Talk:Malagasy civet

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. 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 proposal was no consensus. JPG-GR (talk) 06:13, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Malagasy Civet → Fanaloka — Malagasy Civet, though used, is inaccurate. This animal is not a civet or one of their allies. A "canonical" published source has been cited, but I don't think that it should be followed. Fanaloka returns more results at GoogleBooks (166:94), GoogleScholar (45:30), just plain Google (6110:1710), and JSTOR (7:6). I could search other places, but I don't see why it's necessary. The encyclopaedia of mammals cited in the article uses "fanaloka". —Srnec (talk) 00:15, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.

• Oppose - Mammal Species of the World, 3rd ed (2005) is the canonical listing of mammal taxonomy and common names. It is the only definitive source for mammal common names. - UtherSRG (talk) 00:41, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

So? Evidently it does not determine individual uses, does it? "Canonical" is just a bunch of hand-waving: this isn't an inerrant, unchanging Bible of mammalogy and it is "definitive" only because it's really good. It is not a standard that we must follow, like the dictionary or the laws of logic. (Out of curiosity, does it capitalise all common names of species?) Srnec (talk) 00:55, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

It is the standard that we follow here on Wikipedia. It takes a mountain of effort to use something other than what is listed in MSW3. - UtherSRG (talk) 01:52, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Who says? Besides you. Srnec (talk) 02:48, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

MSW3 says it (the common names are a follow on to the previous listing of mammal species common names) and WP:MAM. - UtherSRG (talk) 03:26, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

The MSW3 says it is the standard that we follow here on Wikipedia? I don't understand your parenthesis and your link is red. Srnec (talk) 03:52, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

MSW3 says it's the definitive source for mammal common names, and the Mammal WikiProject follows it. - UtherSRG (talk) 04:28, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Self-ascriped "definitivenes"? Even so, doesn't apply here: especially where evidence suggest a more common name. And WikiProjects don't determine "policy". Srnec (talk) 04:31, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. 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.

On the move request above

It is my opinion that an article which was created at the title "Fanaloka" should require a consensus to be moved, not to be moved back after an undiscussed move was made. Perhaps this should be looked into. This method only encourages people like Uther not take arguments seriously, since they no that they don't have to do anything to quash the move. Srnec (talk) 03:26, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Malagasy civet/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: J Milburn (talk · contribs) 13:21, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Happy to offer a review. J Milburn (talk) 13:21, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

The first (quick) comment I have is that this doesn't really compare to Gerp's mouse lemur or ? Nycticebus linglom- those are articles about very poorly known and recently discovered taxa. This species has been known about for a long time, and, indeed, has been fairly extensively studied. "Fossa fossana" has 143 results on Google Scholar, at least some of which must contain useful information which could be added to this article, while "Nycticebus linglom" has two hits (three if you count the Wikipedia mirror) and "Microcebus gerpi" has three hits. The first result about this species, doi:10.1515/mamm-2003-0417, will almost certainly be useful, and the rest should be looked through if possible- there's a lot about distribution, activity and phylogenetic relationships, for instance.

More specific comments follow:

• The lead is disproportionately long; it's not far off the length of the rest of the article combined. The lead should contain a brief summary of the contents of the remainder of the article without introducing information not present elsewhere. See WP:LEAD and WP:LEADLENGTH.
• The article contains nothing about the original discovery/description
• No mention of the fact that it's hunted by humans (which I think is the case?) or any other uses (skin, traditional medicine, pet trade...)
• How can it be differentiated from the Indian civet?
• The claims in the article about distribution don't seem to match up with the distribution image.
• There's no year of description category

This is a fairly solid B-class article, but it doesn't really go into the detail I'd expect for a GA on a species like this. You might be able to recruit some help to work on the article at WikiProject Mammals or WikiProject Madagascar. Maky (talk · contribs) is something of an expert on lemurs, and conominated fossa for FA status with Sasata (talk · contribs), Ucucha (talk · contribs) and UtherSRG (talk · contribs). Lemurbaby (talk · contribs) writes a lot about Madagascar, but I believe she is more interested in history/society than biology. One or more of these users may be able to offer advice on and/or a helping hand with expanding/improving the article. J Milburn (talk) 14:01, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

I concur with this review, and encourage the nominator to improve it. The Google scholar link provides several articles that are avilable in free PDFs that can be used to address some of the reviewer's comments. If the nominator would like some help getting started on figuring out how to go about this work, I'm available to assist. Oh, and I've taken care of the easiest of the fixes. Cheers! - UtherSRG (talk) 14:51, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

@UtherSRG: Some help would be great! I mostly rely on Google Books, I can look at Google Scholar too, though. :) PS, that distibution page is kind of hard to describe. --AmaryllisGardener ^talk 23:41, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Google Scholar can be handy in finding some material to flesh out the article, but you'll have to skim through a ton of highly technical language to find what you need. Take a look at the "143 results" link above. Most of the result links you'd have to pay for, but Google also gives access to free PDFs to the right. Get a bunch of them that seem like they might focus on the subject you are looking for. You might find that there is some implied information you may need to dig even deeper for. For instance, the Malagasy civet seems to often be used as a root when doing phylogenetic studies of Herpestidae. Why is that? Find a bunch of articles that have some good information. Print them out. Highlight the information that you can use. Possibly use different colored markers, using one color for one type of information (physical characteristics, for instance) and another color for another type of informaiton. Get a bunch of it together and let's see from there where I can help. - UtherSRG (talk) 13:54, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request (WP:RX) - Volunteers will get you a copy of any paid resources you require for improving Wikipedia content.- NQ (talk) 01:05, 11 January 2015 (UTC)