Talk:List of Major Vegetation Groups in Australia

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Australian versus global categories[edit]

This article seems to go out of its way to avoid linking to existing articles like mangrove swamp, estuary, heath (habitat), etc.

I can see how we can have articles specific to the Australian Floristic provinces. And I can see how we can have articles for things like Mangrove swamps. I'm a bit skeptical that we're going to get non-stub articles for all the intersections thereof. Of course, some plant communities are found nowhere outside Australia. But for those which are, I'm not sure separating the Australia-specific material is the way to go. Some of the existing articles, like the heath one, already have Australian material. Kingdon 14:02, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I had some doubts about this when I posted it, Kingdon. Should I link to heath even though Australia's heath is a unique vegetation complex of myrtaceous-proteaceous shrubs, nothing like the international concept of heath; or do I leave a red link for an article on the Australian understanding of the term. I suspect this comes down to the philosophical question of whether you want something useful now or strictly correct in the longer term. Hesperian 14:13, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, at a high enough level of abstraction, both heaths are landscapes dominated by woody shrubs (but so is chaparral and others - perhaps shrubland would be a better link than heath (habitat)). I don't have the knowledge to comment about that example in detail (or any of these examples in detail, really), but it seems to me this is more a question of "detailed" versus "general" than "correct" versus "incorrect". As for philosophy, I would say that if we pick something which is useful now, we can always change it later if a more specific article gets written. But we shouldn't take that so far as to link to an article which is about something which is different and specific (as opposed to a general article which covers both kinds of heaths, or mangroves, or seas, or whatever). That's one reason I didn't want to just be bold about it. Kingdon 15:09, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]