Talk:Pseudoryzomys

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Brazilian False Rice Rat/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

I will begin reviewing this article. Please revert any changes I make where I inadvertently change the meaning. I often do small edits with edit summaries as explanations, so check them if you have trouble following why I might have done what I've done. I will post queries below. Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:50, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

• The lead should be a summary of salient points of the article. As it stands it seems to focus overly much on taxonomy (granted it is complicated!) I just added a sentence to finish the balancing.

• • I can see your point, but note that the lead also includes the most important points about distribution, habitat, and morphology. What about adding the following:
    • Specific characters it shares with Holochilus and Lundomys (webbing between the digits, reduction in complexity of the dentition)
    • Some additional general morphology, perhaps body weight and relative tail length.
    • Conservation status.
  • Ucucha 14:06, 5 October 2009 (UTC) (Now done - Ucucha 20:36, 5 October 2009 (UTC))

• Is there any more specific meaning by using the word "pelage" over "coat" or "fur"?

• • No. Ucucha 14:06, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

• The first two paras of the Taxonomy are tricky to navigate as there are quite alot of tricky taxonomic changes to include. Not a deal-breaker for GA but section might need tweaking for FAC. I have added a couple of commas here and there to see if it helps.

• • I tried to make it clear by reviewing the histories of the two names it got in separate paragraphs and then reviewing their shared history in the third paragraph and beyond. I am happy to have this section improved; I want to have an article that is as good as possible and not merely one that is good enough for GA, and any suggestions you have for achieving that end would be welcome. Ucucha 14:06, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

• phyllotine and oryzomyine need some explanation.

• • Both are tribes of Sigmodontinae. I added "of rodents" to "phyllotine group" now; is that clear enough?

• but declined to formally place it in Oryzomyini in the absence of explicit phylogenetic justification of such a placement. - needs explaining.

• • The problem was that Oryzomyini was basically a collection of genera that some people thought looked pretty similar, without any phylogenetic justification. Voss didn't want to perpetuate that problem. I think it's too much for this article to explain that in detail. I'll try to think of a suitable replacement for it. (Now done - Ucucha 20:36, 5 October 2009 (UTC))

• mesoloph(id) on its molars - a what?

• • It's a ridge on the molar, and some authors have considered its presence in oryzomyines and thomasomyines versus its absence in akodontines, phyllotines, and others to be very important. It is somewhat explained in the next sentences, but I agree that this may be made more clear. (Now done - Ucucha 20:36, 5 October 2009 (UTC))

• Some clarification of terms in the Description section would be helpful, including alisphenoid strut, tegmen tympani, zygomatic plates, posterolateral palatal pits, anteroloph, posteroflexid. This might be a little tricky but a few words would be helpful. Inline references in paras 2 and 3 would be good.

• • As you say, it is tricky. I will try to give some explanations for them and also add the refs. Ucucha 14:06, 5 October 2009 (UTC) (Now done, except for posteroflexid which was already explained - Ucucha 20:36, 5 October 2009 (UTC))

• Certain bats are also smaller and paler in the Chaco region, which includes much of Paraguay - bats? I'm lost as to why bats are mentioned here.

• • As an analogy: these species show the same kind of variation as Pseudoryzomys does. I think I clarified that now. Ucucha 14:06, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

• The article needs something on aspects of behaviour, including diet and hunting habits (if nothing is known, this needs recording), and breeding/nesting. Do we have any info on predators which eat it?

• • As far as I know, nothing is known. It has been found in owl pellets from time to time, so that actually merits inclusion. I'll see what I can do. Ucucha 14:06, 5 October 2009 (UTC) (Now done - Ucucha 20:36, 5 October 2009 (UTC))

• A range map would be nice.

• • That is true. I have little experience with making such maps well; do you have any suggestions as to how best to do that? Ucucha 14:06, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
    • The IUCN has a range map, but of course that's copyrighted. Also, it appears to be incomplete, as P. simplex has also been recorded from Misiones in northeastern Argentina. Ucucha 20:36, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

• References look okay.

Overall, a bit of work to do. Good luck. I can't help with content but am free to answer questions and help out where I can. Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:54, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I think I addressed most of your concerns. The range map still needs to be added, though, and there are some places in the text where I may not quite have been able to solve the problems you saw. Also, the "Distribution and ecology" section has now become something of a catch-all; I'll need to find some more logical organization for that. Ucucha 20:36, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I think we've reached GA level. I will update and post some further notes on the general talk page itself. Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:14, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Onwards from GA

Some notes - Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:14, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

• Range map (agree this is a tricky problem)
• Some more clarification of technical terms. Another reader would be good.
• Some more thorough referencing (eg the chromosome sentence)

Great, thanks! I added the karyotype ref and some others. Ucucha 23:49, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Citation templates

Is there really a good reason for these citation templates? They make the references section a difficult-to-edit disaster of code. I've never understood why the trend in wikipedia is to intentionally make citing sources the most complex part of the process. --Aranae (talk) 00:26, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

On the contrary, the templates mean one doesn't need to remember the minutae of citation formatting, only fill in some fields. They also do neat stuff like generating metadata. --Cybercobra (talk) 03:06, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

In a format with an incredibly steep learning curve. Forcing editors to write this type of complex code to do the simplest (and most important) tasks really represents one of the biggest barriers to entry for experts who want to improve wikipedia. This type of formatting is not straightforward in any respect. --Aranae (talk) 03:46, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Cybercobra, I wrote this article and added all its citation templates, and I find it much more convenient to just type out the citation than to use these templates and remember the names of all these parameters. Sure, there's probably some script that makes it easier, but all that is only adding complexity and solving a non-existing problem, because I have no problem at all with just typing out the citations.

I can see two possible advantages for using the cite templates. One is that citation formats are consistent across many articles. But whether this is even desirable is dubious. Both the citation template format and the format I commonly use give the same information, just with different punctuation and formatting. The second advantage consists of the COinS metadata. But these are rarely used at best, and it should be possible to generate these data automatically anyway even from non-templated citations.

There are also disadvantages for the use of citation templates (cf. recent discussion at WT:CITE). They slow down page load time, which is significant for people with slow connections. People in Bolivia or Paraguay who want to learn about this component of their fauna, who presumably don't have connections as fast as they are in the West, may indeed notice the difference. Then, as Aranae rightly notes, the use of cite templates complicates adding citations for people who don't know how to use the templates. You speak about the "minutiae of citation formatting", but using cite templates forces one to learn the minutiae of parameter names in those templates, and that is something much more important. If someone adds a citation here and adds a space after the colon in a journal citation, which is inconsistent with the style I used here, the citation is still functional and the only problem is a minor inconsistency in the citations, a small problem that is easily fixed. If on the contrary I don't remember the correct parameter name in a cite template, it breaks the citation. Thus, both formats require one to remember such minutiae, but the consequences of not remembering them are more severe for the cite templates. In general, I prefer not to use templates where they are not urgently required, because they make it more difficult for new users willing to improve Wikipedia to do so. In addition (a minor point), the cite template style has several features that are inconsistent with the styles used in the scientific journals in the field.

In this article, your use of the citation templates created several problems, which result in the article currently not fulfilling some FA criteria. Some of the footnotes refer to Percequillo et al., 2008, which is the IUCN account, but you have now disguised this reference as an external link, making it impossible to verify the conservation status from the information given in the article. The language text ("in Portuguese" etc.) is placed at different places in the citation in the several citations where it is used. This is apparently a problem with the templates themselves and not with your implementation, and it illustrates another problem: using complex templates instead of simple text makes it more difficult to achieve consistency on points like the place of the language label. Your edit created a problem in the Musser and Carleton, 2005 reference, where there are two periods behind the initials of DeeAnn Reeder. This illustrates the fact that even when using the citation templates, one has to remember minutiae, such as not putting a period at the end of the |editor= parameter. For some reason, you used the DOI for the Pardinas, 2008 reference, creating inconsistency with other citations where DOIs also exist. I gave my reasons for not using DOIs at the FAC. Your current formatting creates needless text, because no one is interested (I hope) in seeing the DOI code. Just linking the title is more intuitive and economical, and this was the previous format. You placed the number of American Museum Novitates and some other papers within brackets, even though that is the most important piece of information for finding the paper.

Summarizing, I find the disadvantages of using the cite templates much more persuasive than the advantages. The templates add needless complexity and require one to learn at least as many minutiae as just typing the references does.

You also split some of the references to multiple papers. Not only did this create some other problems (ref. 29 and 31 are currently identical), but it also makes the article less visually appealing by creating strings of consecutive ref tags.

Last, I would like to draw your attention to the principles in WP:MOS#General principles. I believe your changes objectively made the article worse; you probably disagree, but we should be able to agree that both the previous style and the one you proposed are permissible, so the style preferred by the primary contributor (me) is to be used. I am open to objective arguments why I am wrong on the above. Ucucha 11:36, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm currently busy with other 'pedia tasks and the wall of text is rather off-putting, so I'm not going to make an issue of this. --Cybercobra (talk) 12:04, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry if that is the case. I think my main point is in the paragraph "Summarizing, I find the disadvantages of using the cite templates much more persuasive than the advantages. The templates add needless complexity and require one to learn at least as many minutiae as just typing the references does." Ucucha 12:18, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

My apologies for interposing here, but having just seen this I thought that Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Wikipedia Citation Style may be of interest.
— V = I * R (talk to Ohms law) 00:21, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Brazilian False Rice Rat

Why was it moved from "Brazilian False Rice Rat" despite WP:COMMONAME? Chrisrus (talk) 03:58, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Pseudoryzomys is a far more common name for this animal than "Brazilian False Rice Rat". See generally User:Ucucha/Titles. Ucucha (talk) 14:23, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

In light of all that, should WP:COMMONNAME be amended? You don't really seem to be selectively violating it if your practice is to use taxon titling when the taxon is actually the literally most common name. There seems to be a problem between the most common meaning of "common name" and "common name" as a technical term. WP:COMMONNAME seems to be talking about the literally most common name. Perhaps a new guideline elsewhere to warn people of this important distinction. Chrisrus (talk) 16:52, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, my argument is that though Pseudoryzomys is not a "common name" in the technical sense of a name in the vernacular, but it is a "common name" in the sense of a name that is commonly used for the animal, and it is this second meaning of "common name" that is relevant to the policy. I don't have any interest at this point in a proposal to amend the policy, though. Ucucha (talk) 17:25, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

The most popular article taxon-titled article might be Marsupial Wolf. It could be a useful example to use in a reminder or caveat. Chrisrus (talk) 17:46, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Understood; you've done enough already, thanks. You may want to watch this, though. Chrisrus (talk) 19:33, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

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Photo?

Although this species is of "least concern", the only whole-organism photos are of other species. Surely there's a picture of this critter out there somewhere. --Piledhigheranddeeper (talk) 17:51, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

The fraction of small South American rodents for which we have photos is not that high, unfortunately. A fair amount of expertise is needed to identify them. WolfmanSF (talk) 18:03, 19 February 2019 (UTC)