Talk:Domesticated plants of Mesoamerica

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[edit] Purpose?

What is the purpose of this article? Shouldn't it be a list? Why are translations provided - Wikipedia is not a dictionary, not even a Spanish-English one. --Cheeser1 (talk) 05:56, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, I suppose it could be a simple listing, and given there are hundreds of known plant species that could be considered to have been domesticated in Mesoam (although maybe 'cultivated' would be a more inclusive word), perhaps a list would make sense. However, there's also ample scope for an entire article on the topic Domestication of plants in Mesoamerica, which this in a way set out to do. IMO we could easily have both. It's just that really there's been very little development on this article for either of these approaches, it's sort of here in the hope/expectation that someday someone will get around to expanding on it...

As for providing translations, I don't think this is an issue. It's not trying to act as a dictionary, only to identify cognate terms which may be encountered. Even in english-language texts, many plants of this region will often be called by their common name in spanish (eg maguey vs 'century plant'). --cjllw ʘ TALK 00:06, 7 April 2008 (UTC)