Talk:King brown snake

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Featured articleKing brown snake is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.
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DateProcessResult
September 19, 2019Good article nomineeListed
November 5, 2019Featured article candidatePromoted
Current status: Featured article

Untitled[edit]

Hey. I'm doing some quick research on poisonous snakes. I noticed that the article on the Inner Taipan uses the animal's common name as the title while this one uses the scientific one. I'm not positive, but I was under the impression that wikipedia policy was to use the common name unless there was an animal with the same name. If there's another animal called the king brown snake, I should be redirected to a disambiguation page. Ofcourse, I could be totally wrong. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.28.121.180 (talk) 13:54, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The introductory section has question marks in it - I don't know if that portion of the section should be removed or rewritten, but I've thrown a cleanup tag on the article since it seems sub-par as it is. 118.208.79.170 (talk) 03:28, 15 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified (February 2018)[edit]

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Bookmark[edit]

The artist had broad impact, think I can do something when I access a library.
  • Eats budgies, and also climbs trees to eat baby-birds, it is said. ~ cygnis insignis 10:22, 31 August 2019 (UTC) And the treatment was to stand the victim in a tree for several days, looking for references to that too. ~ cygnis insignis 07:57, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • There is some discussion of mulgotoxin at this source. ~ cygnis insignis 07:57, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 29 August 2019[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Not moved. (non-admin closure)  samee  converse  18:13, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]


King brown snake → Pseudechis australis – Two widely used common names, at least, the binomen is required for medical emergencies ~ cygnis insignis 15:09, 29 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose. Both common names are more commonly used than the scientific name. Rreagan007 (talk) 18:27, 29 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Depends on what is meant by that simple assertion. In reliable sources they use one or both common names, they would always use Pseudechis australis. ~ cygnis insignis 04:38, 30 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose [see further commentary below]: The provided rationale does not seem to be relevant to Wikipedia policy or guidelines, a redirect already exists, and web searches are easy. Very few people are going to be screaming out "I think she was bitten by a Pseudechis australis!" during a medical emergency, and even if they do, they will find the correct article just as rapidly. —BarrelProof (talk) 18:53, 29 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose: many moons ago I moved this from its scientific name to "mulga snake" as many herpetologists have been promoting this, however, that too has issues due to its habitat. But, as we reflect not creat usage, looking online showed that there were 741 papers using "king brown snake" vs 484 using "mulga snake" on google scholar, IUCN and Australian Faunal Directory use "king brown" (first of two in AFD). But significantly almost papers looking at indigenous significance use "king brown". "King brown snake" is an iconic name. Also - I'd hate to have this at scientific name and all its congeners at their common names. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:58, 29 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, common names of animals are almost always better than the lay-uncommon scientific names. This is a big problem with 'cat' pages where cats aren't cats or felines but a name I don't remember how to spell. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:16, 30 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Move to Pseudechis australis - BarrelProof's argument can be applied either way: Redirects exist, so the name can be changed to and no readers would get lost. In any event, a quick search engine test shows 222 results for "Australian king brown snake", 351 for "Australian king brown", 484 for "mulga snake", 741 for "king brown snake", and 1460 for "Pseudechis australis". As the formal name has about twice the popularity of the current article name, that fits WP:COMMONNAME best as the term or name most typically used in reliable sources. --Nessie (talk) 14:50, 30 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
FWIW, the reason for the number of hits is that almost all journal articles have the scientific name in parentheses after the common name. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 15:02, 30 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Casliber: but even if they all use the format 'vernacular name (Pseudechis australis)' the math doesn't add up. 484+741=1225<1460. In actuality, 690 results do not mention any of the vernacular names, meaning only about 52% mention a vernacular name. --Nessie (talk) 15:20, 30 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
There may be another wrinkle in search results when the content between parentheses is ignored. How the outputs of algorithms interact is largely an unknown, but it is a known consequence of using that format here (where coding assumes it can be ignored, containing pronunciation keys and other extraneous data.). ~ cygnis insignis 07:48, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
My argument was that "The provided rationale does not seem to be relevant to Wikipedia policy or guidelines". It think that was a valid point at the time. The burden of proof should be on the person who wants to rename the article, and nothing had been provided in the rationale that was relevant to Wikipedia policy or guidelines. I notice that the new search results that were provided by NessieVL consider only scholarly academic literature, which would clearly be much more inclined toward using scientific names in preference to common names. An exact phrase search that is not restricted to academic literature finds about twice as many hits for "king brown snake" than "Pseudechis australis". —BarrelProof (talk) 15:35, 30 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@BarrelProof: I was trying to restrict the search to reliable sources, as WP:COMMONNAME says "the term or name most typically used in reliable sources is generally preferred." I imagine expanding to a regular search would net a majority of unreliable sources. If there is a better way to quickly screen for reliable sources, I'm open to reading about it. --Nessie (talk) 19:43, 30 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I understand and somewhat agree, but I think we also shouldn't put too heavy a weight on specialist academic literature alone. I just tried Google Advanced Search for the exact phrases while restricting the search to news sources. It found 499 results for "king brown snake" and only 44 results for "Pseudechis australis" (and 264 for "mulga snake"). Probably the ones that contain the scientific name are generally somewhat more reliable, but unless we think that more than 90% of the ones with the common name are unreliable (and all of the ones with the scientific name are reliable), it still indicates more use of the vernacular name. Looking at some of the news sources that seemed pretty reliable, I found that they generally put the vernacular name in the headline and might or might not also include the scientific name in one spot in parentheses somewhere in the article to add rigour and clarity (while using the vernacular name repeatedly throughout). (A previous discussion comes to mind; it found 170 results for "vipera palaestinae" and only 34 for "Palestine viper".) Google Ngram search was not so helpful, as it complained about not finding hardly any occurrences. —BarrelProof (talk) 20:08, 30 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, so adding scholar and news gets 748 results for "mulga snake", 1240 results for "king brown snake", and 1504 results for "Pseudechis australis". And I got the NGram to work. --Nessie (talk) 22:28, 30 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think I have a good counter-argument for that (except perhaps Cas Liber's consistency argument). I have struck through my opposition expressed above. (I still wouldn't put much faith in the NGram; look at what happens if you set the end date to 2000.) —BarrelProof (talk) 05:08, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Wikipedia policy is to use the common name for article titles where possible based on recognizability, naturalness, precision, conciseness, and consistency. I note that the second says Naturalness – The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such a title usually conveys what the subject is actually called in English. So the relative number of uses of the scientific name in reliable sources is a moot point; the use of scientific name is for when there is no common name the name applies to more than one species. The question is whether this common name is widely used and whether it is precise and unambiguous. I think the current title passes all five criteria.   Jts1882 | talk  09:34, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Define "common name" as it relates to taxa. ~ cygnis insignis 09:44, 31 August 2019 (UTC) For example, gwardar 09:49, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
something like Common_name#Common_names_and_the_binomial_system. I have been looking for something like this though surprised at the total absence of discussion anywhere else on the issue. So they are saying the name originated in the Top End are they? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:33, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The northwest as it happens, but literally stating that, yes, I had forgotten that explanation until I found it again. Makes sense, nu? They refer to the genus as Mulga snakes, fwiw. ~ cygnis insignis 05:54, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Sort of - the name "king brown" is ubiquitous, and it's a pretty big snake across its range (and bigger and fatter than Psuedonaja brown snakes everywhere...and they're everywhere too). No early work discusses common or vernacular names at all, so all I have found elsewhere is brief discussion late in the piece (1970s onwards). Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:14, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
King brown is a perfectly cromulent name, and is mentioned is every general text I have thought to look in. And as mentioned, it is called the common mulga snake in the SWA guide. I have a general reference on the history of Australian herpetology, and some discussion of naming, most of which was done overseas or eastern states before the 70s; of course, people often used the preexisting names for local species. ~ cygnis insignis 14:41, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Additionally, one of the authors of the txt I cited wrote a paper in 1997 with a title that posed this question, is King Brown an appropriate common name? I haven't read it, but presume the answer was no. I found the recognised synonymy of the genus by Mackay in 1955, which notes Mulga snake then King Brown bdl link ~ cygnis insignis 00:30, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Well, Mackay simply mentions the names - like all papers I have seen the authors are uninterested in the common names. What is the 1997 paper? Maybe I can find a fulltext... Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 03:08, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Casliber: the paper is cited by Kuch (2005, regarding mass) and others, Maryan B (1997) Is “King Brown Snake” an appropriate common name for Pseudechis australis? Herpetofauna 27:20–22 ~ cygnis insignis 14:32, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Certainly there are two different meanings of the term "common name" that come into play when editing English Wikipedia articles about species. We should not confuse the two meanings. In the Wikipedia policy sense of WP:COMMONNAME, the "common name" is the name that is most commonly used in English-language (independent) reliable sources. In the biology context described in the Common name article, the "common name" the vernacular name. Wikipedia policy does not say that we should use vernacular names as much as possible. In some cases, the most common name in reliable sources is the name from binomial nomenclature – e.g., because there may be no vernacular name that is sufficiently clear and widely used. In such cases, the WP:COMMONNAME (in the Wikipedia policy sense) is the binomial scientific name, not the vernacular one. —BarrelProof (talk) 19:50, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support. WP:NCFAUNA stipulates that "When ... no consensus can be reached on the most common name ... use the scientific name". Micromesistius (talk) 15:08, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Where a common name exists, we should use it. Just because there is another name which may be almost as common in sources as this one, it is not a reason to throw everything out and use a name which is not commonly used. For recognizability purposes it's best to keep the status quo, with a redirect from the other common name and the scientific name.  — Amakuru (talk) 16:40, 7 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
So a personal preference for a common name, how does an editor choose between them? The effect at wikipedia will be that one is elevated and the other suppressed, like the systematic name. Mulga ~ is the status quo, it was very recently moved to king brown ~ cygnis insignis 04:07, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Habitats in addition to mulga?[edit]

The article says that "the species lives in a wide range of habitats in addition to mulga". What the heck does "mulga" mean in that sentence? Is it referring to Mulga Lands, or to shrublands where the mulga tree grows, or to the bush in general, or something else? Unfortunately, the cited source is an offline source. —BarrelProof (talk) 23:53, 29 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Mulga is the name of a stunted wattle widestpread across inland australia. It is also the name of a habitat, in which this plant is the dominant vegetation. I have linked to Mulga Lands, but actually that is a specific bioregion in Queensland. (ditto Western Australian Mulga shrublands in WA!) I made Mulga (habitat) which covers the habitat across Australia. Cas Liber (talk · contribs)
A useful article on a confusing term. @BarrelProof:, the concept is too familiar for me to see what might be missing, so as a reader is it clear enough what is meant? ~ cygnis insignis 00:16, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I think it's a very helpful article. The things that spring to mind that might improve the article are to add some mention of fauna and fire. —BarrelProof (talk) 00:23, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Cheers, both are good points for expansion, especially about the fire ecology. I will add something when it turns up. ~ cygnis insignis 14:43, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review[edit]

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This review is transcluded from Talk:King brown snake/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Dunkleosteus77 (talk · contribs) 19:06, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Dunkleosteus77[edit]

  • "Disturbance in coagulation (coagulopathy) is common" you should probably specify coagulopathy means it's a blood thinner because a disturbance is coagulation can also be taken to mean blood clots (just for the laymen who don’t know what coagulopathy means)   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  19:06, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
changed to "impaired coagulation" Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:31, 17 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
you should really stay away from medical terms wherever possible. I recommend “it commonly impedes blood clotting (coagulopathy)” or “it commonly acts as a blood thinner (coagulopathy)” or “commonly impedes coagulation which promotes bleeding”. Also remember to change the phrasing in the lead   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  14:48, 17 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
good point - changed x 2 Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 08:42, 18 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
removed the sentence - pretty obvious what it means anyway. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:39, 17 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
added who Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 07:06, 14 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
aligned Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 07:06, 14 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
there was evidence it was declining or uncommon before the cane toads came (they are sweeping slowly across northern australia) Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 07:06, 14 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Do you have to specify "when administered subcutaneously"? It's snake venom, that's really the only way it would be administered   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  19:06, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
In experiments they administer it in different ways (intramuscular etc.) but conclude that subcutaneously is most like what would happen in a snakebite. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:15, 15 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Symptoms of muscle damage (myotoxicity)" that makes it sound like the medical term for muscle damage is myotoxicity   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  19:06, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
switched, which seems to fix ambiguity Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 07:08, 14 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • "King brown snake venom has some haemolytic activity and some patients get a transient anaemia (typified by a fall in serum haemoglobin)" I think this sentence is more medical than it needs to. How about, "King brown snake venom has some haemolytic activity and can cause red blood cells to rupture, which can lead to anemia"   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  19:06, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Normally wouldn’t push for this but it’s really overly complicated as it stands. I don’t know why you’d say “serum haemoglobin” instead of just “haemoglobin” since the serum haemoglobin test measures the amount of hemoglobin in your blood. I also don’t know why you’d use “transient” instead of “short-term”
I guess I use the word "transient" commonly so don't see it as jargon, but take you point (changed). agree "serum" is unnecessary in this case and removed. Not sure how to insert "red cell rupture" without it sounding clunky. It is bluelinked... Cas Liber (talk · contribs)
”King brown snake venom can cause red blood cells to rupture (hemolysis), which can lead to short-term anemia.” You don’t need to say typified by a fall in hemoglobin because it serves to explain what anemia is, and the people who would understand that would already know what anemia is. If you want to explain what anemia is to laymen, say something like “a fall in blood cell count”   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  14:48, 17 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
last comment   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  22:24, 18 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
fair point and done Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:04, 19 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
added now - wasn't sure how much detail to go into Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 02:45, 17 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • "They are regarded as straightforward to keep, due to the relatively low toxicity of their venom and low likelihood of biting" vs "Snakes of Medical Importance include those with highly dangerous venom resulting in high rates of morbidity and mortality"   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  19:06, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah...I guess the author of the book was a little cavalier. Technically their venom is alot less potent (though they inject alot more of it). The word "relaitvely" is an important qualifier, though I reckon I'd be going to the ER if I was bitten by one. My dilemma is if I remove the poison bit then I am changing the basis of the conclusion.... Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:42, 15 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
You can specify it’s especially deadly because of the high dosage the snake injects   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  04:26, 17 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
done Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:53, 17 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Twelve commentaries[edit]

... or are they legitimate criticism – FA status notwithstanding? (damifino) --2601:840:8402:34A0:81A3:7F0D:B9E9:731B (talk) 19:37, 24 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The term "King brown" has always been a local name for a large "Brown " coloured snake, over the years it has slowly changed to mean the Mulga snake and on many occasions the Eastern brown and the Costal Taipan. — Preceding unsigned comment added by T181843 (talk • contribs) 20:55, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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