymology, either in a monograph, in a paper or specialist textbook, that etymology should be relied upon, over any Wikipedia editor's opinion, even when substantiated by a latin or greek textbook, including that of RWB. Since the etymologies I have given have been questioned and changed lately, I have taken to giving etymologies as given in botanical texts, in quotation marks (although even that has sometimes not saved them). The etymology I added to the page Melaleuca lasiandra at 23:00 on 15 July 2019, is precisely the derivation given on page 214 of Craven and Brophy's monograph. That monograph is available to download here. Gderrin (talk) 11:49, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

@Gderrin, you state: The use of Wikipedia as an etymological source was a mistake I have not made for several years. It seems that you refer to the use of Wiktionary. After using Wiktionary, you seem to have used for a couple of months, this document, that does not mention any author and writes: Please excuse the damage I have done to the Greek language, because when it comes to accents and breaths, it is all Greek to me. This can not be treated as an authorative source (and the errors are numerous). You have used The Australian Oxford Dictionary for a while for analysing Latin epithets.

For the last three years you have used Brown, that is in itself quite a useful dictionary, but you have to know how to use it and interpret it. I have made the last few days, tens of corrections to your edits, as you misread or misinterpreted Brown repeatedly. Currently there are more than a thousand of lemmata with one or more reference to Brown. It could be quite some task to check all those edits. We do not know, whether the specific etymological analyses you have fabricated, based on finding single words in Brown (epithets are almost never mentioned by Brown) are corresponding to what the original author intended or not. Some compound analysis might be rather straightforward, but on my talkpage I have given a few examples that exemplify, that all kind of alternative etymological explanations can be given (when using Brown) that could prima facie be equally valid. Currently, there are maybe hunderdths of Gderrin-syntheses based on Brown still present on Wikipedia.

You have just started recently to replace your own syntheses based on Brown, by primary or secondary sources. That could be a great improvement and from point of view of Wikilawyering, one could not take offense to such a modus operandi. But if we would focus on the content, then it would become clear, that not all replacements are actually improvements, as various secondary sources you are currently using, are internally inconsistent at least and downright non-sensible in certain instances. Here we can see that you replaced phloios for "bark" according to Brown with phloia for "bark" according to CANBR. And phloia is not mentioned once by CANBR, but multiple times (see here, here, here, here and here), but suprisingly we can also read on CNBR: phloios, the bark.. Not all pages of CNBR can be right. So, could you tell me what the word for bark is in Greek, based on your sources?

Gderrin does not mind or does not notice, that he is currently creating an inconsistent potpourri of etymological derivations. He equally does not seem to mind that he is still fabricating his own etymological syntheses based on Brown (or where I can't find one, on Roland Wilbur Brown.). But maybe I am misinterpreting all the Wiki-rules and is this behavior well within the legal boundaries of Wikipedia. But, maybe could Mark Marathon still check the six edits I have made, in which I removed the possible SYNTH-violation of Gderrin. Wimpus (talk) 17:06, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

References