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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) 00:25, 6 July 2020 (UTC) [1].[reply]

List of ursids

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

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Nominator(s): PresN 02:59, 28 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Fifth in my ongoing series of "animals in a family" (FLs felids, canids, mustelids, and the pending procyonids), we continue through Carnivora with the recognizable Ursidae, aka "bears". This one is the smallest yet at 8 extant species, though it still has dozens of subspecies and over 100 extinct species. The animals are fairly non-diverse: they range from "big" to "very big", all look more or less like a "bear", and besides the polar bear like to hang out in forests. While the giant panda famously only eats bamboo, many of the other species have a fairly specialized diet, though even then they'll often eat a fairly wide variety of things if they get too hungry. For the first (and probably last) time in this series, we actually have population estimates for all of the species, which is nice. The list format is based on the prior lists and reflects FLC comments. As always, thanks for reviewing! --PresN 02:59, 28 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

  • It's standard thumbnail size, so it's whatever your personal settings are- overriding that is generally not recommended as it messes with mobile browsers (MOS:IMGSIZE).
  • Why are you citing a book on the History of Music in Russia for the specifications of the lead?
  • For the 7 words prior to the cite- "some bears have been trained for entertainment".
  • There is no generally accepted classification of extinct ursid species according to who? why? have any been proposed? which classifications do exist?
  • I can't really prove a negative, this is a phrase I've had to use in the prior lists as well- almost no animal families have overall classification schemes for extinct species. People find new species, give them a name in a paper, maybe a decade later someone says it should actually be in a different genus, etc., but there aren't any general overview papers or books for ursids that cover the entire family and try to organize things that I can point to. It's just a pile of individual species/genera; the paleobiology database at least collates all of that into one location that doesn't contradict itself. I can remove that sentence and let it stand without it, but I can't cite anything to show that there's no classifications out there.
  • Bolding of the Subfamily violates MOS:BOLD
  • Removed
  • The photos at the bottom of "Prehistoric ursids" need alt text.
  • Whoops, done.
  • I'm not sure; I didn't put it because the link includes a full translation of the paper- the English version of the paper starts on page 13 of the pdf.
@Therapyisgood: Thanks for reviewing! --PresN 15:26, 28 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comments

Just a couple of points from me:

  • "such reclassifying" - missing word
  • Under the polar bear's diet, you use "eat", whereas everywhere else you use "eats"

Great work as ever. Oh, by the way - is that Asian black bear wearing a Batman costume? ;-) -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 16:25, 28 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@ChrisTheDude: Both done! And maybe... --PresN 19:18, 28 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - Just a quick comment, but sentences like "All listed species are extinct; where a genus or subfamily within Ursidae comprises only extinct species, it is indicated with a dagger symbol " shouldn't be in the body of the text, but as a note (either footnote, or in Notes section, or even could be reworded into a legend if you so choose). Mattximus (talk) 23:25, 29 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comments
  • I think this should be called List of bears (redirects here). While the other lists needed to use the Latin family name because there were multiple types of animal common names within the family, in this case it's a single type and the English name is more accessible to readers.
  • I disagree. I think keeping consistency with the other (currently) 7 lists for Carnivora is important, and that this one family has a common name that matches the whole family shouldn't change that- redirects are easy. It also makes it clearer that this is a list of "bear" species, not individual bears.
  • "A member of this family is called an ursid or a bear." This should be reversed perhaps with explanation to "A member of this family is called a bear or an ursid, from the Latin ursa." But even then, it's sort of tautologial. It's not that family members are called ursids or bears, it's that bears comprise this family; the classification came after they were named.
  • Flipped to be bear or ursid. I'm not sure about the "ursa" bit- it's not directly from ursa, it's from Ursidae, which is itself derived from "ursa", but so is Ursinae, Ursus, Ursida, and Ursoidea, and Ursid doesn't derive from any of those. Additionally, that "bear" maps to "ursid" is almost an accident for species- when the name arose for these animals, it did not apply to, say, the giant panda- but that's a "bear" now. It originally just meant "brown bear", because that's what's in Europe, and it turns out after we started calling all 8 species "bears" because they looked like they were, that for once that was correct, so the common term for the family continues to match. (As opposed to, say, the red panda... which isn't a panda, or a bear.) Tons of the common names for groups of animals no longer make much sense with modern dna analysis- in canidae, for example, what animals are "fox" vs. a "dog" or "wolf" is pretty loose compared to the actual genetics of the situation as soon as you get out of Europe. Additionally, how animals are divided into families/genera is nowadays based on their genetics (with, granted, a lot of historical weight), and not on what the common English name for a group of animals is called- saying that all members of Ursidae are bears because the term "bear" is the basis of the family, as opposed to the genetic situation, just isn't correct.
  • The note "All extinct species or subspecies listed alongside extant species went extinct after 1500 CE, and are indicated by a dagger symbol" does appear applicable and should be removed.
  • It is applicable- the U. a. crowtheri (Atlas bear) subspecies of the brown bear has it.
  • Avoid redlinks in the Prehistoric ursids section, else redirects to the subfamily may be appropriate.
  • Why, beyond aesthetics? While I avoid redlinks for species names, as the chances of any one of them getting an article is scant and the sea of red difficult to parse, genera (even prehistoric genera) are good and likely candidates for articles (as evidence, many of them do have articles). WP:REDLINK.

Support Reywas92Talk 22:10, 1 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comments
  • Brown bear range also includes parts of Europe.
  • For polar bear link "supratidal" and maybe "intertidal".
  • Link less well known food e.g. "beluga whales", "kelp"
  • I agree with Reywas92 above about the name of the article and so maybe the first 4 sentences could become something like:

"Bears make up/comprise/ the family of mammals called Ursidae in the order Carnivora; including the giant panda, brown bear, and polar bear. The many living/extant and extinct bears are also known as ursids, from the Latin ursa. Bears are widespread across the Americas and Eurasia ,mostly (living)/ :most live in forests, though some species live in grassland and savana, and polar bear habitat is arctic and surrounding sea/polar bear habitat is arctic (ice) land and sea/polar bears live in the Arctic." or "Bears, being classified by scientists as the family Ursidae in the Carnivora order of mammals, are also known as ursids, from the Latin ursa. Many species are already extinct but the polar bear and giant panda survive for now. The brown bear thrives across the forests of North America and Eurasia; and there are less well known species, some living in grassland and savana."

  • What about the overlap with the Bear page as questioned on this article's talk page?
  • Support

If you have not already done so perhaps you could take a quick peek at Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of active coal fired power stations in Turkey/archive1 Chidgk1 (talk) 17:48, 10 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • Finally getting back to this, starting with these comments: did the links and fixed the map caption. I disagree about renaming the page, and will discuss further below Reywas92's comments. The talk page comment is from 2013 and reflects a very different page. --PresN 02:59, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Dudley

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  • I think the lead should cover diet.
  • Clade should be wikilinked.
  • "if a range map is not available, a description of the bear's range is provided". Why do you say this when all species have both?
  • A first class list. These points are minor. Dudley Miles (talk) 12:45, 1 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Dudley Miles: Added diet to lead, linked clade, and removed that sentence (it's part of my default template for these lists, but accidentally didn't get dropped when it turned out all species had a map). Thanks for reviewing! --PresN 16:24, 1 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from TRM

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(WikiCup entry)

  • The IUCN table leaks badly into the next section which then pushes the Classification diagram down. Are all the IUCN categories with zero relevance here needed?
  • I've modified the template to let me suppress the "other categories" section, since that's all 0 for this family. The main categories should stay, though, as readers shouldn't be expected to know what the 7 red list categories are (e.g. that there's a step in between "least concern" and "vulnerable".
  • In Ursids section, giant panda and brown bear are overlinked.
  • Unlinked
  • "500-1,000 " should be en-dash.
  • Fixed
  • Over what period are the population trend icons based?
  • I can't find how the IUCN defines it; I believe it's a snapshot, e.g. at the time the assessment was last updated what was the trend. They're major directional markers, not transitory.
  • Where, for example, is "(H. Milne-Edwards, 1870) " etc. referenced/explained?
  • The "authorities" are from Mammal Species of the World, e.g. here's an online version of the Ursidae section: [2]. I can add explicit cites if you think I should? The names/dates are weird in the bio world, sources just slap them next to the latin names as if it's common knowledge that "H. Milne-Edwards, 1870" first described the Ailuropoda genus.
  • Likewise "David, 1869" etc.
  • The range map e.g. of giant panda, doesn't seem to closely match that provided by IUCN.
  • Updated the image, after reminding myself how to use Inkscape...
  • "2,500-10,000" en-dash.
  • Fixed
  • It may be worth including a year for when the estimated populations are being given.
  • It's implicitly the date of the citation; I can pull it into the text explicitly if needs be.
  • I may have asked this before, but how are the range maps accessible to screen readers etc? Is the information available in another form?
  • You did, which is why all the maps have a text description above them- e.g. "Andes mountains in South America", to cover both screen readers and if the reader doesn't recognize the area displayed on the map.
  • My understanding is that they way I've done it is fine because it doesn't collapse for screen readers, mobile devices, etc- on those it's expanded and can't be collapsed.
  • Added in the summary paragraph.

The Rambling Man (Stay indoors, stay safe!!!!) 14:03, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@The Rambling Man: Okay, addressed or responded to all these points. --PresN 02:44, 1 July 2020 (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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