Talk:Scapus

RFV discussion: October–November 2018

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Scapus

Is this still a valid, accepted genus? DTLHS (talk) 21:16, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

I can't find it in any of the taxonomic databases I've looked in so far, including the World Register of Marine Species and the Catalogue of Life, so I'm pretty sure it's not. As for coming up with a definition that means anything, the phylum Coelenterata has been abandoned and replaced by two unrelated phyla, Cnidaria and Ctenophora, so it's hard to know where to start.

The worst obstacle for even simple verification is that scapus is the term for a common structure in Cnidarian anatomy, so there are tons of false hits that are very hard to filter out. I wouldn't need that if I knew where to look for synonymy within the phyla, which would include obsolete names for current taxa- but I don't. It doesn't help that the criteria used in taxonomy of less-complex life forms have often been subject to radical changes, so that obsolete and current taxa can be like apples and oranges. This needs the eye of someone with training in the field, or at least access to specialist references- @Metaknowledge, perhaps? Chuck Entz (talk) 01:14, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

 Solved. I'm a big fan of hydrozoans, so I enjoyed perusing the literature on this. @Equinox, please don't create taxonomic entries based on Century without at least a Google search to confirm first; they're so outdated that entries based solely on them can be nearly worthless. @DCDuring, please take a stab at cleaning up the entry; if you want cites, you can probably find them using the species name, but I think we can just withdraw the RFV if you're satisfied. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:48, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

Could you please add whatever literature you were perusing as references. DTLHS (talk) 04:55, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

@DTLHS: I added a couple, but I had no idea how to templatise/format them properly. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:13, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

• I think we do a modest service recording any attestable taxon whether or not it is currently accepted. This is probably most useful at the level of genera and also for any high-ranking name that does not follow current naming rules. Century is a gold mine of older taxonomic names, many of which are attested. That said, current names, if attestable, are a higher priority IMO, especially for megafauna and megaflora, as well as for disease-causing organisms, model organisms etc. DCDuring (talk) 03:59, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

  Most of us know enough about history to be careful about basing an entry on what Century 1913 says about the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Kingdom of Hawaii. No one seems to realize how much worse it is to base a taxonomic entry on the same source. DNA analysis has redrawn the taxonomic boundaries far more in the last couple of decades than the political boundaries have changed over centuries, and we're talking 80 years beyond that.

  Simply repeating what Century says without mentioning that it's completely out of date is dangerously misleading, and referring to things that don't exist in terms of other things that don't exist that were distinguished using criteria that have been forgotten because they were completely wrong without establishing some kind of link to current information is utterly useless- we might as well be writing our definitions in Etruscan using the script from the Phaistos disc. Chuck Entz (talk) 08:41, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

Since my stub entries seem to be misleading: @DCDuring, would you be interested in me saving off the remaining taxonomic stuff from Chambers 1908 and giving you a list to sort through? If not I suppose I'll ditch 'em all. Equinox ◑ 21:15, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

I have been trying to connect the turn-of-the-20th entries to modern taxonomy, at least crudely. That includes labelling entries as obsolete or archaic. I am glad Metaknowledge got to this one before me, because I would not have known what to do with it. If someone would like to take a look at some of the taxonomic entries from Equinox where I have attempted to link it to the present, I'd appreciate the feedback. Taxonomic entries almost always use {{taxoninfl}} and I have added {{R:Century 1911}} to a large portion of Equinox's entries from Chambers. Searching for entries that have those two templates should find many of the entries of interest (~200) at present. DCDuring (talk) 21:42, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

I don't really want to sift through all your edits, but I'd be happy to take a look at especially troublesome ones like this one if you need help with them. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:20, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

I'd appreciate all the help I could get. Scanning the subset of my contributions that uses the two templates above would focus efforts on some (most?) of the contributions you pinged Equinox about. You could either satisfy yourself that the damage hasn't been too great or have data to support your objections more specifically. DCDuring (talk) 18:33, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

• RFV resolved. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:20, 4 November 2018 (UTC)