Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of megafauna

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Trying to avoid closing by the numbers as several of the delete votes are slightly worthless per nom efforts but the issue here seems to be with whether there is a clear definiation to allow these lists to have a proper criteria and the latter votes came after the discussion and suggest that the consensus view is that the nominator's view on the vagueness of the definition has prevailed so delete the lot. Spartaz ^Humbug! 19:56, 30 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

List of megafauna[edit]

The term Megafauna is vague, open to interpretation and has at least one meaning that would require these lists to have literally millions of entries. Since no definitive list is possible - these are unencyclopaedic at best SteveBaker (talk) 22:28, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

All of the following lists should also be removed:

... on the grounds that they are unencylopedic. The term "megafauna" (as explained in Megafauna - which most of these articles link to by way of an explanation for the scope of the term) is vague, open to interpretation and has at least one meaning (any creature visible to the unaided eye) that would make the lists above require LITERALLY millions of entries (most of which would be species of beetle!) in order to stand any chance of being complete.

My problem is that if someone sees that animal X is included on one of these lists and animal Y is not - they are going to come away with the impression that the term "megafauna" has a cutoff somewhere between the size of X and that of Y - and that X is DEFINITELY a megafauna because it's on the list - and Y is not a megafauna because it's not on the list. That's just wrong - it is a flat out untruth to place either X or Y onto the list or to leave either of them out. Further more - given the vagueness of the term, it will be impossible to provide references for the vast majority of species that might properly be considered because nobody who writes on the subject is using a hard-and-fast rule for the naming.

Since no DEFINITIVE list is possible - we should not attempt to create half-assed lists just because we can.

I would cite the fate of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of supercars as 'case law'. That list was removed because the term is ill-defined - and the exact same problem exists here.

SteveBaker (talk) 22:30, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Is the title isn't descriptive enough it can be clarified. ChildofMidnight (talk) 23:13, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- So...What? "List of animals weighing more than 100lbs"? I'm pretty sure that such an arbitary list would get AfD'ed pretty quickly! SteveBaker (talk) 03:18, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - I weigh more than a 100lbs. Are you saying I'm fat? Sabine's Sunbird talk 03:20, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    - "Does this dress make me look fat?"..."No, no, no. Megafauna perhaps.":-) SteveBaker (talk) 10:34, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Lists such as this are inherently original research, as there is no precise definition possible. Chzz ► 01:30, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom. Absent a definition the article is valueless. With a definition, OR. They just don't have a chance. --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:42, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Australia-related deletion discussions. —Grahame (talk) 02:03, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm trendiong towards extinction...sorry deletion here. The lists include thinsg which are not very big - Nile Perch, Red Foxes, Dodos, and are very incomplete if such small creatures are covered by the term. Sabine's Sunbird talk 02:30, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Just an FYI, the Nile Perch can get up to something like 400 lbs. Googlemeister (talk) 13:22, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Ummm..... I came here expecting to cast my vote as a "keep" and that the lists would be definable and manageable, but when I see domestic cats on a list...I am not so sure...surely there must be some more precise definition allowing some discretion in the list?? Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:10, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete As noted the definition is vage and the included animals are very arbitrary. In the case of hte Prehistoric list, that is a list that would include the vast majority of all fossil animals ever described as that is what was preserved, and thus making the list completely useless.--Kevmin (talk) 04:37, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Standard term. . Some books with it in the title American Megafaunal Extinctions at the End of the Pleistocene By Gary Haynes, Springer 2009; "Megafauna & Man By Larry D. Agenbroad, Jim I. Mead, Lisa W. Nelson, Mammoth Site of Hot Springs, South Dakota, Northern Arizona University, 1990. See also [1], where they agree it can not be precisely defined, but go on to talk about it. Most things can not be precisely defined, but we talk about them anyway:The article on Rock Music starts "a loosely defined genre of popular music" cf. Biophysics, sovereign State,and thousands of more. Lists such as this are not the least OR if they rely upon published lists of which there are many.DGG (talk) 05:39, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Notice that we're not talking about deleting Megafauna, but lists of megafauna. APL (talk) 17:40, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep and tidy. Agree with DGG. "Megafauna" is a common (and scientific) term. Use of an external standard to define this term and then removing those that do not apply would be the appropriate course of action here. Not that it is really relevant but I was always under the impression that "megafauna" was roughly defined as "larger than the average human". Of course this is just my opinion/recollection and not supported by anything in the way of facts. :-) -- Mattinbgn\^talk 06:05, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Mattinbgn. Clearly some cleanup is required in order that an appropriate, neutral definition of megafauna is correctly applied, but the list is notable and worthy provided that is met. Do we have a list of charismatic megafauna? :) Orderinchaos 07:53, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Those who claim that there is a definition for "Megafauna" really need to read our article Megafauna which offers no less than EIGHT different and contradictory definitions and says: "The more commonly found meaning, discussed in this article, is of "giant", "very large" or "large" animals — although there is no standard definition of a minimum size.". It's a common term, indeed but so are many other vague words. Would you accept "List of big animals"? Well, "megafauna" is much more vague than "big". Under some definitions, an ant is "megafauna" - under other definitions, an elephant isn't. Who gets to decide what the threshold is? Who gets to decide which definition to apply? Megafauna means either:
  1. "Visible to the naked eye" - produces lists that would need millions of entries.
  2. "land animals roughly larger than a human which are not (solely) domesticated" - certainly not the standard that the present lists seem to be using because we have things like cats and dogs in them and an entire list of marine megafauna.
  3. "the giant and very large land animals considered archetypical of the last ice age" - eliminates most of the lists above and is still vague.
  4. "the largest wild land animals surviving today" - the 10 largest? the 100 largest? marine animals are excluded?
  5. "Giant, large or very large" - define one vague word in terms of three other vague words. How are we to judge what is "large"?
  6. "giant aquatic species" - same problem.
  7. "definitions of size however go down to as small as 40–45 kg (90 lbs)" - which contradicts "roughly larger than a human".
  8. "animals (usually extinct) of great size relative to a more common or surviving type of the animal," - vague, and again eliminates almost all of the lists above.
- I believe the "Keep" respondants owe us a coherent explanation of which of these definitions is to be applied and why that definition should be used instead of one of the other seven - and how we're supposed to keep the lists referenced and accurate as well as complete. This is an encyclopedia...we are supposed to report factual things that can be referenced. You CANNOT find consistent references for whether any particular given animal is considered "large" under the meaning of "megafauna". SteveBaker (talk) 10:30, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - The literature I can find pretty much all says 44-45kg or greater. None of the other definitions appear in scientific literature. And our "megafauna" article, it would seem, needs fixing like so many others. Orderinchaos 11:41, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

the "macroscopic" definite does appear , but only in very specific context, notable soil biology, but for the main generally understood meaning which is what should concern us, Orderinchaos is right. DGG (talk) 19:13, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That's correct - it is used in that way as well - I meant more as a precise definition given in the literature where it appears, I consulted a scientific search engine through my university access. Orderinchaos 05:40, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete I have to say that these sound like legitimate lists, but I would be like creating List of fat celebrities. How do you define what fat would mean? By weight, it might be William Conrad, but I bet that Shaq or Hulk Hogan had a reasonable chance of weighing more without being fat. Googlemeister (talk) 13:22, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete "Megafauna" is a common scientific phrase, but it has different meanings in different contexts. At its most liberal this list could become simply "A list of macroscopic animals" which is obviously not appropriate because it can never be complete. Even in the context where "Megafauna" is means "An unusually large animal" there is no hard definition. Wikipedia should not be in the business of arbitrarily defining scientific terms for the sole purpose of creating lists. APL (talk) 15:05, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete The list is effectively meaningless; it serves no useful purpose. KevinOKeeffe (talk) 17:02, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep
- As: "The list is ill-defined" and "The list has millions of possible entries" are mutually exclusive possibilities. They are presented as concurrent.
- And: 15,700 Google Scholar hits for "Megafauna". The term, and therefore the list, is not "vague, open to interpretation", "half-assed", nor "ill-defined."
- Therefore: The remaining problem, numbers of possible entries, is merely a matter for those who preserve the article by eliminating less notable additions. The list is not invalid because it is not exhaustive. This is an invalid proposition for deletion. Anarchangel (talk) 05:38, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Your first point does not make logical sense. It is entirely possible for a list to be both ill-defined and massive. Trivially so. "List of Mean People", "List of Good Books", etc.

Your second point also confuses me. It is true that there are many Google scholar hits for 'Megafauna', but how does that necessarily mean that term is well defined? I don't see how one follows the other. It's perfectly common for a book or paper to use a vague term and then say something to the effect "For the purpose of this paper, I have defined X as Y". In such a case the researcher is communicating precisely, but the term remains undefined outside the context of the paper. APL (talk) 16:14, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

- I wonder how many Google Scholar hits there are for "mean people" or "good books". I'd bet several. But you are correct, that wouldn't make a good list. Again, Archangel just counts ghits and says "see, it's relevent", without looking at the content of each article. Niteshift36 (talk) 17:50, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- I said that the list is EITHER ill-defined OR has millions of entries - not both at the same time. There is a well-defined definition for the word - which is "visible to the naked eye" - but that would result in millions of entries. The other definitions are ill-defined.
- Google scholar has 44,000 entries for "good book" and 10,000 for "mean people" - so if GS is a valid benchmark for us then "List of good books" ought to be OK. Ergo, GS is not a valid benchmark for us and may safely be ignored. People writing scholarly works use vague terms all the time - it being generally possible to infer the meaning from context. If we take the first GS hit for "Megafauna": "Effects of bottom fishing on the benthic megafauna of Georges Bank" - it is quite clear that (a) the definitions for "megafauna" that only relate to land animals or to prehistoric animals cannot apply - and that since there are no "benthic" (bottom-feeding, mud-dwellering) animals in Georges Bank - or anyplace else for that matter that are larger than a human or larger than 40kg - readers of this article would presumably assume that "megafauna" in this context means "visible to the naked eye"...and indeed, when you read the paper, the term is qualified as: "bryozoans, hydroids, worm tubes". The problem is that our "List of megafauna" will certainly never contain bryozoans, hydroids or worm tubes - unless it has literally millions of entries. So using scholarly works as an argument for keeping these lists is blown away on the very first paper I try to apply it to.
- You may not (without a major argument) delete entries for (say) bryozoans from "List of Megafauna" because I have a solid reference (see above) where a scholarly work in a peer-reviewed journal describes a bryozoan as "megafauna". If you can't delete an entry for a creature that's only 0.5mm long - you stand NO chance of keeping out "cat" and "pidgeon" and all sorts of other contentious entries. Hence you're back with millions of entries again. SteveBaker (talk) 20:57, 27 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep It would need to much explanation for a category. It can be based on RSs, so improve, don't delete. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 04:32, 26 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Really? There are categories already and they don't seem to have much in the way of explanation. Sabine's Sunbird talk 23:03, 26 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as per list of supercars. The term is so vaguely defined that authors need to clarify the scope of the term in every published paper. We could not create a definitive list of megafauna without either being hopelessly incomplete or committing original synthesis. Zunaid 08:17, 27 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nominator. Stellarkid (talk) 03:04, 28 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per previous comments. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 17:28, 28 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.