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Better I guess. But Sess, did you not read my edit summary before reverting? What part of "can is not must" do you not understand?--Kotniski (talk) 10:37, 11 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
A number of inaccurate definitions for "fish school" are currently being offered by some editors who are reverting the accurate definitions being offered by other editors. The most inaccurate definition offered so far is the current one: a swarm or group of fish or cetaceans. Another thoroughly inaccurate definition was that a fish school is a group of fish. A group of fish is properly called an an aggregation. If the aggregation forms a social group, so the fish keep adjusting their swimming to stay in touch, then it is called a "shoal". If a shoal is further structured, so the fish are swimming in the same direction in a coordinated manner, then it is called a "school". That is an accurate encyclopaedic definition, and is easy to understand. A group of cetaceans is normally called a pod, not a school. For more, see shoaling and schooling. --Geronimo20 (talk) 01:17, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This page is not for explaining how people should use terms; it's for helping people navigate to the article they sought when they entered an ambiguous term in the Go box. People who are looking for a school of fish by entering school are looking for "a large number of fish or aquatic animals of one kind swimming together" (M-W.com). Google gets 18K hits on "school of whales" (with quotes), and 63.7K hits on "school of dolphins". The description here should be kept short, with only enough information to direct the reader to the sought article. "School (fish)" (with no description) might do. Or "School (fish), a group of fish" will get people to the article (where they can then read about the technical distinctions of the terms). Or how about "School (fish), a type of shoal of fish"? Short, possibly accurate (I'm not up on the technical distinctions). But in any event, changes here (like the comments indicate) should have been discusses first, to avoid the reversions here and on WP:MOSDAB. -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:58, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
So why not just say how it is: "School (fish), a group of fish swimming in the same direction in a coordinated manner". Surely that is fairly easy to understand. It is true that there is some general confusion about what a fish school is, but you seem to be saying we should reinforce that confusion in Wikipedia. I don't see the point in that. Why are you insisting on these inaccuracies? And worse, you are presenting these inaccuracies as an example in Manual of Style (disambiguation pages). I hope this is not happening elsewhere on the disambiguation pages. As an aside, you must use a different Google to the one I use. I get 4,530 hits for a "school of whales", and 29,300 hits for a "pod of whales". --Geronimo20 (talk) 11:46, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
There's nothing inaccurate about the non-technical usage, and there's no reason to restrict the description here to the technical usage. There is no confusion about what a fish school is, just two different groups with slightly differing definitions. This search yields "Results 1 - 10 of about 18,800 for "school of whales". (0.23 seconds)" -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:08, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Doh... I give up. It's disheartening at times trying to add value to Wikipedia. These Google result are also disheartening. Look at this one, yielding "Results 1 - 50 of about 4,530 for "School of whales". (0.33 seconds)" Guess we can't even have faith in Google : / --Geronimo20 (talk) 12:57, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You're confusing "scientific usage pedantry" with "value". Yes, there is a scientific use of "school", which happens to be more restrictive than the general usage. But WP is aggregating all the uses (including the general one, as cited in M-W.com). Switching .com to .co.nz (or vice versa) in the URLs changes the numbers of hits. Weird. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:23, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
