Talk:Stag beetle

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Stag beetle → Lucanidae — Standardizing to the scientific name. The common name can be applied to other beetles as well. It can also apply specifically to Lucanus cervus. I will go through the redirect links and correct them between Lucanidae and L. cervus after the move as requested. Kugamazog 07:56, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Survey

Add  # '''Support'''  or  # '''Oppose'''  on a new line in the appropriate section followed by a brief explanation, then sign your opinion using ~~~~. Please remember that this is not a vote; comments must include reasons to carry weight.

• Oppose -- WP:NC and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna) "If there is a common name in English, use that" If more than one beetle gets the same name then a sperate paragraph takes care of it. What should not be done is to turn this into a redirect page --Philip Baird Shearer 20:42, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment The purpose of the redirect page is simply secondary, the question is whether it should be under its scientific or common name. Whichever one it is under, the other becomes a redirect to the primary, that's all. A number of beetles in this family are very well-studied, and their articles will probably be longer than a page. Thanks for catching my missing signature on a prior post. I bolded your oppose simply because it makes it easier for folks to see who is saying what.KP Botany 22:22, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

• Is this under a wikiproject, and did you consult with them? I thought plants was the only place scientific names are used over common names. What other beetles besides the Lucanidae is this name applied to? KP Botany 14:03, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
• comment moved here from WP:RM Stemonitis 14:32, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

• The issue here is, as I understand it, one of simple ambiguity between "stag beetles" (often used for Lucanidae) and "stag beetle" (often used for Lucanus cervus). The conventions of WP:ARTH (the most specific applicable project) are those of WP:TOL, to use common names if they are unambiguous, and scientific names otherwise (I'm paraphrasing, but that's the gist). --Stemonitis 14:32, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

• I could go either way on this one - it's a little unusual among beetles in having a single common name for both family and a species within it. Stan 15:35, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
  • This is quite common in the plant world, a common name is used for a plant species or genus, and for the family. This doesn't necessarily make ambiguity for the name, as there are plenty of words in English language where one word points to two things, and this is dealt with quite readily throughout Wikipedia with a simply sentence, introductory, "Stag beetle is both the common name of the family of beetles, the Lucanidae, and the name of the most common species of the family, Lucanus cervus." The common names, in this case, are directly connected. I don't know about how usual or unusual this is, though. KP Botany 00:58, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps it's just Texas, but common names for things people don't really pay much attention to get slurred around. Such as how locust can apply to Acrididae and Cicadidae. People here might argue that a rhinoceros beetle could be a stag beetle (though in truth, they'd most likely call it a "big bug"). The page deals mainly with the Lucanidae family and mentions that it can also sometimes be referred to a Lucanus cervus, so I think the page is better suited with the family name. I'm planning on heavily working on contructing an interlocking tree of the species of this family. I currently have access to a university insect collection, so in my spare time I take pictures, upload them, and in between classes or when I am bored, I create stub pages about the species (pictures I haven't worked on for this family can be found here, all of them can be found here). I have done this for the Sphingidae (Lepidoptera) family, but I have run out of species. Next I was going to do Lucanidae, but I wanted to the main page over the family to be in accordance with the rest of the pages (by the scientific name). There's also the business that while the common name may not be universal in the English speaking world, the scientific name is.--Kugamazog 02:04, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

What you are proposing is not so much a move, but rather creating the family page. This can be accomplished by simply rewriting the current page under its common name to describe primarily the family and, for now, making Lucanus cervus a stub page, rather than a redirect to Stag beetle. We've gone over the non-universality of family names on Wikipedia a zillion times, if you can convince folks that organisms should be under their scientific names, by all means do so, I'll support your successful result 100%. It won't happen, though, and your time is probably better spent writing articles than discussing the impossible. In addition, I just don't know about the using the scientific name in this case, as I'm not a beetle person, and have no feel for it. Nonetheless, PLEASE, discuss all of these moves on the articles' talk pages, as you may get enough interested editors to create a consensus for future moves. As you are creating the articles, as far as I am concerned, if no such article already exists, please use the scientific name, as that is your area. KP Botany 02:43, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Lucanus cervus already has a fleshed out page :) Are you recommending turning the redirect of Lucanidae into a page about the family and having two separate pages of information (stag beetle & Lucanidae)?--Kugamazog 02:53, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

No, that's probably not a good idea. I feel strongly about using scientific names, but it's just not how it is always done at Wikipedia, particularly with very common common names, such as Stag Beetle. I recommend that you just leave it for now, and work on writing new articles about the various genera, and use the scientific names wherever you can, then when you get a good stack of the article, produce an article that is a list of genera or species of stag beetles, post the move with the taxonomic names arguments (namely you're completing the taxonomy of the family and want them all to be in scientific names), then make the move when you get no feedback (and I'll support the move), and then change this page to the redirect. In general, though, don't make these moves without posting on the talk page first, as this is anything but controversial on Wikipedia, and I would rather you spend your time on the articles than on battling this. If you have a stack of articles, then a list, then make the move, I think it will generally be accepted by everyone.

On the other hand, if no one else posts here disagreeing with your suggested move over the next two weeks, ignore what I said above, and please just go ahead and make the move, noting in the edit summary that the move had been open for discussion and no one disagreed with it. KP Botany 02:16, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.