Talk:Dinosaur/Archive 2

message: OK, I just attempted a basic restructuring of this article following the guidelines above. I'm not sure I agree 100% with these guidelines but at least it's a start toward creating a more logically organized article. Edit away! The Singing Badger 19:00, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: WikiProject Science guidelines

message: We have that, though there is evidence of warm-blooded dinosaurs, that need not mean this is valid for all dinosaurs. How can that be? To me this would be like:
If some of the dinosaurs are warm-blooded and others are not, then the divergence must have occured within the dinosaurs. That would mean either all warm-blooded creatures descended from the warm-blooded dinosaurs, or all cold-blooded from the cold-blooded dinosaurs (or both). If neither humans nor lizards are dinosaurs, then the divergence did not occur in the dinosaurs. Birds are dinosaurs and warm-blooded, so if the divergence did not occur in the dinosaurs, then all dinosaurs are warm blooded.
What am I missing? Aliter 20:22, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The evidence lies in things like the distribution of blood-vessel channels within various dinosaur bones and estimated growth rates of dinosaurs. If as you say the divergence occurred within the dinosaurs then maybe the old blanket term Dinosauria is not as useful as Saurischia and Ornithischia. Tuna keep a steady heat above ambient water temperatures. In fact all muscle activity creates heat. Warm-bloodedness in mammals seems to have developed, quite separately, in mammal ancestors, the Synapsids. Color vision has also developed many times quite independently, for another example. Wetman 21:09, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

text: Um, maybe I'm misreading, but it seems like you're saying that an evolutionary shift can only happen once...this doesn't seem reasonable; even something as complex as true flight evolved independently in bats and birds, and there's no reason why the same kind of warm-bloodedness couldn't evolve for creatures in the proto-mammal lineage and in one or more branches of the related dinosauria...right? -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 00:46, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: There are homologous features (femur bones in crocodilians, dinosaurs and us) and analogous features (birdwings, batwings, insect wings). All mammals being warmblooded, this trait must have arisen before the monotremes split away from us eutheres, a long way back. Analogous warm-bloodedness arose separately in some dinosaurs and (if you count them) in tuna. But I don't know enough of the current thought on "hot" dinos to write that bit. Wetman 01:38, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

text: Well, I don't think we really know enough about the warm-bloodedness of dinosaurs to say what it was or wasn't like, do we? And I guess I'm just not sure where to draw the line between "same" and "similar" in this conversation... -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 00:43, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Warm and cold blooded dinosaurs 

message: What place does "Some say (like cloning), it is playing God." have in this page?  This isn't the place for philisophical discussions.  Any objections to removing this edit? -- Crag 19:05, 2004 Jul 12 (UTC)
:I agree and have removed the statement. The previous sentence adequately said the same thing in a significantly more NPOV manner. - UtherSRG 19:29, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I second the move.  "Scientists however, are still unsure about whether or not it would be wise to bring these extinct animals back to life." in the entry is misleading, like all sentences beginning "Scientists think..." or "Scientists say..." It's the fictional para-science of Jurassic Park that's naive from the geneticists' PoV, not the secondary ecological problem, which is in fact the specific theme of the fiction. There's a more useful point buried in this mis-statement, I think. Wanna tackle it, folks? (Wetman 19:40, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  'Playing God' 

message: It seems extraordinary that "Ceratopia" could have been misformed from Ceratops, instead of Ceratopsia, which is the form I hear. Googling the hits votes for "Ceratopsia," but that means nothing. Many barbarisms are enshrined in orthodox Scientific Latin. Is "Ceratopia" barbarously correct? Wetman 21:48, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Ceratopia or Ceratopsia?

message: I've reorganized this article (see discussion above) and created some new headers with very stubby intros beneath to show where this article needs expansion. Please fill in the blanks! The Singing Badger 20:23, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Expansion 

message: * "These are set apart by having diapsid skulls with teeth that grow from sockets ..." - Which?
* "All the evidence varies ..." - With what?
* "a more accurate description is likely distant in the future" - Is this "You'll probably never see a better one." or "It's coming along slowly."?
* "Even though dinosaurs were highly successful life forms ..." - This is not in contrast with them being considered "extinct".
* "... the association of multiple skeletal features ..." - The what?
* "... working visual peptide of a (theoretical) dinosaur has been inferred, using analytical phylogenetic reconstruction methods ..." - Wow?
(Also a nice image of Museum architecture, BTW.))
Aliter 01:51, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wording problems 

message: I noticed Dinosaurs, plural redirects here. Shouldn't that redirect to Dinosaurs (television series)? [jon] 14:34, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Possibly, but of the 70 or so pages that link to the redirect, the majority seem to refer to this page. Are you volunteering to redirect them all here? :) 68.81.231.127 14:43, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Have pity on the reader of Wikipedia. What is a reader who enters "Dinosaurs" actually looking for? is the question. If one accomodates to the reader's needs, one won't make a mistake. --Wetman 15:17, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, shush. Let jon look at the actual list of links and draw his own conclusion :) 68.81.231.127 16:02, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Hey, I was just going by standard Wikipedia policies, where the singular is the normally wikilinked, unless it is inherently plural, which the TV show Dinosaurs is. I realize most of the pages are (improperly) linked to Dinosaur, but I was going on what was correct and whether anyone had any objections. I just may redirect them...I've done it before ;) [jon] 18:01, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: If you're feeling that bored, there about a dozen at Dinosauria that could be pointed here, too. :p 68.81.231.127 19:17, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't remember Dinosauria being a title of a popular ABC sitcom with talking dinosaur puppets. :-P [jon] 19:33, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

text: If you were sitting inside a black box named "Wikipedia" and a slip of paper came down the chute that said on it "Dinosaurs?" would you route the question to "a popular ABC sitcom with talking dinosaur puppets"? --Wetman 20:12, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: *sigh* I guess I'm just strange that way...--[jon] 22:02, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I may be even stranger, but I would expect Dinosaurs to be a disambiguation page. I would expect this anyway, to address the problem mentioned above, but I'm also not sure the title was used only once. Aliter 13:27, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  But it's not the expectation of those making the links... of the 70 or so pages that link through Dinosaurs, I only found one that looks like it should be pointed somewhere else. If that redirect is changed to a dab, then all of a sudden there are about 70 misdirected links instead of 1, and that's not even counting future linkages. (I thought jon was kidding.) 68.81.231.127 18:37, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

text: I was sort of kidding. I am still strange. [jon] 14:32, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

text: A more common expectation would be expect Dinosaur (disambiguation) to be a disambiguation page. Perhaps I have to set it up myself... Nope. There it is already...--Wetman 15:31, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: ''Dinosaurs'' redirect

message: On July 1st, I added "Young Earth Creationists see this as evidence that the dinosaurs lived less than 10,000 years ago; and that the dating methods commonly accepted in science are deeply and fatally flawed."
Note that this does NOT say that this IS evidence! It just stated the fact of a minority opinion. So it was a true statement! SUBSEQUENT to this, I was advised that this information was unanimously decided to "not be allowable" - on the Talk page. Until then, I had NEVER looked at the Talk page, as this was my first visit to Dinosaur. On checking the Talk page, I find that this was not unanimous after all. My edit was in "good faith", but was removed without an edit comment.  Then an 'edit war' started. I put up a re-edited version, which should have been more acceptable - but no - this was reverted without discussion also.
I am just a little confused here, as to when minority views are allowed, as I see them frequently in other articles. If there is a Wikipedia page that explains the policy, please advise, thanks. RossNixon 3 July 2005 11:31 (UTC)
*Your "more acceptable" version referred to YECers as "scientists". Until Earth discusses the views of the modern Flat Earth believers, and Time discusses Gene Ray's Time Cube hypothesis, a random topic like Dinosaur shouldn't discuss a topic as "catch-all" as Young Earth Creationism. --brian0918™ 3 July 2005 13:20 (UTC)
I don't think there's an official policy, but a good rule of thumb is not to include a minority view unless it has something specific to say about the topic in question.  Young-earth creationists do think dinosaurs are 10 000 years old, and doubtless some have argued the soft tissues prove it.  However, that's because they think everything is that young.  It doesn't tell you anything about dinosaurs in particular, so doesn't really belong here. Josh
YE Creationists misuse the public notoriety and subsequent news coverage of dinosaurs as a means to disseminate their views on evolution, while at the same time ignoring 90% of the evidence for evolution. As for the soft-tissue, the only first-hand source is Science magazine (sadly it's too technical). As much as I deplore the existence of the creation wiki, let the YECs wallow in their ignorance there, not here. Phlebas 00:01, July 10, 2005 (UTC)
YEC beliefs are irrelevent until they have some facts to back it up with. Since they do not have acceptable alternative theories(remeber, god is not a valid scientific theory), all they are doing is saying "um... your wrong!!!! cuz um, yeah!!" and don't really add much. IreverentReverend 12:33, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  When to allow minority views 

message: Not anymore.  Repanomamus giganticus was a dog-sized mammal of the early Cretaceous that preyed on small dinosaurs.
-National Geographic, August 2005, p94
--Rob117 22:53, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The exception that proves the rule, no? --Wetman 02:43, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Every terrestrial animal more than 1m in length was a dinosaur." 

message: I followed Truthteller's pronouncements on the discussion page here and found myself disturbed both by them and the responses to them. Effectively countering ID-types in the public arena is difficult. Dismissive approaches and scientific critiques aren't enough in the long run. 
Truthteller's isn't engaged in a scientific debate. Scientists, scientific jargon, research, facts, even the scientific method, only interest these people as stage setting and props for a passion play/presentation/sales message/frame designed for specific, long-term sociopolitical purposes. As a writer and life-long student of communication technique, I've been very frustrated watching this third resurrection of creationism in my lifetime because the scientific community seems like deer caught in headlights. 
So I spent some time doing a detailed analysis of Truthteller's rhetorical argumentation and I've posted the results on my user page. There I deconstruct a couple of Truthteller's paragraphs to get beyond his ostensible subject matter and so take on intent and technique and hint at some approaches to countering them. My critique was written in July, before the recent flurry of media interest in the id-generated faux debate, which has only made my commentary more relevant. 
There are three very large [for legibility] maps on the page, which at low-bandwidth will take several minutes to download. You can use that time to read the text, which is long [30KB]. Not verbose, I hope. -Skookumplanet 20:49, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Truthteller" Analysis 

message: I would like to implement extra information into the taxobox (for all extinct animals), rather than each time have to enter standard information into the text of the article each time.
For example, in the page I created on Alectrosaurus, on an experimental basis, I included an extra section which I called "Age and Locality".  Maybe this isn't the ideal wording but that's what I'm working with for now.  What is the best way to proceed with this, and is it possible to create a new system or code to include a box not unlike the one in Late Cretaceous? --Bolesey 17:15, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Would this obviate the need for any discussion? No nuanced report concerning how secure the information is would "fit": it will just be there.  How many localities will "fit"? just one? My own issues with taxoboxes are generic, not limited to this one, nor directed towards Bolesey. In my opinion, taxoboxes should be limited to containing tabulatable facts, ones that require no thoughtful context: "Moon: material: green cheese" —that sort of thing.. --Wetman 02:05, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

text: A range map isn't a bad idea, but would be time-consuming for any less well known generas.      I would just go ahead and do it the way I see fit, but at the moment I think a lot of pages are a bit of a hodge-podge of different people listing information in a variety of different ways, with no standardisation.  I don't want to create a mess that someone else will have to clear up.  It might also seem appropriate to put various other things into a taxobox, but presumably you stop at some point.  There are also complications, like genera with multiple species, from different locations and different time periods.  So its hard to see which is the best way to approach it.  I shall see what they think over at the "Tree of Life" project. Bolesey 09:52, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Why would that way be better?  Is there a precident for arranging things this way?  I always assosiate the age with the locality; the reason being that you can then consider what animals it was a contemporary of.  Also, in cases where a fossil is known from 2 locations, one location may be of a differant age. Bolesey 22:07, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Detailed classification 

message: Rather than inserting a single pithy sentence about Creationist views on dinosaurs, with a link to one specific Creationist organization (which is hardly representative of the many Creationist interpretations of dinosaurs), why doesn't one of our intrepid Creationists create a page on Creationist interpretations of dinosaurs? If written with honest and earnest NPOV as a goal, I don't see why it wouldn't be a valuable addition to Wikipedia. --Fastfission 00:53, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: *Why don't you just stop adding unessesary POV pushing to the article, guess the 'scientific' method gets very nervous when challanged, a little insecure eh?--WwJd 05:10, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: *The scientific method can no more get nervous than can a stained glass window or your toenails. — ceejayoz ★ 23:14, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Creationism and dinosaurs