Talk:Tumbleweed (disambiguation)

Requested move

The following is a closed 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 move, keep the article at Tumbleweed, not Tumbleweed (diaspore). Parsecboy (talk) 18:51, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Tumbleweed (disambiguation) to Tumbleweed; a move over redirect. Of the current 34 incoming mainspace links to Tumbleweed, most are not related to Salsola. Also, the current redirect of Tumbleweed to Salsola needs to be changed because Salsola is not the only genus of plants that make tumbleweeds. Some other plants do it too (eg, Sisymbrium altissimum). --Una Smith (talk) 02:23, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose. Most of the things that are mentioned at Tumbleweed (disambiguation) are named after the plant. Sisymbrium altissimum, at least according to the article, is known as "tumble mustard" or "tumbleweed mustard", not plain "tumbleweed". Kingdon (talk) 03:03, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose. The weed is the primary topic. Most of the items on the dab page, including Sisymbrium altissimum do not belong there at all; that page needs a clean up. The only other possible use of "Tumbleweed" as a title is the former Australian band. I did fix two bad incoming links to "Tumbleweed" but don't notice many more. Station1 (talk) 04:58, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

How is Salsola the primary topic? --Una Smith (talk) 15:11, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose It's not an article about the reproductive dispersal strategy of tumbling, but an article about the genus Salsola which includes a number of plants which are, in the vernacular, called "tumbleweeds," and not tumble mustards. However, the genus article should be about the genus and a separate article should be about tumbleweeds, a possibly paraphyletic group within the genus. I'll see if I can find time to write it, then it could be an article page with a link to the dab on top. If you have sources listing tumbleweed as a common name for tumble mustard, then it could be included in an article on tumbling weeds. I don't know if the seeds of tumble mustard are like those of the Salsola species with the tumbling habitats, though, and this may also mean leaving it out of an article on the habitat. --KP Botany (talk) 22:33, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

• • Comment I changed the page "tumbleweed" from a redirect to Salsola to an article about tumbleweeds. It needs work, as most stub article do. --KP Botany (talk) 03:04, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose. Per Kingdon et al. Tumbleweed refers to the plant in common usage; the dab. page includes film, music and other derivative uses. Chrisieboy (talk) 02:09, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
• Support. As one consequence of this proposal, we have the new article Tumbleweed (diaspore) and Tumbleweed (disambiguation) now has a list of plants with "tumbleweed" in their common name. What more evidence does anyone need that "tumbleweed" is an ambiguous term and merits disambiguation? --Una Smith (talk) 04:53, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

• • Comment It's your proposal--if you don't want consequences don't make up stuff. Your frenzied edit activity to WP:Forum shop isn't evidence of anything other than your determination to Wiki lawyer and forum shop. You haven't provided dictionary definitions, encyclopedia definitions from elsewhere or anything. You've done nothing but make extra work for other editors all day long. You've just weirdly incorrectly linked the term, then made up a completely different name. I have to seriously doubt everything you've written after this little mind blower. You've also failed to make your WP:POINT by being so disruptive and weird about it. --KP Botany (talk) 05:00, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose The primary meaning of a word should be found AT the word, not after following a redirect. Una wants London to be a redirect, so I think her analysis is incorrect. ++Lar: t/c 06:58, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Lar, which word (or article) do you think is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC? Please give evidence for it. Thanks. --Una Smith (talk) 07:16, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Tumbleweed. The article should discuss tumbleweeds, how and why they form, how they are a method of spore/seed propagation, and what some of the common plant varieties are. In other words, the lay term, as commonly used, with context for further reading. ++Lar: t/c 08:22, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

So would that be Salsola, or Tumbleweed (diaspore), or a set index article listing plants with "tumbleweed" etc in their common name? And what about WP:PRIMARYTOPIC? --Una Smith (talk) 09:06, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

That would be Tumbleweed. Just like User:Lar says--read his post. There's no need to badger us because you disagree with us, Una. And, what about primary topic? That's where primary topic belongs, on its linked page. Click on it, his the discussion tab, and discuss it there.

Your moves are about your attempt at a policy change. Now you're going after editors who are trying to stop you from de facto making a policy change in stead of discussing it where it belongs. Discuss primary topic where it belongs. --KP Botany (talk) 09:18, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

• Strongly Oppose - The plant(s) is(are) the primary usage. See my additional comments at Talk:Tumbleweed (diaspore). --Orlady (talk) 00:04, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Comments

Most people call a tumbleweed a tumbleweed, no matter what species makes it. So perhaps there should be a Wikipedia article about the tumbleweed habit. Some other plants that have this habit include:

• Salsola
• Sisymbrium altissimum
• Anastatica and several unrelated species of similar form

--Una Smith (talk) 15:11, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

By analogy with articles in Category:Plant morphology, the article title might be Tumbleweed (botany). --Una Smith (talk) 17:48, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Tumbleweed (diaspore). --Una Smith (talk) 05:11, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Are you talking about the same Anastatica that [1] is? The latter says "Dispersal to a distance occurs only when runoff carries floating and sunken seeds downstream in the wadis and runnels" - nothing about dead plants being carried by the wind. I suspect I'm asking pretty basic questions here, but I'm really not aware of what plants have this habit (or variants thereof), whether "tumbleweed" is an accepted name for it, and therefore am somewhat limited in my ability to comment intelligently on what wikipedia articles should redirect to what. Kingdon (talk) 21:03, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Anastatica is a well-known tumbleweed. Tumbleweed is a common name and also a common noun for any plant that disperses by tumbling in the wind. --Una Smith (talk) 23:35, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but "tumbleweed" in English actually has a meaning: it means a wind-blown weed. Although Anastatica is called tumbleweed, it is not a well known tumbleweed, because it is not water-blown. If you write the article about tumbleweeds you can include a sentence about this water blown plant, but it's not a tumbleweed by the majority of definitions for this term. That's another tricky issue with common names, some become part of the language with specific meaning but are still applied randomly to other plants outside of that meaning. This also may be a translation from another language. --KP Botany (talk) 01:00, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, tumbleweed is both a common name (a proper noun) and a common noun. That is why I think Tumbleweed should be a disambiguation page. --Una Smith (talk) 05:11, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Tumbleweed is an ambiguous base name and that page currently has a number of incoming links that need disambiguation. Perhaps someone who is opposed to moving Tumbleweed (disambiguation) to the base name would like to disambiguate those links? See Special:WhatLinksHere/Tumbleweed. At the moment, there are just 43 mainspace links. Judging by their pages names, about 20 have nothing to do with either the diaspore itself or plants called "tumbleweed". --Una Smith (talk) 17:47, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Can you be more specific? I've reviewed many of these and they either have already been corrected, or are references to "generic" tumbleweeds... just the need that the Tumbleweed article addresses. ++Lar: t/c 04:51, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Call the question

I suggest enough time has passed here. I see everyone in opposition to this move, except for Una. Can we close this now? The current state of affairs is that there is an article at tumbleweed that is not specific to any particular variety, but discusses them conceptually. It has the dab link at the top so readers can find more info on specific varieties as they desire. That seems a good outcome (granted, it's not the state of affairs when this started, at that time the Salsola article was at the name, which may not have been optimal)... so are we now done? ++Lar: t/c 04:51, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

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.

Comment about redirects being created to unrelated genus

Una, you said you were discuss this, so stop creating the wikilinks to the Salsola article, which says nothing about these unrelated genera. Creating wikilinks that take people to seemingly unrelated pages without any explanation is not helpful. Wikilink to pages that give MORE information directly about what is linked. That means linking to an article about tumbleweeds which includes a discussion of the common name, as I said before, as you agreed before, as you said you were discussing, here, but now are moving ahead without discussion. --KP Botany (talk) 02:40, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

I changed the redirect from tumbleweed to Salsola to an article about tumbleweeds, as the common name is defined. I checked a dozen on-line dictionaries, the name is fairly standard for weeds that tumble about in the wind. The article can now be edited. --KP Botany (talk) 03:03, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

At this point, after trying to get User:Una Smith to stop directing articles that mention the word "tumbleweed" to the Salsola article, and failing to get her to stop and listen, I created the page "tumbleweed." This is a commonly used word with a well-defined meaning in many dictionaries. I explained why I had to do this, pretty much because this user refused to stop creating these worthless redirects with no meaning while discuss the proposed redirect to the disambig or whatever is being proposed above.

Now the tumbleweed article has been moved to the wholely ridiculous title, "Tumbleweed (diaspore)." This title is meaningless. --KP Botany (talk) 04:50, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

KP Botany, thanks for creating the article. You beat me to it by minutes, but I worked your contributions in with my version. --Una Smith (talk) 05:21, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Oh, this was just a petty little race? I don't care who starts an article. It's not your version or my contributions. It's a Wikipedia article. If you're angry at me for starting an article before you, you could have simply asked, before I posted the article, to be allowed to start it. I'm not here for brownie points, or whatever you get for starting articles. --KP Botany (talk) 05:35, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Tumbleweed is again about tumbleweeds

I moved tumbleweed to tumbleweed where it belongs. Even Una can't seem to define the term she made up, "tumbleweed (diaspore)" so I've requested it be quickly put out of its misery. And ours. --KP Botany (talk) 02:49, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

See Diaspore (botany); also Foxtail (diaspore). --Una Smith (talk) 17:50, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm not confused about what diaspore means. I'm simply confused why you wikilinked it to spore|diaspore with a definition on spores and a discussion about how you needed microscopes to see spores, then failed to mention diaspore in the article you named "Tumbleweed (diaspore)," and failed to include micrographs of the diaspores in this article, and failed to explain anything about the angiosperm spores, since that is what you linked to, being dispersed by this mechanism.... Which wasn't the case. I, too, sometimes wikilink without reading what I wikilink to. It's not helpful to the reader, though, especially when choosing to use an uncommon technical term that has multiple unrelated meanings. --KP Botany (talk) 19:42, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

KP Botany, rather than going on ad hominem rants, why not do something constructive such as expand the target article or, as I did, write a new article that provides the missing content? --Una Smith (talk) 20:07, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

I did do something so useful that you've spent extensive time on it. I created an article titled Tumbleweed.[2] And now you want to take it to DYK. I'd say that shows it to even meet your criteria for usefulness. You're welcome. --KP Botany (talk) 07:17, 6 January 2009 (UTC)