Talk:Herd

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the talk page for Herd.

[edit] Do not move to wiktionary

Do not move to wiktionary, a herd or flock has an extremely important role to play in animal behaviour and can be analysed as such, it is more than a word. Dunc|☺ 11:46, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Duncharris. Also, kudos to Pgreenfinch! S/he did a superb job of reorganizing the Herd page from an "almost a wiktionary sort of entry" to a solid foundation for a true wikipedia page on the term "herd." Good on you.

Glad I could help and thanks for your kind appreciation --Pgreenfinch 13:03, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] A 'flock' of geese?

In the caption to the first picture, it says 'a flock of geese'. However, isn't the plural noun for geese a 'gaggle'? I am changing it, but would appreciate feedback, rather than starting an edit war. Daniel (☎) 15:22, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

What I learned somewhere is that a flock of geese in the air can be called a "skein", and a flock on the ground or in the water can be called a "gaggle". Thus your change is correct. However, I agree with the people who say that most such collective nouns are fanciful and there's no real need to go beyond "herd", "flock", "pack", "school" or "shoal", "colony", "swarm", and maybe "covey" and "troop" and "pod" and "pride". So I wouldn't have changed "flock of geese", but I'm not going to change "gaggle of geese" either. —JerryFriedman 18:00, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Three (or more?) Wikipedia articles on herding?

I just added herd behavior and herding instinct to the See also section, as they are both clearly related Wikipedia articles. In my view, we need to shrink these three articles (those two plus this one on just plain herd) into no more than two articles. There is already a discussion going on at Talk:Herd behavior on the possibilty of a merge. I weighed in on that issue over there. However, since I only recently became aware of this WP article herd, it looks like we should be looking at all three when considering how to clean up the group of them. Input from others would be helpful. How ought we organize the entire group? N2e 04:15, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

After reading the three articles you mention, I see how thorny the question is. It seems to me that the difficulty comes mostly in trying to sort out human herding from herding among animals in general. So, what if herd behavior and herding instinct were joined as one article under "Human herding", since that's what those articles are mostly about anyway? This way you could leave the herd article as is, since it's mostly about animal herding.

Rgfolsom 14:56, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Seems a good idea to have a specific Human herding article which would reunite most of the texts in herd behavior and herding instinct. --Pgreenfinch 22:14, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

It seems there is now a consensus on how these three articles ought to shake out: one article on human herding, and one (this one) on just plain [[herd] over in the Talk:Herd behavior page. N2e 01:46, 8 November 2006 (UTC)