Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2023 August 20
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August 20[edit]
Why do we lack articles on so many species?[edit]
I know this is not the most appropriate venue but I am not likely to generate a discussion anywhere else. Has anyone else noticed that the science side of Wikipedia is underdeveloped compared to the humanities topics? It seems to me that Wikipedia is missing articles, even stubs, on a vast number of species, including those described over a century ago and well-known among hobbyists. Surtsicna (talk) 19:06, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
- For one thing, there are Eight million, seven hundred thousand species! (Give or take 1.3 million.); as for Wikipedia editors: Only a minority of users contribute regularly (116,367 have edited in the last 30 days).
- Also, Wikipedia is not, and never can be complete. You are more than welcome to give it a try!
- There might be something in Portal:Biology of interest, or you could join a relavant Wikiproject. -- 136.54.106.120 (talk) 19:40, 20 August 2023 (UTC) . . . P.s: Although not assigned as a bot at birth, today I am self-identifing as one
- Fundamentally, it is because most species are unencyclopedic. In the case of vascular plants, there are something like 350,000 species, but only about 73,000 species articles. I did a little study and found that there are about 5,700 wrongly titled or synonymized species articles on en.Wikipedia, or 8.5% of all species articles. Why? Because polbot and misguided users think that most species are important—they are not—and mass-creating stubs that are nothing but database entries is worse than not creating them. Abductive (reasoning) 20:25, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
- Additionally, these articles tend to be a little labour intensive, I can say from some small experience. Finding reliable sources that pass muster for scientific topics and allow you to flesh out all of the details expected for even a basic summary of the species features (anatomy, behaviour, ecological niche, range, taxonomy) can be difficult--and certain impossible for many little known species. And then you undoubtedly want a photo or six to illustrate your subject, so you have to do an extensive search to find something already authorized under the appropriate license, or else communicate with the owner of the images and try to convince them to license the photo(s) appropriately. Then there's typical new page patrol reviews and tagging and polishing, maybe some of the more borderline sources you decided to go with for this or that aspect of the article gets challenged. And everything I am describing here is for a relatively modest article regarding a non-charismatic species, which are the only type I have authored myself. I assume it's even more complicated to do new semi-popular species that might have popped up in the mainstream, even if you do get to distribute the work a little. SnowRise let's rap 21:48, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
- Oh, how I sympathize, Snow Rise. Somehow I am always prouder of the photographs I manage to procure than of the text I compile. (Look at these!) Still I am puzzled when I find topics such as Clerodendrum bungei, Poecilia kykesis, Xiphophorus milleri, Xiphophorus pygmaeus, etc, for which there is a ton of readily available literature and a decent amount of popular interest yet nothing but a red link for over 20 years of Wikipedia's existence. Surtsicna (talk) 13:19, 21 August 2023 (UTC)
- Surtsicna I've sometimes been surprised myself at the species I find listed at WP:RA! I tend to focus a little more on arthropods, precisely because I feel they get so underwhelming an amount of attention relative to their diversity and fascinating qualities, so to some extent my selection bias makes the lack of articles not altogether surprising. On the other hand, sometimes you see a species or clade that has such interesting features or such a broad dispersion and/or ecological impact that you find yourself saying "Really, not even that critter is getting covered by Wikipedia?" SnowRise let's rap 00:42, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
- Oh, how I sympathize, Snow Rise. Somehow I am always prouder of the photographs I manage to procure than of the text I compile. (Look at these!) Still I am puzzled when I find topics such as Clerodendrum bungei, Poecilia kykesis, Xiphophorus milleri, Xiphophorus pygmaeus, etc, for which there is a ton of readily available literature and a decent amount of popular interest yet nothing but a red link for over 20 years of Wikipedia's existence. Surtsicna (talk) 13:19, 21 August 2023 (UTC)
- Additionally, these articles tend to be a little labour intensive, I can say from some small experience. Finding reliable sources that pass muster for scientific topics and allow you to flesh out all of the details expected for even a basic summary of the species features (anatomy, behaviour, ecological niche, range, taxonomy) can be difficult--and certain impossible for many little known species. And then you undoubtedly want a photo or six to illustrate your subject, so you have to do an extensive search to find something already authorized under the appropriate license, or else communicate with the owner of the images and try to convince them to license the photo(s) appropriately. Then there's typical new page patrol reviews and tagging and polishing, maybe some of the more borderline sources you decided to go with for this or that aspect of the article gets challenged. And everything I am describing here is for a relatively modest article regarding a non-charismatic species, which are the only type I have authored myself. I assume it's even more complicated to do new semi-popular species that might have popped up in the mainstream, even if you do get to distribute the work a little. SnowRise let's rap 21:48, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
- Fundamentally, it is because most species are unencyclopedic. In the case of vascular plants, there are something like 350,000 species, but only about 73,000 species articles. I did a little study and found that there are about 5,700 wrongly titled or synonymized species articles on en.Wikipedia, or 8.5% of all species articles. Why? Because polbot and misguided users think that most species are important—they are not—and mass-creating stubs that are nothing but database entries is worse than not creating them. Abductive (reasoning) 20:25, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
- And the humanities are probably not over represented. Instead we have popular culture well represented. When it comes to biographies, people are keen to write about themselves. For companies or products, advertisers are paid to promote them, so there is a strong motivation to put these kinds of topics in Wikipedia. Compare species articles with numbers of articles on former companies, or dead people. Then we get articles on fossils for which a species may be supported by one bone, and one publication. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:45, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
- Good point. If I consulted a few-decades-old edition of the International Directory of Company Histories from Gale, I suspect I'd find heaps of companies with no Wikipedia articles, and yet I could probably find enough dead-tree coverage to create articles on them easily. Nyttend (talk) 06:48, 22 August 2023 (UTC)