Talk:Smelt-whiting fishing

• Uh, why does this page exist? Looks to me like a word for word copy of sections of sillaginidae and various members of the family. This does not need to exist at all. Kare Kare (talk) 11:00, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Oops, sorry if this offends you, Kare Kare. The article is forked from nine different articles you wrote on smelt-whiting, it's just a reordering of your material; it's your article really. Fishing, as a project, has its own logic and requirements which differ from fish, as a project. Someone interested in recreational smelt-whiting fishing wants to see an article on smelt-whiting fishing, and not have to go on a treasure hunt around Wikipedia. The fishing project needs fishing articles on recreationally significant fish, as well as commercially significant fish. I couldn't resist doing the smelt-whiting article early, because it was so easy; you had already done the hard work in the individual articles :). This not the case for other fish articles, where the forked articles will have to be written pretty much from scratch. The process is two way, and more often relevant stuff from articles on fishing are added back to fish articles. I see the fish articles as the parent articles, with articles on recreational and commercial fishing being forked from them. Also aquaculture, as in tilapia in aquaculture and food, as in squid as food. For example, from the point of view of the fisheries and fishing project, salmon needs articles on "recreational salmon fishing", "commercial salmon fishing" and "salmon in aquaculture", incorporating all the species information within the salmon group. The relevant individual species information can then be forked back to the relevant fish species articles. I presume that it is not your position that only fish articles should have material on fishing, and that fishing articles should therefore not mention fish. --Geronimo20 (talk) 08:48, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

No offense taken, it just seems that there should be some extra information as opposed to information already in existence on other pages. When i wrote all the sillaginid articles i did wonder if a page like this could be made, but presumed someone would only want to merge it with the sillaginid article if it was created. Anyway, if you think its worthwhile, i will give the page a full treatment in a couple of weeks (i'll be away for a week or so from tomorrow). I have a LOT of information on fishing for Australian sillaginids and so can add extra information. If you want the article to retain its format exactly to fit a fishing page 'template', let me know, otherwise i might make a few modifications to the layout.

I saw another of your articles on porgie fishing which did a similar thing, taking info from larger articles and combining them. This strategy works ok for the sillaginid article because the more important species have a larger fishing section and i made it clear which of the species were major recreational targets, and this article treats species with the required 'weighting' of information. The porgy article fails (no offense) because it only contains 3 species, 2 of which are Australian and one Atlantic species. For a balanced porgie article, most of the info should focus on the countless American and European species which are of very high importance, with a small mention of the Australian species (which should include not only snapper and southern black bream, but the yellowfin bream, Acanthopagrus australis which is actually the most popular porgie fishing target in Australia). I guess what i'm trying to say is you are over-representing certain species, which is only a problem because the three species have information copied straight from the species articles. I know the idea is other people will come and add info later, but you and i both know there are very few people who add quality information on fish(ing). You only need the wrong person to look at this page, look at the 3 species articles and yell "MERGE".

Don't get me wrong, i am supportive of each group of fish having fishing articles, but having a few fairly random species talked about in great detail based on duplicated info from a preexisting page is going to have people calling for merges or cleanups. Have a look at Fish in Australia for a prime example of what i mean - seemingly random species and facts cobbled together as opposed to a cohesive article.

Anyway, i don't at all mean to sound overly critical, you do a fantastic job on fishing related articles (and seem to be about the only does), and certainly don't want to dissuade you from keeping on with these fish family fishing articles, but the article does need to contain weighted info on each species to keep it from looking like a collection of random facts.

Cheers Kare Kare (talk) 13:04, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

That would be great :) I don't have the background to write coherently about all the different recreational species fisheries (but then who does?). I'm more comfortable with commercial fishing, fishing vessels and population dynamics. I'm ignorant when it comes to things like fish biology. All I can do is to try and set up a framework where editors, such as yourself, who do know about specific recreational species fisheries, can fill in the gaps. It's true that many such articles might not be fleshed out for years, if ever. But if the framework is not there, than many of the areas that can be fleshed out might never happen. So it's damned if you do, damned if you don't. So I'll probably continue, slowly, trying to put some sort of framework in place, unless I get significant opposition. As far as porgie fishing goes, I've being fishing snapper for decades. Even then, I only know a wee bit about snapper in parts of New Zealand–not enough to contribute usefully. But I don't think the articles need to be written by people with personal experience of the species. The articles on recreational fishing, for the most part, are a frustrating nightmare of enthusiastic fishermen adding over detailed and unsourced material about their local experiences and techniques, as though that covers it. Better if they are written by editors with access to real information from solid sources they can cite. Do you know of suitable resources for recreational species fisheries? Or is it, as I suspect, confined to fishing magazines and blogs just talking about personal experiences with local areas, books of personal fishing memories, and here and there, a scattering of professional papers on some highly specialised aspect and the odd professional book, but with some local, rather than global, viewpoint, and no historical perspective. --Geronimo20 (talk) 00:11, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately i have never seen a peer reviewed journal on practices of recreational fishing, so fishing magazines and books are the only sources i use for the recreational fishing sections of articles. In some cases, peer reviewed fisheries journals or government fisheries bodies publish information on the quantity of species taken by anglers which can be incorporated into articles, but little on how to go about it. In the end, unless the species has a wide distribution, the techniques for one area will usually apply for all areas, so books and magazines in my opinion are quite reliable. I wouldn't use blogs or websites unless it was a last resort (which i have in some South American species). I would suggest that books by recognised experts in fishing (names such as Steve Starling and Jack Pollard of Australia come into mind) are the most reliable source of information on fishing.

Cheers, Kare Kare (talk) 10:41, 9 May 2009 (UTC)