Talk:Reindeer

Article concerns

I just performed a quick read of this article and it was hard, to say the least. From an editorial point of view, I don't see a need for six paragraphs in the lead. Other concerns are the length. I don't see splitting as a necessity but certainly, a trimming could facilitate improvements, especially in some subsections by using summary style editing. A quick example is the "Antler" subsection (10 paragraphs and a quote) that curiously does not even link to that article. The "Distribution and habitat" shows to have Reindeer distribution as the main article yet has five paragraphs. Linking (see:H:WIKILINK) is considered an "important feature" and can be used in lieu of over-informational or the rehashing of content. Boreal woodland caribou has an article but no link and the same with the Peary caribou subsection.

There are eight instances of quotations. It would seem that an editorial preference for quotes could be better served as direct statements in the Wikipedia "editorial voice" that could lead to less over-editorializing.

B-class articles should conform to the criteria (#1), The article is suitably referenced, with inline citations. It has reliable sources, and any important or controversial material which is likely to be challenged is cited, so there should not be any "citation needed" or "dubious – discuss" tags.

At a point, "someone" might want to try to see if the article can be elevated to a higher classification and many of these issues likely will have to be dealt with. --Otr500 (talk) 17:06, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Since we don't have articles yet

@Largoplazo: I did not remove the [[:Species:]] because they were there before the anonymous editor made them in to refs. I simply reverted that change. Someone else must have put those links there as we have no WP articles for them. I agree with that idea but I will not revert you. Invasive Spices (talk) 28 December 2021 (UTC)

I see, no worries! If I had come upon them in their pre-ref-tagging state I would have removed them as well, on the grounds of never havings seen any taxonomic article having WikiSpecies links inserted into text before! If anything, it seems like there might be a template for inserting such links at the bottom of the article. Largoplazo (talk) 17:46, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

I have seen those so yes I am sure we could use those, except that this is the article for all reindeer and not those specific subspecies. However, I suppose we could still add all the subspecies at the bottom. I assume the templates don't complain if you have than one in the same article. I had not thought of that. Would that look alright? Invasive Spices (talk) 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Minor edits

Hello @Moxy: and 2601:ca:4380:3a20:49c2:d076:ae11:6573. I fail to see the necessity of this reversion. Can you explain why you rolled them back? Invasive Spices (talk) 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Cremated the lede

The opening sentence of this article was destroyed on 7 Aug 2022. Please fix it. Grahamaross (talk) 12:49, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up. I fear the damage is much deeper than that, reviewing the page history. I took a shot at repair with portion of lede from before that date, but there have been so many intervening edits - vandalism and legitimate - it's very hard to tell. I've submitted a request for page protection. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 19:15, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

Which edits are in dispute? Invasive Spices (talk) 15 October 2022 (UTC)

There's hundreds of IP edits, randomly, many reverted, some not (which is where it becomes problematic). You're welcome to do a diff of my attempt at restoration from an earlier version, and the state of the lede before it. It was badly garbled before, hopefully it is less so now. But ultimately it would take a day of sifting through all the hundreds of edits to weed out the bogus/non-productive ones from the good ones. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 19:26, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

Species confusion.

The article now says "Porcupine caribou" and "Grant's caribou" are two different subspecies. If this is true, citations are needed to support the claim and the "Porcupine caribou" article needs to be updated.

Also, There are at least 3 species in the table R. a., R. c., and R. t.. Common names should not be used in a "Species" column. The only full species name I found in the article is tarandus. User-duck (talk) 19:09, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes, this table is very confusing. For one thing, it seems to me that it is giving WP:UNDUE prominence to a single, very recent, article that revises the taxonomy of reindeer - this may be worthy of mentioning, but I haven't seen any evidence that it's widely accepted yet and deserves such detailed coverage. Plus, as you say, it contradicts what's currently stated elsewhere in the article - if that's no longer true, we should say so. Perhaps it needs updating, but this is currently the page for R. tarandus not for the genus as a whole, and if there's wide acceptance among zoologists that R. caribou and R. arcticus (which I think is what are being referred to here, although the current text is unclear on this point) are separate species then they need separate pages, not a section within this page. As would the genus, of course, since it currently doesn't have one - or this could be the genus page, and R. tarandus added as a new page. The table needs cleaning up, and, in my opinion, it either needs more confirmation that its scheme has been accepted and used in other sources besides the original, or rephrasing to something like the way the proposed "new" species are handled at giraffe. Anaxial (talk) 19:42, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Oh, and the current lede is far too long, and littered with citations, many of which don't appear elsewhere in the article - not what a lede is supposed to do. I think this page needs cleanup. Anaxial (talk) 20:17, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

I am by no means a reindeer expert. I am an experienced editor currently working on CS1 errors/warnings. I make others edits when I believe it will improve the article. I really don't like the new "Species" column. I combined two columns to improve the display of the table. Caribou and reindeer appear to be synonymous for members of the Rangifer genus. I would suggest that the table be expanded for all species/subspecies. Also the article should be renamed to Rangifer to avoid the confusion inherent to using common names. Caribou and Reindeer would both redirect. There are already articles for some of the subspecies and details specific to a subspecies should be moved to them. User-duck (talk) 04:46, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

PS: I missed the other species in the confusing lede. User-duck (talk) 04:46, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

What subspecies does Porcupine caribou herd belong?

Based on Harding (2022), it is not clear (to me) the subspecies that the Porcupine caribou belong to. It is clear that they are not R. a. grantii. Statements about Porcupine caribou need to be checked and updated as needed. User-duck (talk) 16:20, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

This appears to be fixed in an edit that occurred while I was researching. Thanks. User-duck (talk) 16:28, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

R. c. terraenovae or R. t. terraenovae?

Both R. c. terraenovae or R. t. terraenovae are used in the article. Which is it? Please update all references. User-duck (talk) 17:19, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner. I hadn't finished editing the page on 20 Nov. R. t. terraenovae is the name first given to Newfoundland caribou by Allen (1896), spelled terranovae by Jacobi (1931) and used up until Hall and Kelson (1959), synonymised by Banfield (1961) and resurrected by Geist (1991) and others subsequently. But genetic data and other showed that it is part of the woodland caribou clade, so a recent revision changed it to R. caribou terranovae. Fortidens (talk) 18:18, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

Migration

Here's a job. Migration (and maybe distribution and habitat) seems to be dealt with in more than one section. Unless there's a good reason to do it, that should be fixed. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 01:55, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

I suspect that a number of the issues in this article are artifacts of an incident detailed in the archives here and also at Talk:Caribou. The article was split at one point, under the mistaken assumption that because wild reindeer in North America are usually referred to as caribou that meant we should have two articles. It took way too long to get it merged back, by then the caribou article was rather long, and the merge maybe was sub optimal. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:06, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Good point. Maybe the old caribou article should be mined for good content that didn't get merged. It would be a shame to lose it. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:05, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Comments on page: Rangifer

I'm new to Wikipedia editing, and made multiple errors since I started on 17 Nov., but am learning fast. Some of the problems mentioned above result from my having been unable to complete editing the whole article in a day, and left with conflicts or confusion within the page. Then I kept getting conflict errors when I tried to continue, or to fix problem pointed out to me, or ones that I found just proofreading. Now I'm trying to put proposed edits for the next sections in the Rangifer/talk page, or in my "sandbox", instead of in the article, as recommended, but I'm afraid I'm having trouble figuring out how to do this. I'm taking the comments to heart and will address them ASAP. Sorry for the grief & confusion. Thanks to all for helping me through this. Lee Harding (Username "Fortidens", but I've applied to change to my real name, to make it easier for folks to castigate me). Fortidens (talk) 18:08, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

You're doing fine. These are just normal beginner difficulties. We've all been there. Feel free to go to my talk page and ask for help. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:03, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

@Fortidens: For the first item in the Note section, it's just two asterisks. What does this refer to? - UtherSRG (talk) 16:38, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

UtherSRG: Thanks. I don't know. But I've finished my main goal of updating the taxonomy and now I'm going to go through the page, Reindeer, and eliminate duplicate references, and fix other references that seem to me not very specific, or in the proper format, and review the Notes.

Next I'll proofread the other pages I've edited (Porcupine caribou, etc) and then look at Reindeer Distribution.

And I'll upload some images, once I figure out how to tag them with a Creative Commons license. Some of these would be in the public domain and are not mine: I need to figure out how to do that, too.

I'd like to make a page for Greenland Caribou/Reindeer, once I figure out how to make a new page.

Okay? --LEH 27 Nov '22 Fortidens (talk) 17:49, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

Before creating new pages, would be good to update all of the existing pages so that they are in alignment with the updated taxonomy. After that, I can help you with making new pages. - UtherSRG (talk) 18:26, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

How many species

Is there one or six species? 24.150.121.149 (talk) 20:14, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

There is some disagreement, but six is about right. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 20:26, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

So if there are six species, then shouldn't this article be split into 6 different articles?24.150.121.149 (talk) 20:28, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

If you look here, you'll see that some of those articles have been created. Feel free to create more. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 20:34, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Temperature Error in 'Evolution'

'Around this time, northern Greenland was 11–19 °C warmer than the Holocene...' This is, of course, preposterously inaccurate. RobotBoy66 (talk) 10:57, 3 June 2023 (UTC) RobotBoy66 (talk) 10:58, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

No description in description???

Just popping in to point out this oddity: The section called "description" is almost entirely dedicated to distribution and habitat. Only the first and last paragraphs - which are also the smallest paragraphs - offer any descriptive information at all, and the descriptive info that it does offer is very cursory. I would expect to see detailed information about size, weight, coloration, differences between sexes, antler size and appearance, descriptions of juveniles, etc. Not 3 nomenclature-heavy paragraphs about where all the subspecies live.

Could it be that an editor perhaps misread "description" as "distribution"? 108.28.66.195 (talk) 22:22, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

The quote in introduction is problematic - have altered, may need more attention

"Wild reindeer "may well be the species of single greatest importance in the entire anthropological literature on hunting.""

This seems a rather extraordinary statement given the comparative ranges of reindeer and humans: most human hunters live in places without reindeer. Certainly it would seem to need a lot more justification.

I have altered it to much closer to what the reference of the statement says where it comes up on mouse-over, i.e. "Wild reindeer have long been an important resource for people inhabiting the same range."

However, I haven't got access to the article referenced - someone who has might well be able to do better :-)

FloweringOctopus (talk) 09:09, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

I add, upon reading through - the paragraph now suffers from bad repetition and definitely needs altering further. FloweringOctopus (talk) 09:10, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Fortunately, the relevant section is available on JStor, although the full paper is not. Here's the quote:

In North America and Eurasia the species had long been an important resource - in many areas the most important resource - for peoples inhabiting the northern boreal forests and tundra regions. ... The caribou/wild reindeer is thus an animal that has been a major resource for humans throughout a tremendous geographic area and across a time span of tens of thousands of years. It may well be the species of single greatest importance in the entire anthropological literature on hunting.

There is no further justification for this statement on the opening page and, judging from the topic of the paper, probably not elsewhere within it; it's just the preamble. Anaxial (talk) 13:09, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. I could only get the abstract up.

It has to be admitted that it is technically a correct and relevant quote from a scientific paper.

However, it still seems to me to be an extraordinary claim to make without any sort of justification or reference, and I agree that the subject of the paper does suggest that it is a random preamble statement rather than one that the paper justifies at length.

Moreover, while the statement that the reindeer is an important resource matters to the subject of the article, the statement that it is the single most important species in anthropological literature on hunting is hardly a necessary one.

Unless someone with access to the full paper or, preferably, to a paper actually on the relative importance of different species in the entire anthropological literature objects, or unless someone has some other argument for restating it, I'd suggest that the quote remains removed, and I have tidied up the repetition in the relevant paragraph on this basis.

FloweringOctopus (talk) 17:35, 11 January 2024 (UTC)