Talk:Munididae

Dispute

Clearly, WoRMS is a very poor choice of source for this article, as it makes some obvious errors. Furthermore, the editor mostly responsible for this article has added initial capitals to the names osawai and paucistria, and in doing so has created bogus generic names which have never been published in the literature. Stho002 (talk) 09:18, 11 May 2012 (UTC) The 4 red linked genera are all bogus in one way or another. Stho002 (talk) 09:47, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

And yet it is a reliable source, as usually defined. Everything else is your opinion, or primary research, neither of which are admissible here. Please stop your disruptive patterns of editing. The article is not perfect by a long way, but it does follow a reliable source, and the only reasons to doubt it are unpublished research on your part. I do not claim that the names are published; I merely report that WoRMS makes that claim. That is how Wikipedia works, unlike the unsupported suppositions on the Wikispecies page. ("Unaccepted" – by whom? Presumably, unaccepted by Stho002. Tut tut. If, as seems likely, they are species names being misreported, then they can hardly be "unaccepted genera".) --Stemonitis (talk) 09:24, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

"Unaccepted genera" means that I am not claiming them as verifiable. You *are* claiming them as verifiable. We both know that they are bogus rubbish names, but you want the reader to be misled, I don't! Stho002 (talk) 09:28, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

This is exactly the point. I am claiming that WoRMS cites them (whether or not that is true is actually irrelevant here). You are making fresh, unpublished claims. That is original research, which is absolutely forbidden (certainly on Wikipedia, and I expect on Wikispecies as well). Until you can learn to accept Wikipedia's policies, I suggest you take a step back from editing. Your edits are not helpful; you are repeatedly engaging in edit wars and generally making a nuisance of yourself. As someone who "specialises in group work in the online world" and "is passionate about assisting people to collaborate using a range of online technologies" and who "trains people around the world in online facilitation skills" (vide this), you are not coming across as someone particularly skilled in online collaboration. Perhaps it's time for you to return to the day job. --Stemonitis (talk) 09:35, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Actually pal, I'm not that Stephen Thorpe, just a nearby homonym! Stho002 (talk) 09:40, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

My apologies. --Stemonitis (talk) 09:43, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

BTW, I have just filed a 3rr report against you for this article (check the history). I have no idea if it will be taken seriously, or not ... Stho002 (talk) 09:41, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

BTW 2, you are implicitly endorsing WoRMS as a reliable source, when you know full well that they have stuffed up in this case. You are thereby knowingly propagating misinformation. You have also created and endorsed as being from a reliable source bogus generic names that have never been published. Tut, tut ... Stho002 (talk) 09:45, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

You still misunderstand. What I know or not is irrelevant. What you know or not is irrelevant. All content must be cited to a reliable source. WoRMS is generally considered a reliable source, and occasional errors do not negate that. If we had a further source contradicting it, or explaining the error, then we could cite that, and the error would be removed. No such alternative has been presented, either here or on the under-sourced Wikispecies page. You must learn that verifiability is everything here. It is one of the core content policies on which Wikipedia is founded. Without that, we have nothing. There are no reliable sources listed here claiming that those genera don't exist, and one claiming that they do. We have no choice but to report that. By all means publish your research on generic names in Munididae, but until it's published, we can't cite it. --Stemonitis (talk) 09:53, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

No, you still misunderstand. There is no compulsion for you to use WoRMS as a source for this article. You have a responsibility to the readers to make a good choice of source, but you have made a bad choice and you are sticking with it. I call this "misinformation terrorism", for lack of a better term ... Stho002 (talk) 22:13, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

What's more, basic English grammar says that we capitalise the first letter of the first word in a sentence or other string of words. Nyttend (talk) 11:45, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Basic English grammar is irrelevant to Latin names, and capitalisation in this case means something quite specific, which goes beyond the source ... Stho002 (talk) 22:11, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Remember that Latin predates the distinction between capital and miniscule letters; all capitalisation rules applied to writing it are after-the-fact and subject to interpretation, because no native speaker of Latin ever used these names in this precise context. Nyttend (talk) 01:38, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

The source, showing the names described as species under Munida, is listed right on WoRMS. If the two of you weren't so busy being boneheaded you could have fixed this in five minutes like I did. KarlM (talk) 21:28, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Well, yes and no... The Munida page on WoRMS shows two identical taxa listed under Munida, but doesn't explicitly say that they're the same as the ones listed as genera in Munididae. (Indeed, if that connection had been made, they probably wouldn't be listed additionally as genera.) I realise that's a pretty fine distinction, but it is important. We all think they're erroneous, but we don't have a source to cite for that; I doubt that Komai (2012) states that the two things listed on WoRMS "are erroneous entries", yet you claim Komai as a reference for that. We're in danger of slipping back into original research here. I'd like to see Komai's paper before I commit myself, but I think the current wording will have to be changed. (I might add that the personal attack you made is plainly unhelpful. Note also that the version you "fixed" is very different from the one at the centre of the dispute, so boasting about how easy it was may not be warranted.) --Stemonitis (talk) 06:18, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

My apologies, I was being foolish myself and assuming that WoRMS was at least right about that part. The paper in question does not seem to exist. The 2012 volume of Bulletin of the National Museum of Nature and Science series A would be 38, and moreover it's dubious whether it's even been legitimately published (decapoda.org has papers from a 2011 supplement, but my library subscribes to the print edition and only has through 2010). So my general conclusion still stands - WoRMS is not a reliable source and you shouldn't be uncritically repeating errors from it (or, alternately, deleting info from here and linking to another unreliable source whose only argument for it is the claim that it's slightly less unreliable). Calling it ridiculous to uncritically include what are clearly species names that were erroneously listed as genera is not an insult, it's an observation. KarlM (talk) 17:27, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

It's a big step from saying the volume number is incorrect to saying that the paper doesn't exist at all (& Stho002 professes that he has seen a copy, which would seem to argue for its existence). I'm also concerned that you're repeating the earlier error of original research, as I stated before. It is your opinion that the names are erroneous; you have not got that information from a reliable source. I know it seems ridiculous, but we simply can't impose our own opinions, particularly when we have so few sources to go on. We know the 2010 catalogue to be out of date, so we turn to WoRMS as the only up-to-date source available, and it's normally pretty reliable. The current text states "the volume number and year of the article cited do not match", and cites this page (presumably intending this page), but neither page states that "the volume number and year of the article cited do not match". This is original research on your part, and cannot stand. --Stemonitis (talk) 05:47, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Stem; this is a situation where proving the negative is going to be almost impossible. Who on earth is going to bother to publish a peer-reviewed paper saying that an online catalog has an uncorrected error? It's NEVER going to happen. There are other reliable sources for names of genera (e.g., [1]) and these bogus entries do not appear anywhere else. These names CANNOT be verified using any other reliable sources - and I think both Stephen and Karl are correct in pointing this out AND that this does not constitute original research. This - again - is crucial because no one will ever bother to publish anything to lay these names to rest. Either the WoRMS editors have to fix the mistake, or it will be perpetuated forever, and having Wikipedia perpetuate it defeats as many core principles as it protects. Dyanega (talk) 06:55, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

No, we don't need anyone to say explicitly that the dubious genera don't exist; we just need a comprehensive listing of the genera that are present. At the moment, the only one of those post-dating the original description is WoRMS. Once it fixes its error, everything will be fine, but we can't lead the way. We can choose as editors to disregard WoRMS, which would involve removing the whole last paragraph. No-one has argued for that yet, but I could see it working. I'll give it a go. --Stemonitis (talk) 07:18, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Correction: I have since seen that Stho002 had recently suggested exactly this course of action. I am still slightly uneasy about only citing a single source, especially where we would normally cite WoRMS, but I'm prepared to go with it if everyone else is also happy with it. --Stemonitis (talk) 07:52, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

I realise its been a weekend, but if just a little of the effort that has gone into this disputation could be directed at getting the WoRMS error corrected, we might get a better solution and stop arguing. ACCassidy (talk) 10:20, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

I understand that a message has been sent asking for the WoRMS page to be corrected, but these things take time. --Stemonitis (talk) 10:33, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Obviously, WoRMS is a primary source if the classification they provide is NOT substantiated by secondary or tertiary sources but of their own making. Hence, it should be used sparsely and always yielded to secondary sources. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 11:41, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

No, I don't think WoRMS is seriously or deliberately introducing any novelties. It has just made a mistake. It is a secondary source by all reasonable definitions of that term. Incidentally, we can probably stop discussing WoRMS here now. It is not used by the article at all, and has been fixed to exclude the dubious names anyway. I think we can close this discussion and all move on now. --Stemonitis (talk) 13:30, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Really, it becomes a reliable source because it was JUST an error. An error means it is unreliable and should not be used. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 17:07, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

That wasn't my argument. You were saying it became a primary source rather than a secondary source because of the (now historical) error, and I disputed that. --Stemonitis (talk) 17:34, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, you were the main proponent who claimed WoRMS is a reliable source to the point that you repeatedly reverted a person who, now banned, was actually correct and you wrong. Your argument that it was a reliable source is dismantled either way. Either it contains original taxonomic insight and is a primary source, or it contains errors and is hence unreliable. You make your pick. I suggest further that you post a mea culpa at the appropriate places and get the editor in question unblocked. It is very easy to smack the many policies around someone's ears and frustrate people so much they say something less nice, and then use that to smack them around even harder with the second set of policies. Editor baiting through stubbornly repeating that the "rules" are at your side is so childish, and yes, you can win those by getting editors blocked and out of the way. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 18:23, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

I reject that characterisation. I claimed that WoRMS is generally a reliable source (and in this group, it is), and at the time, it was the only source for the article (although that soon changed). What I reverted was one editor's repeated additions of superfluous cleanup tags to an article already tagged for that cleanup; nothing more. I was more than happy for the article to be so tagged, because it was always a fair point. I have made no special claims for that particular page on WoRMS, and nor would I. The blocked editor was blocked for incivility, not for anything to do with source reliability, reversions or indeed the contents of this article at all.

I realise that this very short article (only intended to link the genera to the higher taxa at the time) has received a lot of attention recently, including at locations outside Wikipedia, but this page should only be used to discuss potential improvements to the article. There has been a lot of recent attention of Wikipedia's coverage of squat lobsters, but little improvement to it as a result. So, please, unless you're coming here to discuss the article itself, rather than its history or related topics, this is the wrong forum. --Stemonitis (talk) 18:35, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Nonetheless, the entire discussion highlights a significant difference between nomenclatural sources and those for virtually any other topic, and worth bearing in mind for future potential disputes; that is, what the ICZN (the Code) - and therefore, by extension, the entire scientific community - recognizes as a "reliable source" for nomenclature is one that is published, following the Code's very specific and technical definition of "publication" (at present, printed on paper in multiple identical copies printed simultaneously, rather than POD; in the near future, digital publication will be allowed, but only with explicit archives and ISSN/ISBN numbers). At any rate, an online catalog is NOT recognized as a publication, as far as the Code is concerned, so scientists can and will ignore any nomenclatural novelties that appear in such a source (from typos to new names to mis-citations), and not bother to publish corrections. When discussing scientific names, there is a discrepancy, accordingly, between what WP treats as reliable, and what the scientific community treats as reliable. Yes, there are a great many WP articles that cite online resources for nomenclature, and it would be a hopeless mess if people were required to find a print citation for everything or have it deleted, but I would argue that verifiability offers a way out of the dilemma - as in this case. Dyanega (talk) 16:20, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Holy cow this has gotten silly. FTR, two observations: 1) The paper does exist; it was the journal name that was incorrect. However, when considering secondary sources like WoRMS that contain obvious errors regarding articles from extremely obscure journals like this one (put out by a small natural history museum serving Chiba prefecture in Japan), it seems self-evident that the prudent course is to leave the material out until it can be verified as being real, rather than repeating errors. 2) Calling evaluating the veracity of secondary sources "original research" is, frankly, idiotic. That has to be done all the time or else we'd be swamped with Alex Jones material. KarlM (talk) 19:19, 14 May 2012 (UTC)