The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was redirect to List of mammal genera. Tone 08:12, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

List of mammal species[edit]

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(for some preceding discussion, see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Tree_of_Life#"List_of_mammal_species"_article)

This massive alphabetical list is a functional duplicate of lists already in existence: List of mammal genera, List of placental mammals, List of monotremes and marsupials, and a number of separate sub-lists, e.g. List of rodents - all of which share the characteristic of having a rational layout organized by taxonomic relationships. In contrast, an alphabetical order is essentially an arbitrary one for this content, as there is no practical reason for requiring the material sorted by alphabet. If a user knows enough about a species to search by genus or species name, they will simply use the search bar - no need for this vast pile as an intermediate step. If they require taxonomic, evolutionary or etymological information, the existing list articles are much better sources.

As a secondary issue, the list currently is in a horrible state (having been copied over from Wikiversity [1]) and contains hundreds of dab links and thousands of redlinks. That can be cleared up, but given the above concerns, I strongly question whether it is worth the effort. Lastly, referencing this thing will always remain a pipe dream. I suggest deletion or redirection to List of mammal genera (although I'd consider the name unlikely as a search term). --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 13:01, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Merge with List of mammal genera. People do search for species, as evidenced by the presence of various sources giving lists of mammals, such as these.^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4]^[5]Leo1pard (talk) 06:30, 27 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

What do you mean by "keep AND merge"? And did you see the bit about the search bar above? And what do these references have to do with anything...? --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 13:39, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The content is already at List of placental mammals and List of monotremes and marsupials. Lavateraguy (talk) 21:02, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

To give an idea of how notable this is. Leo1pard (talk) 06:30, 27 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Wozencraft, W. C. (2005). "Panthera leo". In Wilson, D. E.; Reeder, D. M. (eds.). Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3rd ed.). Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 546. ISBN 978-0-8018-8221-0. OCLC 62265494.
^ A World List of Mammalian Species
^ Mammals of North America: Second Edition
^ Marine Mammals of the World: A Comprehensive Guide to Their Identification
^ COMMON NAMES MAMMALS WORLD PB

Delete. Although this list superficially satisfies WP:LISTN, it has a major flaw: anyone who knows the scientific genus name can type that into the search box, and find the article containing not only the names of the species but also useful details about them.

I endorse OP's argument that better and more useful lists exist, and that an alphabetic list is arbitrary.

There is also the problem noted by OP: the links are to the specific epithet of the species, which is not a distinguishing feature. No zoologist would ever refer to a species by its specific epithet alone, except in casual conversation when the genus was already clear. As a result, the article contains literally thousands of bad links. I patrol the User:DPL bot report Disambiguation pages with links. Since 24 September 2018, I have been presented with and have fixed 42 links to DAB pages in the range a-atys alone. I have no intention of fixing any bad links other than those to DAB pages. (As of today, there are 6,236 bad links to DAB pages; see WP:TDD. New bad links are created at the rate of around 500-800/day, and trying to keep on top of them is a full-time job for several editors.)

IMO the best solution is WP:TNT. Narky Blert (talk) 13:58, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. I estimate about 5% errors in the links to DAB pages. So far (a-ce), I have found 1 misspelled genus, 3 misspelled epithets, 1 extinct species, and 1 unknown to science (no, not the Giant Rat of Sumatra, unfortunately). Narky Blert (talk) 18:31, 28 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per nom, and I agree with Narky Blert also. The list isn't where anyone would go to search for a named species, and if they don't know the name, then the list is of precisely no use. Further, the list is entirely redundant with the existing and better lists already named. The dreadful mess of bad links makes the situation if possible worse, but being completely functionless as well as redundant does seem a good reason for deletion. A third reason is getting Wikipedia a bad name, just as it is starting to work its way towards a decent reputation through careful selection, citation, and review. This sort of list is what the encyclopedia needs not to have. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:11, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete and redirect to List of mammal genera. This list is of little use to anyone, and a tremendous amount of work would have to go into fixing it—which, as pointed out above, would just be duplicated effort, as other mammal taxonomy lists exist and give a much better treatment to the topic. Enwebb (talk) 14:15, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. This type of excessive list directly violates WP:NOTDIR policy and gets into excessive cross-categorization. We already have lists like List of mammal genera that serve the same function without these issues as well as the taxobox navigation, etc. Nothing in the content is useful for a merge, and I don't see the term really being useful for a redirect since the list of mammal genera will pop up in the search bar anyways. Even with all that, the current state of the article is not reasonably fixable as others have mentioned. Kingofaces43 (talk) 14:32, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

"Genera" is a bit of a niche word. People might not know what it means or if it is the article they're looking for, which is why the redirect from species could be nice. Enwebb (talk) 15:05, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, it’s unnavigable, incomprehensible, and impractical. Also, Cloud forest, what source have you been using for species validity? IUCN and ITIS, for example, will say different species are and are not valid. User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk 14:40, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, as per OP and discussion at Tree of Life linked to therein. This list is cluttered, poorly organized and of unknown sourcing with little referencing. I see no value in it being kept. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 17:50, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete This is more useful and usable as a category. – FenixFeather ^{(talk)(Contribs)} 22:16, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, as per Kingofaces43 and others above. Current article offering is redundant and no plan has been demonstrated for what the article could ever be improved to. Loopy30 (talk) 10:04, 27 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Move move to "List of mammals" What if you are a creationist? The list is alphabetical no hierarchical, by the way you can use control F in your computer Cloud forest (talk) 21:50, 28 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Creationists don't believe in species, they believe in 'kinds' and 'baraminology', both of which fall under WP:FRINGE, and which can for that reason be ignored except in articles about pseudo-science. Narky Blert (talk) 00:16, 29 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sidenote I should probably mention here that List of mammal species/navigation now exists and, being both unnecessary and a poorer-quality rehash of List of mammal genera, should be speedily deleted. I’m giving my rationale right now so it doesn’t end up getting contested User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk 20:03, 28 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Seconded. Narky Blert (talk) 23:03, 28 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 13:31, 29 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Animal-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 13:31, 29 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete and redirect to List of mammal genera, per Enwebb above. bd2412 T 00:31, 30 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - as per the nominator and the other comments made above. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 08:23, 30 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.