Talk:Animal
Very little of what's on that page [i.e., Animalia] is taxonomy - it's mostly an overview of the group, a discussion of what distinguishes them, and some notes about their origin. I know it's a little technical but that's mainly because I wrote it in excitement over finding out what unites sponges and metazoa; I'm not sure what the purpose of dividing pages like this would be.
"Animal" is quite obviously a natural topic for biology! You might want to say something on the page called "animal," in less technical terms, and otherwise point to the Animalia page. Similarly, Wikipedia is not going to go through life never having a plant page. There is no good reason to use the Latin words exclusively, is there? If only to avoid redundancy, well, of course you can avoid redundancy by monitoring what is put on the animal page and what is on the animalia page. Maybe, you'll simply want the animal page point to animalia. --LMS
I think the last is probably the best. Or maybe animalia should point to animal, I'm having a tought time figuring that out. See talk:Linnaean taxonomy...also note that a flat list of animals like this is going to die hard if more people ever take an interest in them.
I suggest that the biologists develop biology articles in whatever format they find most simpatico, and after that we can construct a page in ordinary English that points to the Latin pages. (You might want to state your intentions on Animal in order to make this unconfusing to the casual reader.) --LMS
I don't think animal is ever meant in the sense of mammal. Certainly when people give examples of animals, they choose them from that order, but that is no different than aleph not coming to mind when you give an example of a letter. Certainly whenever non-mammals are at all considered the word animal is assumed to include them - for instance, fish and animals is a construction which is just plain wrong.
This same sort of trouble seems to me to come up on Fish, too - the word is often used for things like jellyfish and shellfish, but if it ever came down to the question "are these fish?" the answer would be a definite no.
- Whilst I'd disagree with the exact wording of the entry, I'd also disagree with your statement. Most people would consider it, in the common sense of the word, to include fish, birds and reptiles, they'd probably not include insects quite so readily. Dave McKee
Why in the world is there separate articles for animal and animalia? Following wikipedia naming conventions there should be just one article named animal with the Latin term redirecting there. Any difference in useage would be an interesting thing to discuss in the article itself. --maveric149
Naming conventions aren't set in stone, mav. ;-) From the above discussion, animal is intended for general information, while animalia is reserved for more technical information. --Stephen Gilbert
Well there isn't much here anyway and both of the articles are about the same thing, so I am going to perform a merge of content. No need to have duplication of effort. This type of needless duplication has already been discussed elsewhere. --maveric149
I don't see any duplication of effort, and the articles aren't about the same thing. The animalia page is dense, full of technical information that the average person isn't looking for when they look up animal. Animalia is about scientific classification; animal is for general information. --Stephen Gilbert
- As I have stated in other places, I'm not a fan of splitting content along lines of common vs. scientific usage -- even though I am a biologist. A good encyclopedia article on animals would not be so technical as to not be accessible to non-scientists. Using the Latin name only encourages technically-inclined people to write for, what much of the public at large (esp. in the US) views as the "scientific priesthood" by using technical jargon (no wonder much of the general public feels this way -- also no wonder way the vast majority of them are scientifically illiterate). The difference in usage alone would make for an interesting paragraph (see Jellyfish discussion about the the Portuguese man-of-war). However, in most contexts the two terms are near perfect synonyms. If animalia is too technical, then it needs to be copyedited for that (maybe moving more technical discussions to sub-articles). --maveric149