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Tasmanian Devil

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Comprehensive article on a unique and interesting animal, meets all the FAC criteria. --nixie 06:26, 22 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • Question: What does the license on Image:Devil facial turmor disease.jpg and Image:DFTD dec04.jpg mean? It seems to prohibit modification of the images, re-use of the images in the creation of other works, and commercial use of the images. As such, it would be an insufficiently free license for Wikipedia. --Carnildo 07:31, 22 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • It allows modification, all it really asks for is that subsequent commercial (either in part or whole) use states the original copyright owners interest in the image. Thats a pretty free licence in my opinion. --nixie 07:42, 22 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question: Below, I listed a bunch of stylistic concerns with the article. What's the general procedure with Feature Article Candidates? I could have made several of my suggested changes myself, but once someone lists something here, is the general policy "hands off" until the FA candidacy is resolved?BrianSmithson 18:50, 22 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • No clue what the policy is, but considering this is an open source encyclopedia, there is nothing stopping you from making some of these corrections yourself if thats your asking about. --ZeWrestler Talk 19:16, 22 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • Brian, I'm also unsure what official policy decrees, or if there is any "official" policy on this. I believe that any and all articles remain accessible for editing, and have frequently seen articles edited while being considered as FA, however I think general etiquette is that major changes are discussed first. Many of the changes you suggested could have been made at your discretion as they are not changing the style, content or meaning of the article. For example I changed "Devil" to "devil". Improvements to grammar, consistancy, spelling, etc should always be welcomed at any stage of the article's life cycle, but more substantial changes such as the use of upper case/lower case in the article title, certainly you were correct in raising here. Rossrs 03:59, 23 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Although I've always thought it was "Tasmanian Devil" (capitalised) and have always written it so (and probably always will), it turns out Brian is correct. OED also writes it as "Tasmanian devil".--Cyberjunkie | Talk 12:50, 22 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've struck this objection out as inactionable, despite what you may believe, there is actually a strong conscensus amongst editors working on mammals to use caps for their names, see the recent and long discussion on ToL, and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna) which suggests caps for common names. The article is internally consistent, so I don't believe that this is actually an issue. --nixie 13:15, 22 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • That's fine with me. I prefer it capitalised. Neither style is employed universally in the real world, so as long as Wikipedia is consistent, there should be no problem.--Cyberjunkie | Talk 13:20, 22 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Please don't strike out other people's objetions, especially if you are the person who listed the article for FAC in the first place.
I still strongly oppose the naming used in the article, but following your links, I see that there is no single policy in force at Wikipedia for common names. For what it's worth, a review of every dictionary and encyclopedia I could find at the bookstore today shows that they do not capitalize these names. At the moment, I'm willing to shelve that particular objection.
My opposition still stands, however. The meat of the article is good, but there are some stylistic problems. These are:
#Consistency of nomenclature. If we're going to use "Tasmanian Devil", let's do so consistently. As it is now, the article uses "Tasmanian devil" at least once, "Devil" once, and "devil" several times.
  • I had already changed the single use of "Devil" to "devil", however I think the use of the word "devil" is perfectly correct, as it is the word commonly used for this animal, particularly in Australia. Have a look at this website from Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife - this is common use. [1]. My suggestion would be to make reference in the lead paragraph. Something like "Tasmanian Devil.........., commonly known as devils...." would explain the use of the word, so that in the remainder of the article it is acceptable to retain the use of the single word "devil". Rossrs 03:59, 23 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
#Other animal names. Why aren't other animal names capitalized like "Tasmanian Devil"? Examples in the article include: quolls, thylacine, wombat, kangaroos, wallaby, and dingoes. Perhaps there's some wrinkle of the peculiar Wikipedia proposed policy that I'm missing.
  • Thylacine is the only one that should also be capitalised, the other groups mentioned do not refer to a single species but a group of species. --nixie 09:10, 23 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Somewhat related: I spelled out that Thylacine = Tasmanian Wolf (shudder at the naming . . .  :) when it appears. I'd never heard the former, so hopefully this will help a few other readers, as well.BrianSmithson 13:39, 23 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
#Numbers. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). The TD article uses numerals and written-out numbers; the MoS says to pick one "guideline" and stick to it. I'd suggest that the numbers 1-20 be spelled out, while 21 and up be represented as a numeral. As the article is, we have, for example, "6 kg", "6 years" "6 weeks" and "six native Australian animals". As long as a consistent policy is applied to the article, though, I'll be happy.
#"Devil Facial Tumor Disease". Is there a Wikipedia policy for disease names? Again, I looked up several mammalian diseases in various dictionaries and encyclopedias, and the concensus in these is that diseases are not capitalized. For example, "foot-and-mouth disease", "bovine spongiform encephalopathy" "rabies". Checking these articles on Wikipedia, I see that "Rabies" uses capitalization, while the others don't. Back to the TD article, "canine transmissible venereal tumor" is not capitalized. I'd prefer we follow the majority of published reference works (as I do for the animal name, but that's another matter).
#"The latest revision of the devil's taxonomy resulted in a change of species name to Sarcophilus laniarius in the 1980s . . ." Is there no specific date for when this change was made? "The 1980s" is vague.
#"An analysis, conducted by researchers of the University of Sydney, of mammalian bite force corrected for body size showed that the Tasmanian Devil has the strongest bite of any living mammal." This sentence is confusing to me. Perhaps: "A University of Sydney analysis of mammalian bite force corrected for body size shows that the Tasmanian Devil has the strongest bite of any living mammal." UoS could possibly be moved elsewhere; it just didn't read well as an appositive where it was. I'm also recommending present tense, as this research is presumably still valid and the TD still presumably has the strongest mammalian bite. See "Style Points for Scientific Writing".
#Similarly, "The average life expectancy of a Tasmanian Devil in the wild has been estimated as 6 years, though it may live longer in captivity." Is the average life expectancy still thought to be six years? Then we should use present tense.
#"Tasmanian Devils also have one set of teeth that grow slowly throughout their life." "Set" is singular, so "grows" is appropriate. Also, "Tasmanian Devils" is plural, but "life" is singular. Suggested rewrite: "A Tasmanian Devil also has one set of teeth that grows slowly throughout its life."
#Use of future tense. In a number of cases, the article uses the future tense when present tense would suffice. In general, present tense is more immediate and thus makes for stronger prose. Following are some examples from the article with my suggested rewrites following: "Unhealthy devil will often have a thin tail" ("Unhealthy devils often have thin tails.") "Although the Devil favours wombat, it will eat all small native mammals . . . " ("Although the Devil favours wombat, it eats all small native mammals . . . ") ". . . the female has only four nipples, and no more than four young will survive." (". . . the female has only four nipples, and [or use "so"] no more than four young [can] survive.") There are a few more cases in the article, but you get the idea.
  • I changed a couple more instances. If you don't like them, I won't object if you change them back. I do prefer present to future when talking about animal behavior, though. BrianSmithson 13:39, 23 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
#Passive voice: "Twenty physical postures, including their characteristic vicious yawn, and 11 different vocal sounds have been identified when feeding devils communicate, usually establishing dominance by sound and physical posturing, although fighting does occur." Suggested rewrite: "Scientists [or Biologists, or Researchers, etc.] have identified twenty physical postures . . ." "Cultures from the cancerous tissue have been used to study the condition." Suggested rewrite: "Researchers have used cultures from the cancerous tissue to study the condition."
#Mutant mouse: "There is also a mutant mouse named the Tasmanian Devil that is defective . . . ." This whole section threw me off. Is this mutant mouse some sort of cartoon character, or are we talking about a real creature? If a real creature, was it named for the Looney Tunes character? If so, make this explicit.
  • One final concern: Currently, the article uses both "State" and "states" when talking about those political entities in Australia. I don't know what common practice is in Australia, so I didn't change these, but shouldn't they be either both capitalized or both in lower case? BrianSmithson 13:39, 23 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've made its use consistent. Practice varies in Australia. Some capitalise it at any mention, especially in academia, and some use lower case in any circumstance, following the trend favoured by newspapers (News Corp ones, at least). Others, still, used mixed capitalisation. For this article I have chosen to capitalise "State(s)".--Cyberjunkie | Talk 14:26, 23 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I know I'm being picky. But these changes should be easy to make, and if anyone objects to any of them, I am open to arguments. Overall, it's a good article. BrianSmithson 18:50, 22 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • BrianSmithson, you should have participated in this articles Peer Review. --ZeWrestler Talk 19:16, 22 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - agree that it meets all criteria, to a high degree. Rossrs 15:02, 22 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment (albeit rather trivial) - do endnote superscripts go before or after puncutuation? Personally I'd prefer after, but either way, they need to be consistent. --Spangineer (háblame) 18:18, July 22, 2005 (UTC)
    • Also, what's this about a mutant mouse also called the Tasmanian Devil? Is there an article on it? Is it relevant for this article? It was only found in 2002 (according to the reference), so I'm unsure how it relates to the mammal, since it appears to have been named after the cartoon character. I don't think that one sentence is enough info for this—I'd say expand or delete. Great work though, looks well researched and thanks for the inline citations. I'll vote neutral until my concerns are addressed. --Spangineer (háblame) 18:29, July 22, 2005 (UTC)
      • The article about the mouse mutant is referenced, I mentioned it in this article since it is a common hit on a google, scholar.google or pubmed search and someone might be curious about why this mouse is called Tasmanian devil, the section should be more clear now. The article doesn't actually mention why they chose to call the mouse Tasmanian devil, but I assumed it was named after the cartoon version since the behaviours are smiliar and becuase geneticists name lots of genes and mutants after cartoon characters, I'll email them and find out for sure--nixie 09:10, 23 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
        • Ah, much better. And that's interesting that geneticists name things after cartoon characters; as they say, who'da thunk? =). Anyway, support. --Spangineer (háblame) 19:06, July 23, 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. Great work, as usual. Dave (talk) 15:10, July 24, 2005 (UTC)
  • Support- comprehensive article. Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk 19:14, 24 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Excellent article, and suitably brief treatment of that irritating cartoon thing. Flowerparty talk 00:55, 26 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. excellent material, well written and researched. - Taxman Talk 22:52, July 26, 2005 (UTC)
  • Conditional Support w/comments: "Devil" vs. "devil" is still used inconsistently through the article. "The Tasmanian Devil" and "Taz" are not, technically, two names for the same cartoon character ("Taz" is, I believe, and updated version of the original). It's a wording nit, but I would not say that appetite is the only thing the character and the animal have in common (for example both have two eyes, etc. etc.). Assuming these things are fixed (primarily the first), I will support.--User:Jgm(i think this is who made the last comment, he didn't sign it, so based on the histry, Jgm made this post --ZeWrestler Talk 18:43, 27 July 2005 (UTC)).[reply]
"The Tasmanian Devil" and "Taz" are two names for the same character. Or at least I've never seen them considered two different characters until your comments here. You're right that "Taz" is a more recent appellation for the character, and you're right that the character has been updated in recent years; all the Warners characters have. I don't think it's worth the fuss to consider earlier and later versions of Bugs Bunny or Porky Pig to be completely different entities. (Short version: That part of the article doesn't need to be changed ;) BrianSmithson 18:45, 27 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Further note: The use of "devil"/"Devil" is consistent. Currently, "Devil" is capitalized when preceded by "Tasmanian" (except when discussing the mutant mouse). It is not capitalized when used alone, except when it is the first word in a sentence. I'm not sure what you saw as inconsistency. BrianSmithson 18:50, 27 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
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