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.
This term was originally used as a joke in a The Far Side comic for the spikes on the tails of Stegosaurs. As an anatomical feature exclusive to stegosaurian dinosaurs, it has no separate notability from the main Stegosauria article. The term is notable enough that it should be redirected to the appropriate section of the article.Hemiauchenia (talk) 12:45, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I should note that in many stegosaurians there is a smooth gradiation between plates and spikes, so the "thagomiser" concept does not represent a clear anatomical term that applies to all stegosaurs. As can be seen in this skeleton of Kentrosaurus. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:13, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support redirect - while it is not notable enough to be a standalone article, it should redirect to stegosaur, where it is already discussed. FunkMonk (talk) 12:55, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep – It has detail on the etymology and applications on mathematics, which are outside the scope of the Stegosauria article. Keeping them separate might be better. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 15:01, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Concur with keep on that. DS (talk) 16:10, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It is not an application to mathematics. It is just that a student wrote an article involving a graph that looked like this shape and hence decided to import the term, and then that student wrote another article with some co-authors reusing the term. Not a good reason to keep the article. Ebony Jackson (talk) 18:13, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Which is not fully correct; the term has been used by a number of papers also by different authors, [1]. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 18:30, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Most of those are preprints, which are not useful for determining notability. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:50, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This one, for example, [2] is a Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society article, is written by different authors, and has the term "thagomizer" in its title. This makes the use of the term in mathematics notable by all standards we have. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 18:59, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You make it sound as if there are many such math papers! In fact, I think there are none beyond the ones co-authored by the student who coined the term and her advisor and the authors of the paper you mentioned. The other papers on Google Scholar that you linked to are about stegosaurs or the Far Side cartoon, not mathematics. There may be other good reasons to have a Thagomizer page, but it is not correct to argue for it based on its significance in mathematics. Ebony Jackson (talk) 04:32, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Here is another one if you want: [3]. But in any case, even a single paper already makes it relevant enough for inclusion in Wikipedia. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 08:55, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That's not actually another one: it's written by the advisor! Also, where did you get the idea that a single paper on a topic guarantees its appropriateness for Wikipedia? Ebony Jackson (talk) 21:54, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Here is what WP:N says about whether a single paper is sufficient for notability: "Sources should be secondary sources, as those provide the most objective evidence of notability. There is no fixed number of sources required since sources vary in quality and depth of coverage, but multiple sources are generally expected." Ebony Jackson (talk) 22:05, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, then there still are more examples, like this one [4]. And see Wikipedia:Notability, but we are not even talking about a standalone article for this math topic. And in your quote, note the word "should". They should be based on secondary sources where these are available. We have many science articles (look at dinosaurs) which are based on primary sources exclusively, some almost completely basing on a single paper, e.g. Perijá tapaculo. But we are getting out of topic here. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 22:11, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That is not another one either; it is co-authored by Xie like the first one you mentioned, so I stand by my claim. Ebony Jackson (talk) 23:49, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep – I agree that the other dinosaur-related articles brought up recently are unnecessary, but I like this one and its relevance within popular culture and mathematics is IMO enough to justify it as a separate article. There are also bound to be more in-depth studies on thagomizers and stegosaur tails that could be used to expand this article into something longer that also justifies it being separate from the stegosaur article. On a sidenote, I have seen some people refer to the tail spike-arrangements of certain glyptodonts (Doedicurus) as "thagomizers" as well, but that is something that appears to have not made it into the literature yet. Ichthyovenator (talk) 16:50, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Merge/redirect. With respect to the mathematics vote: two published math papers have used the term "thagomizer matroid". There's no secondary commentary on etymology in either paper. It's a cute in-joke, but this is not a good indicator of notability. --JBL (talk) 16:51, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep – It has enough notability as it is, likely more so now that it entered a certain pop culture franchise. Besides, even if it isn't accurate it at least remains an object of historicla interest. --Bathornis — Preceding undated comment added 17:28, 25 January 2021 (UTC) — Bathornis (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
Support redirect - As mentioned in my comment above, there is no actual application to mathematics. Ebony Jackson (talk) 18:18, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Not being a paleontologist, I'm not the best suited to say whether this article has possibilities for expansion. I think that an endnote at Stegosauria could handle the etymology of thagomizer satisfactorily. The use in mathematics is cute but not really noteworthy. XOR'easter (talk) 20:12, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Merge selectively to Stegosauria. It is a mildly noteworthy bit of trivia, but the sort of thing that makes Wikipedia articles enjoyable to read. BD2412T 21:13, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Valid term for both a unique anatomical feature and a mathematic model. Basically, it meets notability. --SilverTiger12 (talk) 22:24, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep AfD is for deletion discussions, not a place to forum-shop merge discussions that didn't go your way. The topic is clearly notable by this title and if it's good enough for the Smithsonian Museum, it's good enough for us. And note that we have articles about other features of the stegosaur – see scute and osteoderm. There have been lots of species and they often have common anatomical features and it's best to describe those separately. Andrew🐉(talk) 00:07, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Scutes and osteoderms are broader anatomical concepts that apply to many animals, while "thagomiser" is a semi-joke term that applies solely to stegosaurs. If you actually read the palaeontological literature you find that the term "thagomiser" is rarely used by palaeontologists anyway. Hemiauchenia (talk) 02:42, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. A notable and well-known piece of anatomy for a group of multiple species that, except for having a name derived from a joke, is not different in principle from other topics on pieces of anatomy common only to small numbers of species, like say our articles on monotreme prostates, tiger tails, or parts of horse legs. In fact, the success of the joke from which the name was derived attests to the fact that this is a well-known and therefore notable topic: if it weren't, nobody would have gotten the joke. As for the name, first of all it's irrelevant as it's the underlying topic and not its name for which we need to determine notability, secondly, it seems to be the WP:COMMONNAME now in the absence of any alternative, and thirdly WP:IDONTLIKEIT is not a valid deletion rationale. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:50, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Update: I see that, perhaps in response to my comment, User:Reywas92 has boldly merged tiger tail into tiger (see diff). I have no personal opinion on the appropriate organization of our content on tigers into topics and subtopics, and the article as merged did not include any sources specifically on tiger tails that might have established independent notability, but according to Wikipedia:Article size the tiger article is already near the top of the acceptable range for article sizes. I hope this merge was made after due consideration of article size and the notability of that subtopic, and not merely to make a point. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:09, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm actually leaning keep here but haven't made a decision since if merged it would be disproportionate coverage of the non-morphological info within the main article that doesn't need etymology. Tiger tail was a really dumb article that had zero sources about tails in particular, it was just picking out facts from general sources that related to the tail. You could just as easily make an article about tiger heads or tiger skin or whatever from the same sort of sources and have a bunch of subarticles which are not independent topics. Tiger has 52,172 characters of prose and is nowhere near so long materal should not be added. The page already has several subarticles better than split by body part. Reywas92Talk 18:59, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep as per David Eppstein's comments. -Kj cheetham (talk) 08:59, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, clearly has cultural significance, and apart from the fact that it's origin was a joke (so what?), the deletion rational seems to be IDONTLIKEIT, which isn't a good enough reason; happy days, LindsayHello 19:24, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - clearly notable term, if only b/c of its origin story. Good article, of the sort users hope to find on wikipedia. --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:40, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. The history and culture behind the term makes it relevant by its own, as this is far beyond the scope of the dinosaur-article. Andol (talk) 00:38, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, as there really doesn't seem to be any particular justification for deletion. The article is well-sourced and plenty notable. -Grahamdubya (talk) 05:13, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep -as noted by Andrew up above, it doesn't seem there is any honest intent to delete the article, but rather use AfD as an avenue to revisit a merge that even the nominator admits got no traction 4 years ago. Jens also notes multiple published articles above, including one using the term in the title, so I don't think WP:Not is an issue on the math side either. Darquis (talk) 05:46, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The "multiple published articles" in math are, as mentioned above, are all co-authored by the one student who started using it in math, the student's advisor, and Xie. This would not merit inclusion even as a section in a Wikipedia math article (I am coming from the math side of things, not the dinosaur side). I see that there are other reasons to keep Thagomizer as a separate article or not, but to argue based on notability in math is misguided. Ebony Jackson (talk) 02:27, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per the reasons stated above. Rhino131 (talk) 13:22, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep because it is the subject of multiple sources independent of StegosauriaNovabrahm (talk) 17:02, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep for reasons already stated above Steevithak (talk) 03:47, 2 February 2021 (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.
