Talk:List of bees of Israel

Requested move

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. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: No consensus to move, sources support current title and current title does no harm to WP. Article move protect for 30 days Mike Cline (talk) 15:16, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

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List of bees of Israel → List of bees of Israel and the occupied territories – An editor is attempting to rename the article "List of bees of Israel and the occupied territories." I've reverted the edit as controversial but am initiating this REQMOVE in an effort to seek wider input from the community.—Biosketch (talk) 06:40, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

• Rename:It says in the first sentence of the article that the list here includes bees in the Palestinian territories and the Golan heights, neither are part of Israel. "List of bees of Israel " is therefor a clear violation of npov and inaccurate. It should therefor be renamed back to "List of bees of Israel and the occupied territories" to reflect the content of the article. --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 06:43, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. The name of the country is "Israel." The convention regarding articles of this nature is to call Israel "Israel," e.g. Geography of Israel, Sports in Israel, National parks and nature reserves of Israel, Economy of Israel, etc.—Biosketch (talk) 06:44, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

The name of Israel is Israel, but the name of the Palestinian territories and Golan heights is not Israel, bees in these two areas are in this list. --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 06:46, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Which bees from the list are only in the Golan Heights and West Bank and not in pre-67 Israel? I'm sure there are bees in the list that also live in Cyprus, Lebanon, the Sinai, and so on. Should the article then be named "List of bees of Israel and surrounding countries"? Of course not. The name of the country this article is about is Israel. If you can establish that the article is about other countries or territories, your argument will carry some validity. But the article is about Israel and the species of bees related to Israel. See Ants of Israel, which is from the same site this article is derived from, Discoverlife.org. The site is neutral, and so should the names we give articles on Wikipedia follow neutral points of view.—Biosketch (talk) 07:05, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

According to the first line of the article, besides bees in Israel, its also about bees in the Palestinian territories and the Golan heights. So the article is not only about Israel, but also about two other places outside of Israel, it is therefore not right to exclude them from the title of the article, (i.e. basically claiming that these two areas "are Israel") --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 07:57, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

The first line of the article is unsourced. You're proposing a controversial rename without basing your proposal on any reliable sources. See below for elaborated comment.—Biosketch (talk) 11:33, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

• Comment: If the page is to be renamed, it should be a more precise title like List of bees of Israel, Palestinian territories and the Golan heights. The phrase "occupied territories" might be too ambiguous per WP:PRECISION. Zzyzx11 (talk) 18:06, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I can support the wording: "List of bees of Israel, Palestinian territories and the Golan heights" --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 22:41, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

• Supportspecifically in the wording suggested by Zzyzx11. If the article has been written based on the territory described in the opening, then the name should reflect it.--Peter cohen (talk) 01:31, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• Note that most of the titles of sources for the article use "Israel", not "Israel et al." If this reflects the sources content, then the intro paragraph is incorrect and the article should not be moved. —  AjaxSmack  04:26, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
• Support: I am the main contributor to this article. All official biodiversity-related publications in the State of Israel include the Golan Heights and the West Bank as Israeli territories. Of course this can be interpreted as part of the occupation policy. However, from a scientific and conservational point of view, the main body that is responsible and contributing to the documenting and preservation of biodiversity in all those territories right now is the State of Israel, which for me justifies their inclusion. I couldn't care less about the name of the article; I only stress that the scope of the article should not be changed, because due to the nature of the scientific publications, it his quite hard to separate out species which occur in the occupied territories but not within the pre-1967 borders. Please notice that these fruitless discussions are repeating themselves from one article to the next recently, mainly due to the politically-motivated editings of a few specific Wikipedians. The scope of these articles is, however, quite removed from politics, at least for most of the biologists I know (outside Israel too), which are those who exchange this kind of information. Gidip (talk) 19:03, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• To be sure, no one is proposing that the scope of the article be reduced. But the way the WP:REQMOVE procedure is supposed to work is arguments are made in reference to Wikipedia's policies at WP:NAMINGCRITERIA. There are basically five criteria there: Recognizability, Naturalness, Precision, Conciseness, and Consistency.

The Recognizability criterion is easy. Per the sources listed in the article, the bees in the list are universally recognized as of Israel. There's no corresponding list of bees suggested for the Palestinian territories or the Golan Heights. Hilactidae are "The Hilactidae of Israel"; the two new species of carpenter bee are "Two species of carpenter bees new to the Israeli fauna"; when the Andrena genus is mentioned, it is "the genus Andrena (Apoidea) in Israel"; similarly, when the Prosopis genus is mentioned, is it "the genus Prosopis (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Colletinae) in Israel"; and when the Systropha genus is mentioned, it is "Systropha new to Israel and Central Asia"; etc.

The Naturalness criterion unequivocally favors List of bees of Israel. "List of Bees of Israel, the Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights" is a long, artificial and unnatural formulation.

The Precision criterion was drafted in reference to WP:Disambiguation, which isn't a relevant consideration here as there are no other "List of bees of Israel" articles from which it's necessary to distinguish this one.

The Conciseness criterion obviously favors "List of bees of Israel."

Finally, to establish that the Consistency criterion is best met using the "List of bees of Israel" title, here are some examples of similar "of Israel" or "in Israel" articles that have been stable with their existing titles despite having ostensibly the same issues as are being raised here: Geography of Israel, Economy of Israel, List of adventive wild plants in Israel, Wildlife of Israel, List of endemic flora of Israel, Demographics of Israel, Media of Israel, Taxation in Israel, List of companies of Israel, Music of Israel, Culture of Israel, etc. All these articles cover the West Bank/Palestinian territories/Golan Heights to varying extents, but it's understood that they're mainly and crucially about Israel.

To sum up the argument with respect to Wikipedia's policy, there's no compelling reason not to go with the more recognizable, natural, concise, and consistent title List of bees of Israel. There's no reason not to explain in the lead what the scope of the article is to avoid any possibility of a reader being misled, and indeed the explanation in the lead satisfies any POV concerns that would otherwise be valid arguments against the original title.—Biosketch (talk) 11:33, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

What you are saying is inaccurate in different ways. User:Gidip is a biologist and has graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and he has expanded the article a lot, so this person has a lot of knowledge of the subject, he has said above that "All official biodiversity-related publications in the State of Israel include the Golan Heights and the West Bank as Israeli territories." So when some sources speak about bees in the Palestinian territories or Golan heights, they can be incorrectly presented in the sources as being "in Israel", although they are not. And there is no reason for us to follow this incorrect Israeli narrative. The "Naturalness criterion" wouldn't exclude the PT and GH as the subject of this article includes these two areas so there is nothing natural about excluding them and presenting them as "Israel". This would only be unnatural. For the Precision criteria, ("How precise is the title under discussion?") then "List of bees of Israel, Palestinian territories and the Golan heights." is spot on, while current title is not. Just because you have found some other articles that excludes the PT and GH from the title doesn't mean we should be wrong here also, it means that after we correct this article, we should also correct the other articles (by either correcting the name of the articles or removing information not about Israel, it depends on the article). There are also articles that have neutral names like the name suggested here: for example: Islam in Israel and the Palestinian territories, List of cathedrals in Israel and the Palestinian Territories, List of mosques in Israel and the Palestinian territories. You also mentioned the List of companies of Israel that includes Israeli companies in the occupied territories, the companies are "of Israel", but a bee in the occupied territories, is in no way "of Israel". Israel didn't manufacture the insects. I also don't see the Music of Israel and Culture of Israel articles mentioning the occupied territories. --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 04:37, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose attempt to politicize a non-political article. Using 'of Israel' is certainly ambiguous and ultimately NPOV and avoids the heated argument about using 'in Israel' or 'in occupied territories'. --Shuki (talk) 00:34, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose but support rename to "List of bees of Israel, the Palestinian territories and the Golan heights" or thereabouts with redirects from "List of bees of Israel", "List of bees of the Palestinian territories" and "List of bees of the Golan heights". Or rather, I support setting that as the scope of the article as described in the introduction, biting the bullet, amending the title to match the scope and moving on. As someone with a great personal interest in Hymenoptera it saddens me to see these entirely apolitical things politicized by boundaries which are of no interest to the subjects of the article. Unlike Shuki, I take the view that it is the current title (like several others) that actually politicizes the subject and causes these fruitless discussions. Amending it de-politicizes it and sets a framework for the kind of productive collaboration that actually exists amongst biologists. I appreciate Biosketch's attention to policy. He is probably right policy-wise but Wikipedia:Ignore all rules is a policy worth considering sometimes. It's true that when it comes to data sources there are scant references to bees and ants for the Palestinian territories or the Golan Heights. It's also true source-wise for other places like Cambodia, Myanmar and, to a lesser extent, Laos, because biologists tend to be in Thailand for various reasons although much of the work is relevant to neighboring countries. I would hesitate to compile a list of bees of Thailand for example and call it that or to create an article titled Ants of PNG (not mentioning the Indonesian Papua province) instead of an Ants of New Guinea article. I don't really see 'of Israel' as any less an artificial and unnatural formulation than 'of Israel, the Palestinian territories and the Golan heights'. They are both artificial and unnatural. The only difference is the length and what matters is the scope, having a title that matches the scope and making sure people can find the article. I think setting the scope of the article and renaming the article to match it would put this issue to rest so that people can focus on more interesting things (such as the invasion history of Apis florea there). The people at AntWeb, a model of collaboration, have been extremely generous in donating and uploading about 32,000 of their marvelous images to Commons. If only we were as good at collaboration. Sean.hoyland - talk 16:45, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

No one is stopping you from creating an article about Bees in the PA territories. Create a stub, contact some people at PA universities, ask Nableezy or SD to translate some material. Just because you assume there is not enough information does not legitimize giving more weight to the One-state solution here. --Shuki (talk) 20:27, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

What would stop me is that it makes no sense to do that. Israel, the Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights are not islands. It's the barriers and intersections between biogeographic spaces that occur at many scales and are not static of course, amongst other things, that matter. The article should have a scope that makes sense from a practical perspective and a title that accurately describes its scope. I understand that you genuinely believe that you are resisting politicization but you should consider that in this case, you may be wrong. There's a time and a place for nationalism, or so I'm told, but this isn't it. Sean.hoyland - talk 05:56, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

WP:V is the policy that must determine the name of this article, not political sympathies or nationalistic worldviews. The consensus among the scientific community, as demonstrated by the RSes in the article, is that the bees listed are classified as "bees of Israel." If there are RSes that dispute that classification, that's something that needs to be taken into consideration and then some of the other names proposed here could be valid. But that isn't the case. This is actually a straightforward and easy case to close because all the RSes are in agreement about what name to adopt in reference to the bees in the article. There should be no hesitation here at all. I'm currently struggling with how to classify certain companies like Perrigo and Sodastream because sources contradict each other over whether these companies are American, Israeli, or both. A situation like that, where RSes are in disagreement, is a worthwhile use of intellectual energy and time. This is not such a case. We use the relevant RSes to determine how to create content in articles because that's the method Wikipedia has determined to be the most neutral and consistent. Here the RSes are clear: the bees listed are classified by the scientific community as "bees of Israel."—Biosketch (talk) 12:39, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

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. No further edits should be made to this section.

Ignoring the close while discussions were ongoing, are you sure that '[t]he consensus among the scientific community, as demonstrated by the RSes in the article, is that the bees listed are classified as "bees of Israel." ?' (my bolding). That isn't really how the scientific community classifies things and looking at the sources being used here I'm not sure that "classified as bees of Israel" is meaningful in the way you are ascribing meaning to it. Country lists are just one possible intersection set that can sometimes be generated (if you're lucky) from the information produced by biological systematics. These kinds of lists are inherently synthetic I suppose no matter what title we give it, they will all be wrong in several senses. But take Apis mellifera syriaca as an example of the inherent problems with these kinds of lists. It's not 'of Israel', it's the feisty Syrian honeybee subspecies and it's native to the Eastern Mediterranean; Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, and Syria. How about we just remove ", the Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights" statement then so that the title and scope match ? Do you agree that the title and the scope should match ? Or perhaps just change it to "This is a list of the bees of Israel" ? I think it's the stated scope vs title mismatches that cause these problems. Or perhaps expand it to cover the Eastern Med. And for your entertainment, "Borders are a human system. Bees have no borders". Sean.hoyland - talk 15:26, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

But naturally, all articles 'in ABC' or 'of XYZ' have a nationalistic centrality. Israel is not an island, but neither is Switzerland. Perhaps, a large List of bees of the Middle East' is warranted. --Shuki (talk) 23:17, 2 January 2012 (UTC)