Talk:Waitoreke

older entries

Has anyone actually seen the Waitoreke lately? Does anyone know where it lives?

Spelling/grammar

"New Zealand and It's Inhabitants". Can't find a picture of the title page, but wouldn't it be "New Zealand and its Inhabitants"? GrahamBould 08:41, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

GA Review

With all due respect, this article has a long way to go before GA status. There are significant and obvious grammatical errors evident right in the lead section (specifically, almost the entire second paragraph). Heck, the last sentence doesn't even end with a period! There are also spelling and grammatical errors in the infobox to the right as well. It would help to editors to review WP:LEAD to help write a good, summarizing lead section for the article. Done

There are significant manual of style errors throughout; the 'description' subheading is a level 3 subheading, but that is followed by the 'name' subheading, which is level 2? The 'otter' and 'beaver' subheadings should not contain links in them. Link to those articles using 'main article: ' or 'see also: ' links directly beneath the heading title. Done

There are zero inline references. There are a few external link reference throughout, which need to be properly formatted. There is also a 'notes' section, but this only contains an external link and does not contain any inline citations. Also, the references and/or footnotes should come before the external links section, not after. Please review WP:CITE for information on how to include inline citations in articles.  Done

The 'evidence' and 'documentary' sections are very short, and need to be expanded. They don't make too much sense in relation to the overall topic as written.P Done

I would recommend taking a look at some of the information in the relevant wikiprojects (at the top of this talk page) for more guidelines on how to write a similar article. It might also help to review the good article criteria. Good luck! Dr. Cash 04:17, 4 August 2007 (UTC) Done

GA failed again

I am sorry to say that this article is not in a sufficient state for GA. I think that when Dr. Cash made his concerns above, he only cited some of the problems he saw and that there would be more problems on a similar line

• OR - "If the waitoreke does in fact exist, it it would be remarkable because New Zealand does not any native land mammals." - you have concluded this "it would be remarkable" - personal commentary. Simply note that it would be the first. This is repeated a few times
  • Another example - "(and presumably nonsense)"
  • "The Waitoreke would be most remarkable if it exists, due to the fact that New Zealand is one of the few significant land masses on Earth to have no (known) native land placental mammals" Done

• WP:WTA - "Alleged" you should reframe the article to say that it is a "theoretical" type of an animal rather than say that it is "alleged" which is an ungainly kind of word for NPOV purposes. Repeated a few times. Also in the "name" section, which should be called "etymology", you should not use "some" so much. It is also a weasel word.If possible, attribute it to a school of thought
• WP:REF - Severely lacking and not filled out properly with the name, date, publisher etc. See Dinesh Karthik for examples Done
• Lists - Better to prosify and expand the etymology some more. There is more info in your links Done
• Information - In general needs expansion. One of the sources (CZ) is quite detailed and discusses the various issues in detail.  Done

You mean Cz.com. This is OK for recent stuff (such as the living animals) - it cites properly (a good sign), despite some taxonomy errors (always a very very bad sign; professionals go at great length to spell out taxa correctly), but it does cite a Worthy/Holdaway paper (always a very good sign when it comes to NZ prehistorical biology). It is, however, nearly as worthless as any other page for the real things, the contemporary reports, which are not cited properly. Its sheer volume of information, however, makes it far better than usual. Dysmorodrepanis 11:30, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

• POV - In some places, the POV seems to be imported from "cryptozoology" - how do we know that the evaluation of this pundit reflects scholarly consensus? It should be attributed to people. It would be good to get some rebuttal and counter-rebuttal of the theories. "However, not a single piece of physical evidence put forward in over 200 years has conclusively proven the animal is anything more than cryptozoological myth." and so forth Done

Blnguyen (bananabucket) 02:39, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Passed

GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS):

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   a (fair representation): b (all significant views):

5. It is stable.

   

6. It contains images, where possible, to illustrate the topic.

   a (tagged and captioned): b lack of images (does not in itself exclude GA): c (non-free images have fair use rationales):

7. Overall:

   a Pass/Fail:

Zalgt 20:11, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Delisted GA

This article has been delisted from WP:GA per Wikipedia:Good_article_review/Archive_26#Waitoreke.

WP:GAC#How_to_review_an_article states "Choose an article to review, noting: You cannot choose an article if you have made significant contributions to it."

• This article was first nominated by User:Zalgt at 14:35, August 2 2007.[1]
• It was failed by User:Derek.cashman at 00:18, August 4 2007.[2]
• At 10:27, August 9 2007, User:Zalgt renominated the article without first addressing the concerns noted in the initial review.[3]
• At 22:17, August 9 2007, User:Blnguyen failed the nomination.[4]
• Then, at 16:16, August 10 2007, User:Zalgt listed the article at WP:GA.[5]

This is unacceptable. Until the issues listed in the GA reviews are addressed and this article meets all the criteria listed at WP:WIAGA, it cannot be listed as a Good article. Lara♥Love 04:59, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

"Torete, kaureke..."

There is some scholarly research available for free online. Go get it, or I'll add it'; and as a matter of professional honor, I have zero tolerance for cryptozoology without a capital "Z".

Until then, consider this little gem - it's a Māori chant "The Cry of the Little Green Parrot". Probably southern N island, but this would require verification. Source is Colenso [if you don't know who that was you should look it up yesterday], date is 1880. Original name of chant is not given, might have been - hold tight to your seat - "Torete kaureke". BOOM!

The chant is a discussion between what almost certainly - "almost" because the Māori text is not given; the ID is pretty unequivocal - amounts to a kea and a kakariki. In which the latter says,

"Torete, kaureke; torete, kaureke.

O, thou big brown parrot, still flying away there!

Tell me whither art thou flying?

Art thou flying away to Poutahi [pou tahi = "one perch/post"]?

Art thou flying to Puke whanake ["Cabbage tree hill"]?

To carry tidings away to Te Iripa [te iri pā(?) = "the-pā-hanging down" - "the one hanging in a pā"?]?"

the implication being roughly the kea is about to choose between freedom ("Puke whanake") and being caught and bound to a post ("Poutahi") in a pā as possibly already happened to its mate ("Te Iripa"). [The terms I tried to translate are apparently, in the context of the chant, proper names invented for that occasion. The chant is about the kakariki teasing the kea and wanting to get some of the latter's red underwing feathers, claiming them to be his]

I would not want to see this article as GA. Basically, it is not bad but repeats a lot of the usual CZ jetwash uncritically. Primary sources, people, primary sources! And speaking of primary sources: where is the primary sourcing for the fricking name?

Leading me to Colenso's interpretation of the chant: namely, that Torete, kaureke is how the southern N Island Māori rendered the calls of Cyanoramphus. Unfortunately diacritic signs were not then used extensively in transcribing Polynesian languages, so the pā macron is guesswork (it makes little sense otherwise, though "the one hanging on a fishhook" might fit, arguably even better. Though Colenso says "village" = pā, and he almost certainly knew Māori for "village" (technically "hillfort") from Māori for "fishhook"). And this leads to a further question: does a Wellington Region rendition of a parakeet call have any bearing on a cryptid from, roughly, it seems, the Ngāi Tahu takiwā? Probably not. But this being cryptozoology, it does at the least fall just short of noteworthy.

You might ask yourself why I discuss this at length. Easy: it's the only time a name of this here cryptid animal occurs - at preliminary search - in the Transactions/Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand between 1868-1961. And that was the #1 NZ natural/cultural history journal at that time. So though absence of evidence != evidence of absence, what we have here is a damn absence of evidence, in the source where some 70% of the 19th-century moa papers were published, etc.

Stay tuned for more. Dysmorodrepanis 11:23, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

The Fish of Maui test

I propose this, as something to ponder over - provided I am correct: The fulltext is available and searchable here. If I have not made a serious mistake and/or the search script is bad (note that truncation with "*" does not seem to work properly; try "kak*" vs "kaka"), none of the combinations of:

Waitorek-, Waitoret-, Kauret-, Kaureh, plus

-e or -i

scores hits in Te Ika a Maui, the alleged 1855 source by Rev. Taylor. Which is bad and good. Bad because there goes another alleged source, good because we can track and check on this error. Any source that reports Taylor as a source has not checked it out itself, and has likely done so in other instances.

The proposal being, no information from sources reporting Taylor as source may be accepted at face value under any circumstance (see also WP:V The most plagiatory source may contain a key gem in cryptozoology. But it has to be found among the hand-me-downs. Dysmorodrepanis 12:59, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Reference Question

Okay, I went through the footnotes and everything else. I suggest removing http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10773-fossils-reveal-new-zealands-indigenous-mouse.html as a reference due to it having really nothing to do with the Animal in question. Beyond that. The following Links from everything I have found show a great deal about this animal and the possible theories of it. http://www.cryptozoology.com/cryptids/waitoreke.php I have Looked through the references sourced in the article and found they sound reliable. http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/1966/animals-mythical/1 the final paragraph covers this animal, and seems reliable as well. http://www.newzealandecology.org/nzje/free_issues/ProNZES21_57.pdf This whole article goes to the heart of this animal by someone who seems to know what they are talking about, including the skeptical nature of it and the doubt that prevents the writer from totally calling it a myth. http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-Gov15_03Rail-t1-body-d18.html at the end it mentions "during the first few days of their stay in the Sound, a four-footed animal was seen by three or four of the Resolution's company; but as “no two gave the same description of it,” Cook could not say what it was. However, all the witnesses agreed that it was “about the size of a cat, with short legs, and of a mouse colour.” One of the seamen who had the best view of it, said that it had a bushy tail, and was more like a jackall of any animal he knew." This doesn't name it as this animal, so not sure if this should be included or not. Also I'm not sure about the reference to Rev. Richard Taylor and the seeming dismissal of him as a source. I looked at the Link for that and found it confusing why he was mentioned at all. Again, want to get clarifications before making changes. So All in all, To make sure these are appropriate sources I ask others to review them as well. If they are good, I'll do the work and put them in as cites, but I do not want to make a large change without discussing it first. Also I think the whole article needs to be looked over for POV, particularly the last sentence. Thanks Cougaria kit (talk) 08:13, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Cut and burn clean up

I am contemplating how to improve this page. This will involve removing original research and unreferenced claims. To give you an idea I think the whole "New Zealand mammals" has no place here. Will get going in a day or so. Dushan Jugum (talk) 08:59, 22 July 2021 (UTC)