Category talk:Fish
The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for moves, mergers and splits (permalink).
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Vertebrates as a group contains both things we call "Fish" (Category:Fish) and various land creatures, but in everyday usage we think of these as very different things. People distinguish meat and fish for example, as if the flesh of fish is not meat. Moreover, we have Category:Fish under Category:Vertebrates, which is inaccurate. Fish are chordates; specifically the chordates that are not tetrapods. Not all fish are vertebrates. Therefore I propose:
- Splitting off tetrapods into a new Category:Tetrapods
- Moving Category:Fish directly under Category:Animals
- Deleting Category:Chordates and Category:Vertebrates
Alternatively, only Category:Vertebrates is deleted, and Category:Fish and Category:Tetrapods categorised under Category:Chordates. However, this solution is not as good, because there are no chordate species that are not either fish or tetrapods, so this category would never contain entries and never contain more than two subcategories. —CodeCat 00:34, 26 May 2017 (UTC)
- Please read w:Chordate and w:Vertebrate. Cephalochordates and tunicates aren't fish, which is why I created the Chordates category in the first place. As for non-vertebrate fish, hagfish are the only animals one could call fish that aren't vertebrates- sharks are vertebrates (their vertebrae are made out of cartilage, but they're still vertebrae). As for calling fish vertebrates being inaccurate, the tetrapods arose within the lobe-finned fish, so, if you want to be completely accurate, you will either have to move lungfish and coelacanths out of Category:Fish, or move Tetrapods into it. Category:Fish is based on obsolete science, but it's too entrenched in our world-view to mess with. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:19, 26 May 2017 (UTC)
- So what do you suggest we do? —CodeCat 12:51, 26 May 2017 (UTC)
- Please read w:Chordate and w:Vertebrate. Cephalochordates and tunicates aren't fish, which is why I created the Chordates category in the first place. As for non-vertebrate fish, hagfish are the only animals one could call fish that aren't vertebrates- sharks are vertebrates (their vertebrae are made out of cartilage, but they're still vertebrae). As for calling fish vertebrates being inaccurate, the tetrapods arose within the lobe-finned fish, so, if you want to be completely accurate, you will either have to move lungfish and coelacanths out of Category:Fish, or move Tetrapods into it. Category:Fish is based on obsolete science, but it's too entrenched in our world-view to mess with. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:19, 26 May 2017 (UTC)
- Keep as is. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 04:55, 26 May 2017 (UTC)
- I wouldn't mind moving the un-scientific category "Fish" out of "Vertebrates" and into "Animals", but I'm not sure it would really make things that much more sensible (don't many of the same people who distinguish "meat" and "fish" also consider "animals" and "fish" and maybe also "birds" to be different?). I'm not sure we need a category "Tetrapods"; in particular, putting footless snakes into "Category:Tetrapods" would probably not make sense to non-scientist readers. I'm sympathetic to the argument that for almost all languages, "Chordates" is an empty category and even for English it only includes a few entries which could perhaps be moved to the parent category; in general, one could argue that our categories contain overly many overly specific levels (see previous discussion about Category:Grasses and its subcategories). But "Vertebrates" seems like a sensible category. - -sche (discuss) 19:44, 27 May 2017 (UTC)
- No action taken. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 22:54, 28 December 2017 (UTC)