Talk:Carnivorous Plant Newsletter

Taxon lists

• The lists of taxa appear to contradict certain policies.
  1. First, notadirectory has already been mentioned above - specifically - See no.7 Wikipedia is not a complete exposition of all possible details. Rather, an article is a summary of accepted knowledge regarding its subject.
  2. Second, academic language should be eschewed. See: academic language # 7. Texts should be written for everyday readers, not for academics.
  3. Content Information cannot be included solely for being true or useful. Merely being true, or even verifiable, does not automatically make something suitable for inclusion in the encyclopedia. See WP:INDISCRIMINATE
  4. Wikipedia is not a mere collection of internal links. Something like this may be appropriate for a stand alone list article. See WP:NOTLINK.
  5. Wikipedia, or the article, is not a scientific journal, or academic journal and should not be treated like it is. See Wikipedia is not a scientific journal
  6. These are articles about the journals. A statement that the journal is the vehicle for new species descriptions, would be sufficient. ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 07:57, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I disagree. I would expect a full and complete article on a small, specialized journal like this to detail exactly which taxa have been described in its pages. I wouldn't expect, say, Taxon to list its taxa. But the CPN is very small and very specialized. NOTLINK doesn't apply here as it is a useful and instructive list akin to flora and fauna lists found in park or natural wildlife area articles. And no one is trying to use this article as a scientific journal. Without the context of which taxa, how many, and examples, I think it would be worse off without the list. I think it would be excessive and you might have a point had the list included the year the taxon was described, the author, page numbers, and other unnecessary information. But really? A simple list of taxa that seems to be encyclopedic? It should stay. Rkitko ^(talk) 15:31, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

• I agree with Steve Quinn. In addition to the reasons that he has given, this list is unreferenced and falls in the categories WP:OR and/or WP:SYNTH. WP:NOTADIRECTORY clearly tells us that we should not describe the complete contents of a journal, nor list them paritally. As Steve says, a statement that new taxa have been described in this journal would be sufficient. If there are sufficient sources to support an encyclopedic list (which would have to be more than a simple list of names to be encyclopedic), the list of taxa could be split of in a List of taxa described in Carnivorous Plant Newsletter. BTW, as an RfC has been started at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Academic Journals#Lists of taxa in journal articles, it might be better to centralize the discussion there. --Crusio (talk) 16:08, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I will address your points in more detail later, but right now I'd like to point out that many of them are simply false. The list of taxa is clearly not unreferenced, nor does it constitute OR or original synthesis. That's not even up for debate; just follow the link in the reference. Furthermore, the list includes no specialised academic language. Terms such as taxa and cultivar (which one can expect to find in any article on a botanical subject) are wikilinked. Finally, I cannot see how WP:NOTADIRECTORY supports your position. We are not describing the "complete contents of a journal" nor providing an arbitrary or incomplete list. Taxon description are an important aspect of this journal. These are the articles most commonly consulted by researchers and the ones most frequently cited in scientific papers (as opposed to cultivation guides or field reports, which typically appear in the CPN). mgiganteus1 (talk) 18:43, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Re: stub rating for WPJournals

The useful, encyclopedic content of this article, after removal of important details like what size paper was used is the following (leaving out the refs to avoid cluttering this talk page even more):

The Carnivorous Plant Newsletter is the quarterly official publication of the International Carnivorous Plant Society (ICPS). It was established in 1972. Articles of scientific interest are peer-reviewed. Articles cover matters of horticultural interest, field reports, literature reviews, synopses of new literature, and descriptions of new taxa or cultivars. The newsletter has been a registration authority for cultivars of carnivorous plants since 1979, and in 1998, was appointed by the International Society for Horticultural Science as the International Cultivar Registration Authority for new carnivorous plant cultivars.

This is what I call a stub. This is the rating that I assigned it for the WPJournals project and which has been changed to "Start" three times today by User:Sasata. I maintain this should be rated "Stub" for WPJournals. I have not changed the rating for the Carnivorous Plant project, as they may have different standards. --Crusio (talk) 23:42, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Please objectively compare the quality of this article to others rated "start" in the WPJournals project (many of which were rated by yourself). Then, if you feel the need, start a RFC to get the opinion of different editors so that we may better get consensus on whether this should be rated stub or start. Sasata (talk) 23:49, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I've had a look through a number of other stub- and start-class journal articles and have to agree with Sasata that this page falls into the latter category. Not that this is really an important issue, at all. mgiganteus1 (talk) 23:59, 27 November 2010 (UTC)