Portal talk:Biology/Major topics

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REDIRECT Portal talk:Biology

Order of topics[edit]

I rearranged the order of the topic headers into a roughly hierarchical order, but since that's a pretty subjective determination, I wonder if it would be easier to just put them in alphabetical order? Opabinia regalis 02:48, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's a possibility. But first, I'm wondering whether to scrap the "biology of man" and "tissues" sections. I'm not sure how much there is to say. It might be more interesting to include some newer fields - systems biology, bioinformatics, phylogenetics, instead. But phylogenetics could also be an item under, say, "systematics". - Samsara (talk • contribs) 07:57, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I see, you included bioinformatics already. Good job. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 08:00, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I moved bioinformatics to "other fields"; there's probably some bioinformatics people who would hate me for calling it a "technology" and listing it with electrophoresis :) Opabinia regalis 12:47, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Organs of man"?[edit]

Maybe that would be a better way to bring some more human interest to the list. We would be encroaching on the medics, but that's always been inevitable ever since the two disciplines decided to go separate ways. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 08:09, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think it would be hard to have a list of major topics in biology without at least one section on human biology... I assume the medicine portal probably has an equivalent list already? Opabinia regalis 12:53, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Their list is different in that it lists categories rather than articles - this would probably be an easier approach, but I doubt it would be any less biased. I'm just not sure how many people are out there systematically building up biology categories. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 13:27, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The bio categories do seem a little ragged to me (but maybe I shouldn't complain, since I haven't edited them). In general I like the idea of linking directly to the main article rather than dumping people into the corresponding categories, which I usually don't find well-organized. The alphabetical arrangement isn't intuitive unless you know what you're looking for. Opabinia regalis 02:22, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How detailed?[edit]

How detailed are these entries meant to be? And what is the limit, top 100 or similar? Looking at this edit, are morphogen and chromosome too specific? David D. (Talk) 03:11, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I took out chromosome because I put it in twice by mistake. morphogen came out because morphogenesis was already there, and by cursory examination looked more detailed, but if you think both should be included, go ahead. I'm not too familiar with how much detail portals usually put in these things. Opabinia regalis 04:09, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I see what you mean about morphogenesis being similar to morphogen. That is more due to the weakness of the morphogenesis article than due to the similarity of the topics. In the future much of morphogenesis could be moved into morphogen and the morphogenesis article rewritten. So many things on the to do list! David D. (Talk) 05:16, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Similar lists[edit]

Here is a similar list of topics presented by the Molecular_and_Cellular_Biology Portal. David D. (Talk) 16:09, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, they're the same minus ecology and evolution. Keeping a broad focus has the advantage that we can reference all the Wikimedia links as they are. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 16:19, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) I was just about to add another example here from the Medicine Portal. Obviously we do not want to be replicating these lists exactly and should be aiming to complement them from a broader perspective. We currently seem a little top heavy in molecular genetics and cellular topics and need some more on ecology and evolution.

I'm sorry if i'm adding very specific topics. I am adding them since they seem relevant but some deletion smight be in order once we have a full list to make it a more managable number. David D. (Talk) 16:09, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My comment about broad focus was more reflecting on the possibility of renaming the portal to "evolution and ecology" to differentiate it. The recent featured content seems to be leaning in that direction already. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 16:29, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That is a real possability since there seem to be a few portals related to biological topics. Could the biology portal remain as a unifying umbrella, similar to the science portal, for all the biology related portals? This would mean transferring the archives of this portal to a new "evolution and ecology" portal. Too much independance is fraught with the problem of so much overlap within biology, especially with regard to evolution. Another solution is to have one lead section common to all biologically related portals rather than retaining the biology portal as an umbrella. David D. (Talk) 16:46, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There's more than one way to do it and that applies to wikis too. I don't really mind a degree of overlap in portals, though I think a focused effort on evolution and ecology would be useful too. IMO the best solution is an overarching biology portal with medicine, molecular bio, evolution, etc. as sub-portals, but I don't think that's terribly likely to happen. Opabinia regalis 05:26, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]