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The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was promoted by Giants2008 via FACBot (talk) 23:05:22 14 July 2019 (UTC) [1].

List of felids

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List of felids (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): PresN 03:47, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

In a complete break from my usual video game-by-company or scifi award lists, as well as my usual editing, a couple weeks ago I decided to start a new project and build up a taxonomic list article instead. I pulled the data into a file, wrote a program to build wikitables out of it, and here's the result: List of felids, a list of all 41 species in the Felidae family, otherwise known as "cats". I based the format on the relatively recent FLs List of parrots and List of fruit bats, and the taxonomic structure on the thankfully recent IUCN classification update, like our articles (mostly) do. I got some small but positive feedback from people who work more often in the biology area, so I'm hoping that this FLC will be a good proving for what I hope to turn into a series. Thanks for reviewing! --PresN 03:47, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I love these animal lists! A few thoughts:

  • What is the purpose of the colored boxes? I see the fruit bats list uses them to distinguish the taxonomic levels, but this uses a purple instead of teal for genus, in case they were selected for a reason. I think the framing around the entire table is a bit much and the format at List of cetacean species is a lot cleaner.
  • Where are the sources for the species table itself? A couple general sources would be fine but they need to be specified. "A revised taxonomy of the Felidae" looks like it but mark it somewhere that it's for the whole table and not just the in-line use.
  • The other articles all have the genus name, describer name/year, and number of species in the same line. You know I'm a fan of consistency, so consider using the same format here.
  • Since "conservation dependent" is a deprecated category, it does not need to be listed in the IUCN key.
  • Would you be willing to add additional informational columns? The cetacean list has population and size, and I think both of those would be useful here since many felines are endangered and they represent a range of sizes.
  • Basically the only articles that link here are the others in the Mammal species navbox – not even Felidae links here! You should advertise your fine work by adding links to eg Felis and perhaps Template:Carnivora if there's a good spot on that.
  • I note the above two because this should actually serve a unique purpose – we got by fine without this article before you created it last month. I mean, Felis and Leopardus already have tables with much of the same information, so I'd like to see what can stand out as a definitive resource that clearly passes 3b. Someone just pointed that out on the talk page today, and while a merger to Felidae is certainly feasible (34 species is not that long) for once I'm not going to push for one.

Reywas92Talk 06:06, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I've started on this- I've converted the genus tables to just have a header like the Cetacean list instead of a surrounding color, and added a population column which I've filled with the data present at the IUCN site. It doesn't have data for all species, so I'll look further. The list isn't linked in a lot of other pages because one user dislikes these types of lists and has decided to prove that it is duplicative by removing the seealso links I made and instead add in subsets of this page onto Felidae etc.. I'm not going to argue about it with them unless/until I get a wider consensus. --PresN 02:45, 16 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Okay I see they're now copying your work into the Felidae article and it doesn't look anywhere as good by combining columns. I think either that should be left as it was as bullets, linking to the list, or your list should be merged there. I would be glad to back you up on that because otherwise this wouldn't pass 3b and their table is ugly. Reywas92Talk 05:58, 16 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the offer. Jts1882, who is also active in the area, has added some suggestions for reorganization on the talk page which I'm taking up, so the list will be in flux for a bit while I add data into the new columns. --PresN 02:48, 17 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Now addressed all of your points, @Reywas92:, so this is ready for another look. --PresN 03:19, 26 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Not seeing any further problems, Support Reywas92Talk 23:51, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I love animal lists so I'm happy you put effort into this but I have two questions. It looks like you excluded all extinct felids despite mentioning at least one (Proailurus) in the lead? I don't think this can be considered a list of felids without including all felids in the list. Also this list appears to be copied in the Felidae page. Is this a duplication issue? Mattximus (talk) 22:35, 17 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I excluded extinct felids for two reasons: 1) the other animal lists exclude them (unless they went extinct post-1500CE), so I followed suit 2) extinct species are much more chaotic as to how they are divided into genuses etc.- a lot of time it's just one skeleton someone saw in the 1800s that some minimal research (compared to how much goes into extant species) has put into a category. It didn't seem to fit with the more robust table of extant felids.
As to duplication, see above- one editor disagreed with this list's existence and has tried to inject a table into Felidae to force its merger. It's overwhelming the article a bit in my opinion, and I'm also expanding out this table with additional information at the moment in order to further justify its separation from Felidae. --PresN 18:14, 18 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]


  • Drive-by comment I realise that you've already been discussing this subject on the article's talk page, but, speaking as your average zoology-ignorant pleb, I had absolutely no clue what "felids" were until I opened the article. I do know what felines are, though. For what it's worth, I think "felines" is the more WP:COMMONNAME and would therefore make this technical article more understandable, but that's really a discussion for editors who have spent more time on the article. Thanks, A Thousand Doors (talk | contribs) 02:09, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@A Thousand Doors:. To be fair to User:PresN that was the original title and it was changed as a compromise. The problem is that felines is used both broadly for all living cats and more narrowly for subfamily Felinae, exluding the pantherines of subfamily Pantherinae (e.g. lions and tigers). This sets up a conflict between WP:COMMONNAME and use of an unambiguous term, although I doubt many people seeing list of felines would be surprised to see lions and tigers included. Perhaps the issue should be reopened.   Jts1882 | talk  08:37, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That's fair enough, it's just that I read "A member of this family is also called a felid or feline" in the lead, and my immediate thought was "Well, why isn't this article called 'List of felines' then, since everyone knows what a feline is?". But, like I say, that's for better-informed editors than me to decide. Thanks, A Thousand Doors (talk | contribs) 21:31, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved comments from The Rambling Man (talk) 10:45, 11 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comments
  • Curious as to when you link domestic cat as it redirects to cat (which you use a couple of times beforehand).
  • Fixed redirect; I was linking to domestic cat because "cat" is for the domestic cat species, not for the Felidae family as a whole (which has the nickname "cat" as well, which was the sense I was using it in for the first 2 sentences)
  • You then link "domestic cat" by name afterwards, so technically that's overlinked...
  • delinked.
  • Cheetah is overlinked in the lead too.
  • delinked.
  • Smilidon is overlinked.
  • delinked.
  • You should use {{dagger}}, together with alt text, unless you're certain † is inherently accessible.
  • Done.
  • Big deal this one: I think that too many of the maps have no context at all, the range is only available to those who recognise the odd shapes here and there. Suggest the range is included in text too. In fact, in a sense, the current situation is contrary to MOS:COLOR which disallows the use of colour only to represent something. How do screen readers provide the range information based purely on these images?
  • Well, all of the maps have alt text, so I think we're good on screen readers, but I can add that text to the table itself as well.
  • In the population column, what's the difference between an italic ? and an en-dash? And are those symbols accessible?
Alt text and hovertext added for population direction icons.
  • Does Status need to be capitalised in the IUCN Status heading?
  • Nope, fixed.
  • "6,000-92,100" that's some range! Should use en-dash. Check all the other population ranges for dash.
  • Yeah, that's a weird one, I'm guessing there's a couple very conflicting sources underlying the used consensus source. Ndashes fixed.
  • Despite Wikipedia's bizarre decision to remove all capitals from species names, you can't decapitalise European I'm afraid!
  • Fixed
  • "Domestic Cat lineage" capital C?
  • Fixed

Lovely list. The Rambling Man (talk) 09:37, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Done except for the map text. --PresN 17:11, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
PresN responded above on that last point. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:40, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@The Rambling Man: Okay, updated my script to put the alt text above the image as a caption instead and regenerated the tables, so all points addressed now. --PresN 02:37, 8 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Director comment – We could really use another review to get this FLC over the line. I'd normally be happy to do it, but I'm the last remaining uninvolved closer so my hands are tied here. Giants2008 (Talk) 21:08, 29 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@DanielleTH: Done! --PresN 20:24, 30 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Awesome, support. This list is very detailed and complex, great work with it! DanielleTH (Say hi!) 00:22, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Under the bay cat, you write "distribution in Indonesia" however most of the sightings are in Malaysia, not Indonesia. So this caption is incorrect. There is also a different (better?) range map in the Bay Cat page. Mattximus (talk) 14:28, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • actually several of these captions are confusing "Canada and parts of northern America" Do you mean "northern United States"? What about Alaska"?
  • What does "Curved stretch of middle and southern Africa" even mean? Mattximus (talk) 14:32, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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