:::::::Diversity: so you are starting to get the point that an infobox can hardly be used for diversity, especially if that diversity is large: better not to try, and just to give an example, which we’ve done.
:::::::Diversity: so you are starting to get the point that an infobox can hardly be used for diversity, especially if that diversity is large: better not to try, and just to give an example, which we’ve done.
:::::::Policy: you are now arguing with every single reasoned point I make. [[MOS:IBI]] says in terms “When adding ”’an image”’ to an infobox, ”’thumbnails should NOT be used”’. Infobox templates should implement the InfoboxImage module to help with formatting of images so simply supplying ”’the file name”’ will work. For example, to use File:Image PlaceHolder.png, you can simply use ”’|image=Image PlaceHolder.png”’.”. (my emphasis, indicating a singular/one-and-only-one file with exactly one filename and exactly one parameter to hold it.) Some templates permit two but that’s getting close to the practical limit. The statement on thumbnails must apply ”a fortiori” to component images even smaller than thumbnails in galleries or composite images, i.e. such usage is deprecated by the MOS.
:::::::Policy: you are now arguing with every single reasoned point I make. [[MOS:IBI]] says in terms “When adding ”’an image”’ to an infobox, ”’thumbnails should NOT be used”’. Infobox templates should implement the InfoboxImage module to help with formatting of images so simply supplying ”’the file name”’ will work. For example, to use File:Image PlaceHolder.png, you can simply use ”’|image=Image PlaceHolder.png”’.”. (my emphasis, indicating a singular/one-and-only-one file with exactly one filename and exactly one parameter to hold it.) Some templates permit two but that’s getting close to the practical limit. The statement on thumbnails must apply ”a fortiori” to component images even smaller than thumbnails in galleries or composite images, i.e. such usage is deprecated by the MOS.
:::::::Readability: there is a limited width for images in the infobox, and it can’t be very long either so height is also a constraint. That makes the area for images small: if you then put many images into that area, each one must be small, and on small devices especially, that means they individual images are way too tiny to be readable (intelligible in any detail, such as a kind of fish, whatever). [[User:Chiswick Chap|Chiswick Chap]] ([[User talk:Chiswick Chap|talk]]) 15:35, 9 October 2025 (UTC)
:::::::Readability: there is a limited width for images in the infobox, and it can’t be very long either so height is also a constraint. That makes the area for images small: if you then put many images into that area, each one must be small, and on small devices especially, that means they individual images are way too tiny to be readable (intelligible in any detail, such as a kind of fish, whatever). [[User:Chiswick Chap|Chiswick Chap]] ([[User talk:Chiswick Chap|talk]]) 15:35, 9 October 2025 (UTC)
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Fish has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it. |
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“For the superclass of living fish, see Osteichthyes.”That phrasing implies that all living fish are Osteichtyans. Which is obviously false. —User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 17:30, 12 May 2025 (UTC)
- Added ‘bony’ to the hatnote. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:08, 12 May 2025 (UTC)
The redirect Fish or fishes has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 June 27 § Fish or fishes until a consensus is reached. Steel1943 (talk) 19:18, 27 June 2025 (UTC)
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To change the photo description from trawler to a purse seiner, plus it’s not cod. There is the same photo on this link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seine_fishing#/media/File:Chilean_purse_seine.jpg and here it states it’s Chilean jack mackerel not cod Anarchistgodking (talk) 08:48, 17 August 2025 (UTC)
- Fixed. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:18, 17 August 2025 (UTC)
@Chiswick Chap I feel that we should either omit the plural of fish from the lead entirely and leave it for the etymology section, or provide a link to the explanation. As I understand it, and according to the article, fishes isn’t used as a plural in the way one would expect, i.e., to describe multiple individuals; so just saying that the plural can be either fish or fishes in the lead is misleading. 9ninety (talk) 16:17, 18 August 2025 (UTC)
- Sounds reasonable, if that’s in accord with policy. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:41, 18 August 2025 (UTC)
- That isn’t what the article says at all. It says that fish and fishes are generally interchangeable, but that the two forms are given distinct meanings in biology. —User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 19:07, 25 August 2025 (UTC)
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Change the absolute wording of “A fish is an aquatic, anamniotic, gill-bearing vertebrate animal with swimming fins and a hard skull, but lacking limbs with digits.” to “Fish is almost exclusively referred to aquatic…” to include exceptions to the rule, such as finless fish (hagfish), amphibian fish (lungfish), or arguably whales. The latter because fish is no taxonomic term, thus being mammals alone as a reason cannot exclude them. Many cultures and languages including English view them as fish, being more closely related to bony fish than sharks and lampreys and are treated as such in day-to-day life. Sources for the latter to include the “whales are fish” discussion: https://doi.org/10.2993/0278-0771-40.1.56, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02284-9, https://doi.org/10.1186/1746-4269-3-9 Not as to prove the absolute, but to show that debate exists. Pruimenmoes (talk) 13:10, 9 September 2025 (UTC)
- Hi, and thanks for the request. However, the lead (intro), and especially the first sentence of the lead, are intentionally simple. That means that a beginning reader gets a clear overview. It is both impossible and undesirable to hedge such introductory statements about with exceptions, almost exclusivelys, and generally speakings, and Wikipedia doesn’t do that. Instead, articles begin clearly, simply, and from a massively informed point of view, always wrongly in some small ways. Then they give a bit more detail (the rest of the lead); and then they go into the full monty of ifs and buts and all the rest, safely out of the way of the first glance of the beginning reader. Hope this is clear. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:26, 9 September 2025 (UTC)
Currently the first sentence is:
“A fish is an aquatic, anamniotic, gill-bearing vertebrate animal with swimming fins and a hard skull, but lacking limbs with digits.”
However, later on it says that fish contain all tetrapods, which are mostly not aquatic and gill-bearing. 97.113.253.255 (talk) 19:16, 6 October 2025 (UTC)
- I think the article says it quite clearly and accurately: “Despite the cladistic lineage, tetrapods are usually not considered fish.” Vpab15 (talk) 19:34, 6 October 2025 (UTC)
- Yes. Further, the lead must be a simple summary, and a fortiori its start is no place for clever complexity or exceptions. Chiswick Chap (talk) 00:23, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
Most articles on diverse animal groups have a gallery instead of a single example as a picture in the infobox. Given the diversity of fishes, I’d be happy to try and make one. cyclopiaspeak! 09:02, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
- Much opposed; and those other groups should not have a gallery either: it’s nearly always facile and frequently unreadable into the bargain. The infobox’s job is to present a small and immediate summary of the lead. It must be short. A composite image, itself a thumbnail, presents even tinier images, basically unreadable on any small device; while a gallery up there is simply misplaced: it isn’t the infobox’s job to try to say everything (even less than the lead, which is meant as a short summary). In this article’s case, the task is further complicated by the question of what diversity in fishes might consist of. The article gives multiple answers to that difficult question: size, speed, body shape, ecology, and phylogeny are among its answers. Any attempt to do all that in the infobox would be ridiculous, while any attempt to sketch diversity without saying that would be pointless and counter-productive. No, please, we don’t need to make the article worse by over-populating the infobox with inappropriate materials. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:29, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
- Woah, that’s definitely an unexpected answer; my title was almost a rhetorical question. I brought other other articles because they seemed to me positive examples. To me it does not make much sense to include just a single image of an “archetypal” fish, when the group has enormous morphological diversity. I’ve never found the composites of the infobox “unreadable” on my small devices, and it seems to me including composites is necessary to give a better idea of the group. We’ll see what other editors think. cyclopiaspeak! 10:41, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
- “Necessary”: not at all. “Enormous diversity”: yes, not at all capturable with a little gallery in the infobox. “Almost a rhetorical question:” you may have thought so, but that just says that you hadn’t really thought through any of the implications. Arguing from “other stuff exists” is weak to the point of non-existent; and the genuine diversity of the fishes would totally defeat any attempt of any vaguely reasonable infobox scale. We really can do better than think rhetorically here. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:12, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
that just says that you hadn’t really thought through any of the implications
Well, I still do not see these “implications” as even vaguely meaningful, so I guess we simply agree to disagree. cyclopiaspeak! 18:51, 8 October 2025 (UTC)- I could add: I agree “other stuff exists” is a weak argument in itself. Yet, contextually, it might be not. The fact that such composites persist in several widely read and edited essential articles, several of them GA or even FA, means that there is, in practice, a significant tacit consensus on them being at least not a negative, if not a positive. If they were commonly found to be “unreadable” by a majority of editors probably some of them would have complained and now most pages would have got rid of them, especially when evaluated for GA or FA status. That said, I wait to assess consensus here. cyclopiaspeak! 18:59, 8 October 2025 (UTC)
- “Tacit consensus” has no basis in policy. Unreadability is not considered by many editors, so what they “probably” would have done is pure speculation and of no consequence. To be clear, there is both a general issue, where you rely on other stuff, and a specific issue, which is the very large diversity in the fishes, far wider than many other groups. You suppose that the implications are vague or meaningless, but that is mistaken: fishes can be fast or slow; gigantic or tiny; marine or freshwater; bony or cartilaginous; toothed or jawless; long or short; round or flat; with fleshy or spiny fins: the number of dimensions of fish diversity is, in short, large. That is totally different from, say, diversity in horses, where a carthorse and a pony together would give a good idea of the range. Policy is for a single image, or if need be a (very) small number of images; they need to be readable by Wikipedia readers, or by definition they have no function (other than decoration, which is deprecated). Chiswick Chap (talk) 05:29, 9 October 2025 (UTC)
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“Tacit consensus” has no basis in policy.
– Sure thing, it just highlights that I’m not proposing something outrageous, as your comments seemed to imply, but actually something quite part of WP normal practice.Unreadability is not considered by many editors,
– This is a very bizarre comment. Do you think editors do not read articles? If they found an illustration hard to discern, wouldn’t anyone notice but you?which is the very large diversity in the fishes, far wider than many other groups.
– That is exactly the point. How is then a single image better than a composite/gallery of, say, 4 images? Of course it wouldn’t exhaust the diversity, but it would show that it is a diverse group much better than the single image we currently have. That’s why we have composites or galleries at Eukaryote, Animal or Chordate that are, by definition, even more diverse than fish.Policy is for a single image, or if need be a (very) small number of images
Well, it’s not like I want to add dozens of images; 4 or 6 would suffice IMHO. Could you link the relevant MOS or policy? I looked for it yesterday but didn’t find much.they need to be readable by Wikipedia readers, or by definition they have no function
Could you pinpoint exactly what are your concerns with readability? I sincerely do not understand how is a composite or gallery poorly ‘readable’. Thanks!
- cyclopiaspeak! 14:03, 9 October 2025 (UTC)
- “Normal practice”: no idea what it is, and everyone could and would define it differently. For me, a normal article has one lead image, whether in an infobox or (preferably) not in one.
- Unreadability: see the item on ‘Readability’ below, we’re talking images. Please keep the “bizarre” to yourself, it’s pointlessly offensive and unnecessary. I am not stupid and if I say something I generally mean it.
- Diversity: so you are starting to get the point that an infobox can hardly be used for diversity, especially if that diversity is large: better not to try, and just to give an example, which we’ve done.
- Policy: you are now arguing with every single reasoned point I make. MOS:IBI says in terms “When adding an image to an infobox, thumbnails should NOT be used. Infobox templates should implement the InfoboxImage module to help with formatting of images so simply supplying the file name will work. For example, to use File:Image PlaceHolder.png, you can simply use |image=Image PlaceHolder.png.”. (my emphasis, indicating a singular/one-and-only-one file with exactly one filename and exactly one parameter to hold it.) Some templates permit two but that’s getting close to the practical limit. The statement on thumbnails must apply a fortiori to component images even smaller than thumbnails in galleries or composite images, i.e. such usage is deprecated by the MOS.
- Readability: there is a limited width for images in the infobox, and it can’t be very long either so height is also a constraint. That makes the area for images small: if you then put many images into that area, each one must be small, and on small devices especially, that means they individual images are way too tiny to be readable (intelligible in any detail, such as a kind of fish, whatever). I imagine that is why the MOS says what it does, but whether or not that is so, the MOS should be obeyed here. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:35, 9 October 2025 (UTC)
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- “Tacit consensus” has no basis in policy. Unreadability is not considered by many editors, so what they “probably” would have done is pure speculation and of no consequence. To be clear, there is both a general issue, where you rely on other stuff, and a specific issue, which is the very large diversity in the fishes, far wider than many other groups. You suppose that the implications are vague or meaningless, but that is mistaken: fishes can be fast or slow; gigantic or tiny; marine or freshwater; bony or cartilaginous; toothed or jawless; long or short; round or flat; with fleshy or spiny fins: the number of dimensions of fish diversity is, in short, large. That is totally different from, say, diversity in horses, where a carthorse and a pony together would give a good idea of the range. Policy is for a single image, or if need be a (very) small number of images; they need to be readable by Wikipedia readers, or by definition they have no function (other than decoration, which is deprecated). Chiswick Chap (talk) 05:29, 9 October 2025 (UTC)
- “Necessary”: not at all. “Enormous diversity”: yes, not at all capturable with a little gallery in the infobox. “Almost a rhetorical question:” you may have thought so, but that just says that you hadn’t really thought through any of the implications. Arguing from “other stuff exists” is weak to the point of non-existent; and the genuine diversity of the fishes would totally defeat any attempt of any vaguely reasonable infobox scale. We really can do better than think rhetorically here. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:12, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
- Woah, that’s definitely an unexpected answer; my title was almost a rhetorical question. I brought other other articles because they seemed to me positive examples. To me it does not make much sense to include just a single image of an “archetypal” fish, when the group has enormous morphological diversity. I’ve never found the composites of the infobox “unreadable” on my small devices, and it seems to me including composites is necessary to give a better idea of the group. We’ll see what other editors think. cyclopiaspeak! 10:41, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
