Wikipedia:WikiProject Cephalopods

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[edit] Title

WikiProject Cephalopods

[edit] Scope and Top page

This WikiProject aims to help organise our collection of entries about cephalopods.

[edit] Parentage

This WikiProject is an offshoot of WikiProject Tree of Life

WikiProject Science.
WikiProject Biology
WikiProject Tree of Life
WikiProject Marine Biology
WikiProject Cephalopods

[edit] Descendant Wikiprojects

No descendant WikiProjects have been defined.

[edit] Related Wikiprojects

It is worth keeping one eye on several Wikiprojects that overlap with this one, including Wikipedia:WikiProject Cetaceans, Wikipedia:WikiProject Ecoregions, WikiProject Conservation worldwide and Wikipedia:WikiProject Marine life

[edit] Participants

[edit] Structure

See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Birds#Structure

[edit] Criteria for inclusion

See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Birds#Criteria_for_inclusion

[edit] Names and titles

See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Birds#Names_and_titles

[edit] Article contents

The following items are desirable for articles of all levels, although the detail will vary depending on several factors. These items do not need to be separated into distinct sections; text should flow in continuous prose so far as possible. The order this information is included is also relatively unimportant, although the order listed is generally preferred.

  • Description (physical, behavioral) - what makes this (group of) critter(s) different from its close relatives? Include here evidence about cognitive capacities.
  • Habitat - where does it live? how broadly does it roam? maps are good
  • Cultural, Religious, Economic, etc. Importance - what impact has it had on humans? Include here use for experimental purposes that do not relate to other headings.
  • Classification - how does it fit into the tree of life?

[edit] Task list and progress

  1. Create article for each Family Whew!
  2. Ensure all Family articles are taxonomically consistent
    1. Ensure all articles between the Order and Family rank are taxonomically consistent
    2. Ensure all articles between Family and Genus rank are taxonomically consistent
  3. Create articles for all Species and for needed Genera
    1. Create links for all species articles on appropriate articles
    2. Create lists of uncreated articles to add to category pages:
      1. general cephalopod articles
      2. bobtail squid articles
      3. cuttlefish articles
      4. squid articles
      5. octopus articles

[edit] Taxonomy and references

Cephalopod taxonomy is by no means fully known or agreed upon. The following references are currently being used for this Project. See the discussion for other possibilities.

[edit] Use a taxobox

In general, cephalopod entries should have taxobox. This is something we have inherited from the Tree of Life WikiProject. There are many examples there to look at.

There are several example cephalopod taxoboxes, suitable for cut and paste insertion into entries:

[edit] Talk pages

Place {{CephalopodTalk}} at the top of an article's talk page. This will help to direct editors to this page for guidance.

[edit] Recent articles

Please include a link to recently created articles on this sub-page.

[edit] Cephalopod stubs

Please mark stub articles with the template below.

{{Cephalopod-stub}}

[edit] Names and titles: the bird rules are not applicaple

Please please please can we make sensible choices for titling articles. Some of the "official" common names are almost meaningless, and simply create confusion. For example, I discovered the article on Spirula spirula is called Ram's horn squid. I've written a book on cephalopods and at least two scientific papers on Spirula, and not once in ten years have I ever encountered anyone, professional or amateur, who uses this name. A quick Google test proves my point: Spirula = 123,000 hits, "Ram's Horn Squid" = 333. Of those 333, only 205 are not mirrors or copies of the Wikipedia article! The title for this article should be Spirula, as that's what scientists, shell collectors, amateur palaeontologists, etc. call it.

The problem with using the bird names is this: Birds are observed by vast numbers of amateurs, and between them common names have been agreed. By contrast, most cephalopods are only observed by those looking for them professionally. These people will be using their Latin names. In a very few cases there may be common names that have some currency, e.g., pearly nautilus or blue-ringed octopus. But otherwise fishermen, aquarists, biologists, palaeontologists, etc., will all be using their Latin names. The ICZN rules do not cover common names, hence the idea the Cephbase names are "official" is daft; all the common names used in Cephbase mean is that the authors of the database elected to use one particular name in their database field. Nothing more, nothing less.

Some particularly egregious examples used in Wikipedia include Böttger's Argonaut (only 5 hits on Google, 4 Wikipedia derivatives) and Veined squid (961 hits, versus 25,500 for its Latin name, L. forbesii). Fundamentally, by enforcing a stupid rule that is irrelevant to this group of animals, you actually make it *more* difficult for people to learn more about these animals that easier. The names given don't get used in the scientific literature or in popular science books, and they aren't used much on the Internet either.

Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 10:30, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

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