Talk:Ostrich egg

Merge with ostrich

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

To not merge, given that Ostrich egg is independently notable through its human uses including visual art.

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There is little to no reason why this short article should be separated from the even shorter ostrich parent article. FunkMonk (talk) 20:15, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Oppose merger with Ostrich since Ostrich egg was previously targeted to Ostrich as recently as a few weeks ago and consensus at RfD in the discussion was that it Ostrich was not the appropriate target. There, consensus was that Egg as food#History was the better target, but, crucially, this was without prejudice to converting Ostrich egg in an entirely separate article, which Srnec promptly did. As closer of the RfD, I was surprised Srnec did it so quickly, but the article is well cited, and it serves a two-fold purpose in describing the biological information of the ostrich egg and also in discussing its use as food and nourishment for humans. Doug Mehus T·C 20:25, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

We need some biology people here to discuss this. That discussion hardly included enough people (three?!) to create a consensus, the bird project should have been consulted. The notion that "it's more likely that a reader entering this search term is looking for information about cookery than about the bird's reproductive habits" is rather questionable. FunkMonk (talk) 20:30, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

FunkMonk, But this article isn't just about the biological aspects; it's about culinary aspects. Thus, Ostrich, which didn't mention Ostrich egg specifically, was deemed to be not the most appropriate target to which regular users would be seeking. I didn't participate in the discussion, so I'm going to ping the other participants in @BDD, Narky Blert, and Wugapodes: (Srnec has already been pinged above) so they can add to the thinking on why Ostrich was not a suitable target. As to low participation, that is not uncommon at RfD. Doug Mehus T·C 20:34, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

FunkMonk, You do make a good point that, perhaps, we need to notify the WikiProjects at RfD like we do at AfD. BDD, thoughts? Doug Mehus T·C 20:35, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose merge. The article discusses three different things. (1) Biology. (2) Use by humans as food. (3) Use by humans for decorative purposes. The second and third of those, especially the latter, would fit rather uneasily into an article about the bird. It is likely that many people who have seen a carved ostrich egg, for example in a museum, have never seen the live bird.

Ostrich egg came up at WP:RFD as a usual type of problem: where should it best point (if anywhere)? Several voices said that no current target was ideal, and that it was {{R with possibilities}}. One suggested that carved eggs were WP:PTOPIC. I suggested cookery as the best of a bad lot. I am pleased that this article has been written. It fills a gap. If ostrich is too short, that is a reason to expand it, not to pad it with unrelated topics. A description of carved ostrich eggs no more belongs in ostrich than would Easter eggs in chicken. It's a distinct cultural use.

It is not uncommon to have separate articles about animals as animals and animals as food. Cow and beef is one example. Dog and dog meat is another. Quail and quail eggs is a third.

WP:AFD deals with articles. Proposals there are generally straightforward to categorise by WikiProject, because there is text to work on. RFD proposals are not so easy. In the instant case, the redirect originally related to WP:WikiProject Birds; the proposal related to WP:WikiProject Visual Arts; and the consensus was that the best target (as of then) related to WP:WikiProject Food. IMO it would be impractical routinely to notify WikiProjects about RFD discussions; because, as in this case, the consensus might relate to a WikiProject which had not been involved from the outset. RFD needs disinterested editors trying to find the target which will help readers best, not advocates for one or other WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT (which is WP:RM stuff). There is also the factor that many WikiProjects are moribund if not dead. Narky Blert (talk) 21:26, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose merge as above, and I think Narky Blert does a great job of answering the question of WikiProject notification. Note that a bot leaves messages on talk pages of redirect destinations, so when I nominated the ostrich egg redirect, Talk:Ostrich was updated, which is tagged for the WikiProject. All that said, I have a mental list of active WikiProjects who I try to notify when their feedback would be helpful at RfD, and I can add Birds to that list. (WikiProject Football has a manually updated page of proposed deletions and moves, which I add to when applicable. I'd be happy to do the same for other projects with such pages.) --BDD (talk) 16:54, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose, obviously. This page could be greatly expanded on human uses. The biological bit is really only there for context and completeness. If all we had were biology, a merge would make sense. But ostrich egg(shell)s have many uses, historically, beyond what is typical of other eggs. Srnec (talk) 03:22, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Trade in ancient times

https://phys.org/news/2020-04-year-old-egg-reveals-complexity-ancient.html (secondary source, I guess) summarizies research published in 'antiquity' (primary source) about decorated ostrich eggs. Kdammers (talk) 15:11, 9 April 2020 (UTC)