Talk:Cell (biology)
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Cell (biology) was one of the Natural sciences good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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To-do list for Cell (biology):
99.65.214.26 (talk) 00:30, 15 March 2012 (UTC) |
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Requested move 13 July 2024
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– This is the clear primary topic since the dab page says that is the most common term for the page. Interstellarity (talk) 20:23, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
- Oppose – do you have any solid backing for this rather than what another editor added to a DAB page? Remsense诉 20:35, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
- Support per some combination of WP:SURPRISE and WP:NWFCTM. If you say 'cell' when you mean cell phone and I don't know what you mean by 'cell', you will clarify "cell phone". If you say 'cell' when you mean prison cell and I don't know what you mean by 'cell', you will clarify 'prison cell'. If you say 'cell' when you mean the biological unit and I don't know what you mean, you will assume I don't have a high school education and draw me a diagram of a cell. I should think end users of the site would expect about as much when using the searchbar of this website. I think the current dab is a diplomatic nicety or compromise as I'm sure WP has significant representation of individuals specializing in at least two or the three topics, which is why I mention WP:NWFCTM and the examples it gives as something to immediately consider in tandem. AVNOJ1989 (talk) 22:00, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
- "Cell phone" is not the incisive example here: there are many things referred to primarily as "cell", as it a word used in general to characterize discrete units with like contents and biological cells are not clearly primary among them. Remsense诉 22:09, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
- I'm not denying 'cell' is unique to 'cell'. Again, I explicitly mention WP:NWFCTM for a reason. Identifying a city in Bulgaria as a PTOPIC is not to say there aren't hundreds of thousands of people who have that same word as their name, but to adjust a portion of the site to accomodate for what users are most likely to expect when they type 'Sofia' into a search bar. Think of any search engine. If I type 'cell' into Bing or Google or any other search engine of choice, I am mostly being met with pages about the biological unit. If I want prison cell, I immediately know what to type in to get more relevant results. If I want cell phone, I immediately know what to type in to get more relevant results. I would be annoyed (re:SURPRISED) if I was searching for the biological unit and wasn't getting those results. Excel cells, cell towers, geometric cells, etc... I would be curious to find out what you consider to be the incisive example that overrides the cell and actually challenges the point I'm articulating. AVNOJ1989 (talk) 22:21, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
- "Cell phone" is not the incisive example here: there are many things referred to primarily as "cell", as it a word used in general to characterize discrete units with like contents and biological cells are not clearly primary among them. Remsense诉 22:09, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
- Oppose While Cell (biology) has a plurality of pageviews on [1], it does not have anywhere near a majority, so it fails WP:PTOPIC on the usage criterion: "much more likely than any other single topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined". On long-term significance, we can downweight some entries like Cell (film), but other general science entries like Electrochemical cell and its subtopics (e.g. Fuel cell) are just as important, so it does not have substantially more long-term significance than everything else combined. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:58, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
- Would you be able to clarify how pages like Electrochemical cell would be in contention for PTOPIC of 'cell'? The PTOPIC of Star is currently determined to be the astronomical object, but, for example, the Dallas Stars would appear to have the plurality of pageviews when analyzing the Stars disambiguation [2]. I don't mean to 'what about' here but try and understand the logic. How many of these general science entries – which I don't disagree are just as important – are you actually proposing could get away with only being titled 'Cell', and if they're not, are they still relevant to the argument as you're suggesting? AVNOJ1989 (talk) 01:59, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
- It's very easy for me to use "cell" by itself in that context. Remsense诉 02:29, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
- I think WP:NWFCTM speaks to that when it talks about partial title matches, no? AVNOJ1989 (talk) 02:51, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
- It's very easy for me to use "cell" by itself in that context. Remsense诉 02:29, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
- Would you be able to clarify how pages like Electrochemical cell would be in contention for PTOPIC of 'cell'? The PTOPIC of Star is currently determined to be the astronomical object, but, for example, the Dallas Stars would appear to have the plurality of pageviews when analyzing the Stars disambiguation [2]. I don't mean to 'what about' here but try and understand the logic. How many of these general science entries – which I don't disagree are just as important – are you actually proposing could get away with only being titled 'Cell', and if they're not, are they still relevant to the argument as you're suggesting? AVNOJ1989 (talk) 01:59, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
- Oppose, and I did a biology degree. Phrases like "The cell is..." or "Cells and organisms" are unambiguous, phrases like "a cell" suggest biology but not conclusively so ("He spent the night in a cell"). I'd like this to be the definite primary topic but to the general public it's at best only weakly so, and the arguments in this thread already demonstrate where this is headed — nowhere. We might as well stop now really, but I guess we'll have to endure a week of it before it undeniably runs into the ground. Chiswick Chap (talk) 05:19, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
- Weak oppose while it seems the most common use it doesn't appear to be primary. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:08, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
- Support for no other reason than that the dab page is such an awful place to land that I refuse to even scroll down to see where the important articles are. I'm a regular Wikipedia editor since 2005 and dab pages like this stop me in my tracks. Srnec (talk) 18:53, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
- Wouldn't that be a good reason to improve the DAB page, not create an even more ambiguous situation? Remsense诉 18:54, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
- Unless I watchlist the dab page, how can I be sure any improvements won't be rolled back? Srnec (talk) 19:00, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
- While admitting I personally have a very extensive watchlist: I'm not sure why you wouldn't do precisely that? Remsense诉 19:19, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
- Unless I watchlist the dab page, how can I be sure any improvements won't be rolled back? Srnec (talk) 19:00, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
- Wouldn't that be a good reason to improve the DAB page, not create an even more ambiguous situation? Remsense诉 18:54, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
- Strong support, clear primary topic by historical importance, so much so as to blow all of the others out of the water. BD2412 T 17:40, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
- Well, BD2412, that's easily asserted, but the evidence is that the biological cell is not so far ahead.
- Historically,
- the monastic/prison varieties are much the oldest (early medieval).
- Hooke saw biological cells in 1665, but they only became important much later.
- The electrochemical cell dates from 1790.
- Cell phones date from 1973.
- By usage, biological cells are 2nd by Ghits, 1st by Scholar hits (research papers):
- Type -------- Ghits --- Scholar
- Tele cell -- 3.2 Bn -- 5.1 M
- Biol cell -- 1.3 Bn -- 8.6 M
- Elec cell -- 1.1 Bn -- 6.7 M
- Pris cell -- 0.5 Bn -- 1.1 M
- It's not easy (even for a biologist) to assert that the biological cell usage "blows all the others out of the water"; instead, it mixes punches with the best of 'em in the fight, and might come out on top, or not, according to taste. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:18, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
- How are you getting these numbers? I have read any number of biology papers which do not specify that the cell they are talking about is a "biol[ogical] cell". They are very likely to specify the species or lineage of the cell(s) but rarely stop to specify they are biological cells, which made me wonder how such head-to-head information would be obtained from Google Scholar or otherwise. AVNOJ1989 (talk) 20:30, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
- Oppose - the biological uses of the term are far predated by several other uses; cf. wikt:cell. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 04:11, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
- Oppose. How on earth is the biological term more notable than Prison cell? -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:30, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
- Per WP:DPT, let's have a look at https://wikinav.toolforge.org/?language=en&title=Cell where we can see meta:Research:Wikipedia clickstream which said for May that 2.2k readers viewed this list, and we could identify 749 clicks to the proposed primary topic, which is just over a third. Based on clickstream-enwiki-2024-05.tsv, there were a total of 1593 identified clickstreams that month, so it's not really over half of even that (the clickstreams have anonymization so the long tail is invisible). For June it said 1.8k views, 737 clicks to biology, 1439 identifiable total, so the pattern is similar (~34% / ~47% and ~41% / ~51%).
- It's long been sorted on top into the common section, though the latter doesn't have a section heading - we have in other cases noticed some effect from changing this, but it's unclear that it would contribute a lot - it's unlikely it would push the ratios from a third/half to e.g. >80%.
- So the readers are telling us there is no primary topic by usage. If we want to make a move, it would need to be based rather on long-term significance. Ideally this kind of an argument would be well fleshed out, because we risk badly navigating half the readers. --Joy (talk) 07:39, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
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