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Talk:Sarcobatus

Latest comment: 11 years ago by Mike Cline in topic Requested move
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Latest comment: 11 years ago42 comments16 people in discussion
The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Moved to Sarcobatus Mike Cline (talk) 03:28, 26 February 2013 (UTC)Reply


Greasewood → Sarcobatus – Greasewood is an ambiguous common name for 3 unrelated plants Plantdrew (talk) 00:28, 15 February 2013 (UTC) Greasewood is a common name for Sarcobatus, Larrea tridentata and Adenostoma fasciculatum as well as a community, Greasewood, Arizona. Per WP:FLORA, scientific names (i.e. Sarcobatus) are preferred for plant article titles. Greasewood is more appropriate as a disambiguation page. Note Sarcobatus exists as a disambiguation for the plant genus and a region named after the plant genus Sarcobatus Flat. I don't believe a disambiguation for the two uses of Sarcobatus is necessary; the region can be treated with a hatnote in the plant article. Also, (outside the direct scope of this move request), per WP:FLORA, the article about the monogeneric family Sarcobataceae should be merged with the article on it's sole genus.Plantdrew (talk) 00:28, 15 February 2013 (UTC)Reply

More harm is done in leaving the article at Greasewood. There is plenty of precedent for changing common names of plants to their botanical names, and this has been a long-standing and excepted part of the naming convention. Please see Wikipedia:Article titles#Explicit conventions. --Hamamelis (talk) 20:56, 17 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment: I'm well aware of that naming convention, which is a guideline. The main page at Wikipedia:Article titles however, which instructs that we use the common name, has now been elevated to policy and consequently overrides a conflicting guidance page. As the passage you linked to says, "This practice of using specialized names is often controversial, and should not be adopted unless it produces clear benefits outweighing the use of common names." Skinsmoke (talk) 21:54, 17 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
The policy page on article titles states "This page in a nutshell: Article titles should be recognizable to readers, unambiguous, and consistent with usage in reliable English-language sources." Scientific names for plants are preferred because they are unambiguous; whereas common names usually are not. Any specified common name may be given to more than one plant species/genus (e.g. "bluebell" refers to Hyacinthoides non-scripta in England, Mertensia in North America, Sollya heterophylla in Australia and Campanula rotundifolia in Scotland.) And of course, any one plant may have several different common names (e.g. see Arum maculatum). PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 23:24, 17 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Support. I'm not sure why Wikipedia:Article titles is being trotted out. The term "greasewood" appears to be ambiguous, and in particular, there are multiple plant species known by the name as well as a community. Disambiguation is necessary, and unless there is a reason to think there is a primary topic, I don't see why this page should not be moved in favor of a disambiguation page. N.B., it seems the Larrea tridentata article does not contain any reference to being known as greasewood. older ≠ wiser 23:56, 17 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
Per N.B.: Ok, it does now :) Hamamelis (talk) 00:24, 18 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Support. "Greasewood" is ambiguous and so unsuitable as a title per WP:AT. Also, there is a place name Sarcobatus Flat, showing that (unambiguous) name also in common use--Curtis Clark (talk) 02:36, 18 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Support As in many of these cases, "Greasewood" is all too commonly used as a name, and therefore ambiguous. Skinsmoke: note that WP:AT uses the term "common name" in the sense of "most commonly used name," not in the sense as described at the article "common name". Yet another example of using a phrase that is too ambiguous..... First Light (talk) 03:16, 18 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment: Wikipedia:Article titles is being trotted out because that is the way we decide article titles on Wikipedia. I do not doubt that greasewood is ambiguous (the article says as such), and that is why it is most appropriate as the title for the article covering the community of plants. Botanists appear intent on making out a special case for ignoring the rules that apply everywhere else on Wikipedia on the grounds that we can't work out a common name that applies in English. Well tough! Work harder at it! The same problem is encountered in other fields, particularly mammals, fish and birds, but editors in those fields manage to find a way round the problem without resorting to wording that is meaningless and incomprehensible to the majority of our readers. What this insistance on Latin names does is ensure that many readers, on arriving at the page, will immediately back off from the article because it is written in language that is inaccessible to them. It doesn't do our readers any favours, nor does it help the encyclopedia, even though it may throw a small clique of botanists into paroxysms of ecstasy. It also leads to articles which are gibberish like the one I came across yesterday on a protected wildlife area in India, which stated that common species in the area include... followed by a list of about 30 Latin names for plants. I am willing to put money on it that 99 per cent of readers coming across a passage like that simply skip it and ignore the whole thing. It doesn't increase interest in plant species, it doesn't increase interest in botany (perhaps that's the whole idea, to ensure the great unwashed don't pollute an area that should be left to the experts?), it discourages interest in conservation, and it turns readers off the encyclopedia. All it serves to do is make a small self-serving exclusionist group of editors feel good about themselves. Why botanists have to take this exclusive approach (almost uniquely among scientific groups contributing to Wikipedia—others at least attempt to make their articles understandable by the general reader, no matter how obscure the field they are writing in) I can only guess at. Perhaps they need to get out more and start talking to people instead of to plants. There, rant over! Skinsmoke (talk) 04:43, 18 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
Plants are not like other groups of organism. Birds, for example, have a unique internationally assigned English name. It is often not a common name because it's not commonly used in any of the countries in which the bird occurs. Thus "robin" is a genuine common name used for at least two species. We don't use it as an article title; instead we use "American Robin" and "European Robin", which are artificial English names used to distinguish the two species. If there were a similar international register of English names for plants, then the situation would be different, but there isn't. Where the plant only occurs in one particular region/country and there is a definitive list of English names for the plants of that region/country, then these names would be good candidates for article titles. If you can show that this is true for "greasewood" then you would have a good case, were the article about a single species with this "official" English name.
I would also remind you of the need to assume good faith. Referring to self-serving exclusionist group of editors does not win support for your arguments. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:39, 18 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment: I'm really sorry you find names from Latin and latinized Greek so offensive; Tyrannosaurus must be especially vexing. You will probably be equally chagrined that most of those 30 plant species in the protected wildlife area don't have English names, and that some don't even have names in the local language, because no one uses them directly. And while we're at it, lets get rid of all the formulas in the math, engineering, and physics articles; my eyes just glaze over when I look at them (I'm not being facetious; they actually do). But I also have a different problem; English (despite it being my birth language) is often incomprehensible to me, for example "...it is most appropriate as the title for the article covering the community of plants." Could you explain what you mean by that in, uh, English?--Curtis Clark (talk) 06:26, 18 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Support Use the commonly used name from reliable sources that is not ambiguous for plants, ie. Sarcobotus. Greasewood, with respect to plants, may refer to Sarcobatus, Larrea tridentata, Adenostoma fasciculatum, Baccharis sarothroides[1] and Glossopetalon spinescens var. aridum (spiny or Nevada greasewood).[2].
    Sorry, I forgot to sign the above.--Melburnian (talk) 10:17, 18 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Support I am sympathetic to Skinsmoke's concern that scientific names can make articles less accessible for the general public. But when there are multiple species sharing the same common name, they need to be disambiguated. Tdslk (talk) 07:46, 18 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment: No, Curtis Clark, Tyrannosaurus isn't in the least bit annoying, because it has become a common word in English, and so is understood by most readers. As for your later point I meant exactly what I said (try looking up the words in a pocket dictionary: even the smallest one will contain them all as they are all very common). As for the species in the protected area, when I checked the links, every one of them had a common name in Indian English, and almost every one had a common name in British English. I only wish I could remember the page it was on, but can only remember that it was one of the districts in Odisha, Andhra Pradesh or Tamil Nadu.
To answer the unnamed contributor immediately after Curtis Clark (it appears to be Melburnian), despite a bit of nifty editing that has been going on to try to support this move request, it is pretty clear that the multiple species do not share the same common name. Sarcobatus is a disambiguation page linking to this article and a region in Nevada; Larrea tridentata is commonly known as the creosote bush (and as chaparral when referred to as a herb), and should rightly be under one of those titles (greasewood is such a common term for it that it was only added this morning); Adenostoma fasciculatum is commonly know as chamise (the article was amended by the proposer the day before he listed this move request, to remove reference to greasewood being more commonly used for this article's subject), Baccharis sarothroides is commonly known as broom baccharis or desert broom; and Glossopetalon spinescens is commonly known as spiny greasewood or Nevada greasewood. It appears very much that certain people are trying to create a difficulty purely to justify this move request, and that there is no problem whatever finding a common name in English for any of these articles. Skinsmoke (talk) 09:54, 18 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
No one except you has mentioned a "community of plants", so despite my knowing the meaning of "community", "of", and "plants", and two different meanings of "community of plants" (one botanical, and one having to do with industrial facilities sharing a locale), I still have no idea what you mean in the context of this RM.--Curtis Clark (talk) 17:10, 18 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
You're making a lot of unsupported statements here about what English names are used for what species. Also you're not addressing the point when you say that it's possible to find English names for plants. Of course it's possible; we could always translate the Latin name. But this isn't the issue. The issue is whether the proposed English name meets the five principles of WP:AT. You seem to want to find a non-Latin name at all costs. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:32, 18 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Support because it's a genus article. Being English, I'm not familiar with any of these plants or their common names, so I tried some Google searches. It does appear that "greasewood" is commonly used as part of the vernacular name of species in other genera, as indeed Skinsmoke notes above. So given that this is a genus article, it seems clear that "greasewood" is not the common name of the genus – this would require "X Greasewood" almost always to mean a species of Sarcobatus, which it manifestly doesn't. I suspect that Skinsmoke is right to think that sometimes we at WP:FLORA are a little too quick to favour scientific names; in this case considering the five principles of WP:AT suggests to me that the scientific name is on balance the right choice. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:55, 18 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment: The statements I made about names are merely the statements that are already included in the Wikipedia articles on those plants. I accept that plants that are not from English speaking countries often don't have a common English name, and that there may well be a case for using the Latin name in those instances. But that isn't the case here. We are talking about a group of plants found in the United States, where we have evidence of English names in common use. And no, I am not advocating that we have an English name at all costs, just that when we can find a suitable one that we use it as, incidentally, almost all botanical gardens in the English speaking world do, along with most literature on botany or plants that is intended to be read by the general public.
Nor are we talking about a genus containing a number of plants. Yes, greasewood is used as part of the English common name for a number of other species, but it is specifically used for the two (disputed—some experts claim they are the same species) members of this particular genus. It is therefore the common name for the genus, and possibly for the two plants (which presumably have an individual name in English, although nothing is given in the article). If the two plants do not have a specific English name, then greasewood is clearly the name for the genus.
I did point out in my earlier comments that I was having a rant. I do get annoyed, I admit, when it seems that the default position of those who edit plant articles on Wikipedia is that we must use the scientific (Latin) name in all cases, even when it is perfectly possible, with just a little work, to find a common English term that is used for that plant, and which has resulted in us having such abominations as Oryza sativa, commonly known as "Asian rice" or Quercus petraea, the "Sessile Oak", also known as the "Cornish Oak" or "Durmast Oak" (and it's worth pointing out that the proposer of this move has a similar proposal to have Douglas-fir moved to a Latin name). When this is challenged you tend to get the argument that has been put to me on these pages more than once (and variations of which have been used in this discussion), that "there are five names in English for this plant. What am I supposed to do?" Well, the answer to that is you try harder and do exactly what every other field has to do, whether it is those interested in geography, history, mammals, transport, engineering or whatever. You search for the most common name in English, evaluate any reasonable alternatives, taking into account specific regional ties, and come to a consensus that makes sense. You most certainly do not give up at the first hurdle, which is what seems to happen in the majority of plant articles. Nor do you bleat "They've got an internationally recognised list for birds, so it's easy for them."
Coming back to the specific example of greasewood, what do the sources in English use? Nobody has even attempted to answer that question in this discussion, other than to say The name is used as part of the name for other species as well". Well, I'm sorry, but that just isn't good enough. There must be plenty of authoritative publications in the United States that refer to greasewood and the other species that have been dragged into this discussion, including wildlife guides, botanical guides, the better travel guides, publications of the United States Forest Service, National Park Service, United States Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Land Management, plus numerous agencies at state and county level, all of which can be examined to see the term most popular in English. As far as I can see, nobody has even made an attempt to do that. Skinsmoke (talk) 17:03, 18 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
What's the point of doing all the original research, which goes against Wikipedia policy, when there is a single unambiguous name widely used in English reliable sources?--Curtis Clark (talk) 17:14, 18 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
@Skinsmoke – the English term "most popular in English" to describe Sarcobatus vermiculatus is definitely Greasewood. I don't dispute this from the searches I've done. So of the five principles at WP:AT, "Greasewood" meets Recognizability and Naturalness. However, it fails Precision. Greasewood is the English name used for other plants, which is also easy to find by searching. Titles are chosen by balancing the five principles.
@Curtis Clark – inappropriate "original research" is not involved in trying to determine whether four of the five principles at WP:AT are being followed (Conciseness doesn't need searches). There's no other way to find out; it's the regular practice on Wikipedia when there are disputes over titles. There isn't going to be a reliable source which tells us whether Wikipedia's five AT principles apply! Peter coxhead (talk) 21:48, 18 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
Peter, it is original research to evaluate each instance of the use of "greasewood" in the literature (necessary to show that it is the most commonly used name) to determine whether it indeed refers to the genus Sarcobatus rather than one but not the other of its species, or rather than some other plant. This is in answer to the rant below, as well. Hand-waving isn't a reliable source.--Curtis Clark (talk) 03:43, 19 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
Curtis, I don't find WP:OR quite so simple, but maybe that's me. (1) "Wikipedia articles must not contain original research" – deciding which title to use doesn't seem to me to affect what the article "contains". It won't be "material added to the article". (2) "Research that consists of collecting and organizing material from existing sources within the provisions of this and other content policies is fundamental to writing an encyclopedia" – I think this is what is happening when doing what you describe, provided that it's clear from the source what "greasewood" refers to and it isn't imposed. In language I'm more used to, scholarship is fine, research is not. But the line between the two isn't always easy to draw.
These comments do not, of course, in any way endorse the inappropriate language used by Skinsmoke. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:24, 19 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
The comment above would certainly qualify as a rant. I suggest that you consider withdrawing it, and recheck your earlier comments to see if you want to withdraw any of those as well. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:01, 18 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment Sarcobatus is definitely what I first think of when I hear the name "greasewood", and I think an argument could be made that if a preponderance of uses of the common name refer to one organism, the article on that organism could use the common name as its title, even if another organism is on rare occasions referred to by the same name. Have you looked at the potential sources you mention, Skinsmoke? If you have, I would be interested to hear what you've found. It would be especially nice if you could do this while assuming good faith (e.g., not describing opinions you disagree with as bleating). Tdslk (talk) 20:13, 18 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
I have looked at some of those sources, out of interest. Sarcobatus vermiculatus is almost always called Greasewood; this is very easy to verify. So "Greasewood" seems to meet Recognizability and Naturalness (see WP:AT). However, the reverse is not true; Greasewood does not almost always mean Sarcobatus vermiculatus. Many sources call other species Greasewood, e.g. this page is titled "Adenostoma fasciculatum Greasewood". So, as others have argued, "Greasewood" fails Precision. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:37, 18 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Support for the reasons given above by Peter coxhead and others. I add the attitude that Greasewood is a bad name for this plant because the plant is neither greasy nor woody, whereas Sarcobatus is a good name. And apparently the Sarcobatus name is in vernacular use in Nevada, since they have called the Sarcobatus Flat after it. Seanwal111111 (talk) 23:39, 18 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment: Whether the plant is either greasy or woody really isn't relevant to this discussion. That has no bearing on whether a common name is in use (nobody ever set out a rule that a common name had to make sense, after all). The second part of that comment, about Arizona, does not demonstrate one way or another whether the word Sarcobatus is in vernacular use. It merely demonstrates that a place has been named Sarcobatus Flat. It does not demonstrate any reason why that name has been chosen, and to draw any conclusion from the naming is purely original research. Skinsmoke (talk) 17:14, 19 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Support - I see no evidence that the genus is even called greasewood (as opposed to the species). Genera, in general, don't have common names because they are (pretty much by definition) specialist technical concepts. Common names (real ones, anyone) apply to sets of objects, not to taxonomic concepts (in other words, well- or less-well-supported hypotheses). As best I can tell, the Sarcobataceae and the genus Sarcobatus comprise an identical set of objects. Yet the assertion that "greasewood are a plant family" is laughable. There's a different argument to be had over species names, but this is a genus article. Guettarda (talk) 22:56, 19 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment - Been out for a while because my internet connection broke. Not so sure it was worth coming back–I'm always left so uninspired, disappointed, sad, and tired when Wiki forums such as this become more about editors than the editing; seething over something this petty is surprising me no end. 'Perhaps they need to get out more and start talking to people instead of to plants' Huh? Why the insult?; 'Such abominations as Oryza sativa, commonly known as "Asian rice" or Quercus petraea, the "Sessile Oak", also known as the "Cornish Oak" or "Durmast Oak".' What? Skinsmoke, these aren't arguments. Ok, I guess you don't like Latin names, for some reason. So what? I do—to me they sound like poetry—and I'm not even a botanist. But again: … so what? Agree with Sminthopsis84: your ranting just poisons the well, even if you're mixing something rational in there as well. Why bother even reading someone who's ranting? Makes me want to just to tune it all out. Good gravy, please make your arguments minus the ranting, bullying, and insulting, you should never have started doing it in the first place. Having a bad day/week/year? C'mon, there's no excuse for it. And with that, I'll take a wikibreak. See you all later! -Hamamelis (talk) 00:00, 21 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Support As already noted, greasewood is ambiguous, with multiple plants laying claim to the term, and not even addressing which english is being used (Canadian? Australian? Indian? American? British?)--Kevmin § 02:21, 21 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment WP:TITLE may be policy, but the policy explicitly endorses the WP:FLORA guideline here: WP:MOSAT. As others have mentioned, Greasewood as a title for an article about Sarcobatus fails a number of the core WP:CRITERIA in WP:TITLE. WP:UCN (see footnote 3 especially) applies to commonly used names; scientific names may be more commonly used than "common names". Greasewood appears to most commonly used for Larrea tridentata, not Sarcobatus; Google hits for Larrea+greasewood=602k, Sarcobatus+greasewood=18k (and Adenostoma+greasewood=8k).Plantdrew (talk) 03:50, 21 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment: Thanks for that Plantdrew. It's the first attempt I've seen by anyone on this page to actually argue the case that Sarcobatus is the common name. Unfortunately, you haven't provided a link to your search results. However, an Advanced Google search in English for Larrea and Greasewood excluding Wikipedia, Chapparal and Chaparral (which seem to be the preferred common names for the plant), does produce 284,000 hits. Wikipedia:Article titles and Wikipedia:Search engine test advise that you need to examine those search results, rather than simply taking the figures on face-value. I didn't bother paging through to the last page, as it was quite obvious from the first 40 hits that almost every one of those hits prefers Creosote bush as the common name, and mentions Greasewood as an alternative. The exceptions are three hits for online herbal medical supplies all selling the same brand of Greasewood extract, and one (Encyclopedia of Deserts by Michael A Mares, published by University of Oklahoma Press) which notes Creosote bush is known in some areas as "greasewood", a name usually referring to plants in the genus "Sarcobatus"".
A similar search for Sarcobatus and Greasewood excluding Wikipedia gives 65,000 hits, all of which appear to refer to either the genus or one of its two members (we'll come to that point in a moment). That does not, of course, prove that Greasewood is the common name for either the genus or either of the species within it.
Most of those hits appear to agree that, if there are two species within the genus (and there certainly doesn't appear to be agreement on that), one is Sarcobatus baileyi, and that its common name is Bailey's greasewood, the other being Sarcobatus vermiculatus, and that its common name is Black greasewood. Those that consider there are two species seem to agree that the genus is Sarcobatus, and that the common name is Greasewood (which accords with the external links listed on the article page). Those that consider that Greasewood is the common name of Sarcobatus vermiculatus do not seem to recognise that Sarcobatus baileyi exists, and therefore consider that Greasewood is the common name of both the genus and species. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Skinsmoke (talk • contribs)
Sounds rather ambiguous. older ≠ wiser 21:25, 23 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
Nearly all Requested moves discussions are. Otherwise, we probably wouldn't have been having the discussion in the first place. Skinsmoke (talk) 21:36, 23 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
This still ignores one fundamental point: what evidence is there that "greasewood" is the most commonly used term for the genus? Not the species. The genus. After all, this isn't a species article, this is a genus article. Guettarda (talk) 19:06, 25 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.
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