I'm not sure how useful is the classification by country for plants and animals using categories.
1) There are many plants and animals which can be found in most countries in Eurasia and Africa, for example. That would mean a hundred or two of categories.
2) In an average country, there are somewhere between 3-10,000 species of plants. Some tropical countries (like Brazil) have more than 25,000 known species of plants and 5,000 species of animals. I can't see how such an immense category can be useful or maintainable.
An alternative would be the usage of lists, but those would also potentially be very large.
Any suggestions?
On 3 Jul 2006, at 11:13, Bogdan Giusca wrote:
I'm not sure how useful is the classification by country for plants and animals using categories.
- There are many plants and animals which can be found in most
countries in Eurasia and Africa, for example. That would mean a hundred or two of categories.
- In an average country, there are somewhere between 3-10,000 species
of plants. Some tropical countries (like Brazil) have more than 25,000 known species of plants and 5,000 species of animals. I can't see how such an immense category can be useful or maintainable.
An alternative would be the usage of lists, but those would also potentially be very large.
Its pointless trying to classify animals based on the political boundaries they happen to inhabit. It shows a deep misunderstanding of classification. Delete them.
Justinc
Monday, July 3, 2006, 2:07:18 PM, Justin wrote:
I'm not sure how useful is the classification by country for plants and animals using categories.
<snip> JC> Its pointless trying to classify animals based on the political JC> boundaries they happen to inhabit. It shows a deep misunderstanding JC> of classification. Delete them.
I nominated them for deletion. Here's the link to the discussion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion/Log/2006_July...
On 7/3/06, Justin Cormack justin@specialbusservice.com wrote:
Its pointless trying to classify animals based on the political boundaries they happen to inhabit. It shows a deep misunderstanding of classification. Delete them.
Justinc
Perhaps but there is no shortage of books on say the fauna of the British Isles.
Monday, July 3, 2006, 3:16:09 PM, you wrote:
g> On 7/3/06, Justin Cormack justin@specialbusservice.com wrote:
Its pointless trying to classify animals based on the political boundaries they happen to inhabit. It shows a deep misunderstanding of classification. Delete them.
g> Perhaps but there is no shortage of books on say the fauna of the British Isles.
Yes, But I'm not arguing to delete the lists, like this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_vascular_plants_of_Britain_and_Irel...
On 3 Jul 2006, at 13:16, geni wrote:
On 7/3/06, Justin Cormack justin@specialbusservice.com wrote:
Its pointless trying to classify animals based on the political boundaries they happen to inhabit. It shows a deep misunderstanding of classification. Delete them.
Justinc
Perhaps but there is no shortage of books on say the fauna of the British Isles.
Yes, but thats just a way of making a smaller book. Usually for portability reasons. And the British Isles, being islands, are a more sensible geographic unit for animals (although not birds; my birdbook is Western Europe).
There appear to be lists of "Birds of Belgium" but not books that I can find.
Justinc
On 7/3/06, Justin Cormack justin@specialbusservice.com wrote:
Its pointless trying to classify animals based on the political boundaries they happen to inhabit. It shows a deep misunderstanding of classification. Delete them.
It's not at all pointless. "Australian native mammals" is a perfectly natural, meaningful, valuable, navigable category.
Animals are not "Australian" or "English" or "French". But they can be "native to Australia", "native to England" etc.
Political boundaries may not matter to animals, but they matter to us, and there's no inherent reason not to use them to categorise animals. Whether it's actually practical due to the sheer number of entries is another question...
Steve
I find the idea of deleting these categories bizarre. While they are unweildy and need a little refinement, they are very useful categories. Our species pages have precious little information as is. The range of the species is useful information, and it so happens that this information is most readily available in terms of political boundaries. The assertion that you will have species in 100-200 categories just isn't true - to begin with, are there 200 sovereign states in the world, and if so, the species that are found in all of them are things like rats, cockroaches and houseflies. It might make sense to limit the use of these categories on such cosmopolitan human commensals. But other than that, these are useful categories.
With regards to Justin's concern about the size of the categories, that's easy enough to solve by breaking them into subcats as they get bigger - already you have "Avifauna of Foo" - breaking things down into Class or Family is quite feasable.
As for saying that it isn't "useful" to categorise species by country - thanks for calling my professional interests "useless"
Ian
On 7/3/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/3/06, Justin Cormack justin@specialbusservice.com wrote:
Its pointless trying to classify animals based on the political boundaries they happen to inhabit. It shows a deep misunderstanding of classification. Delete them.
It's not at all pointless. "Australian native mammals" is a perfectly natural, meaningful, valuable, navigable category.
Animals are not "Australian" or "English" or "French". But they can be "native to Australia", "native to England" etc.
Political boundaries may not matter to animals, but they matter to us, and there's no inherent reason not to use them to categorise animals. Whether it's actually practical due to the sheer number of entries is another question...
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