Talk:Monkey

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From the article:

A monkey is any haplorrhine primate not belonging to the family Tarsiidae, Hylobatidae, Pongidae, or Hominidae.

I think this is a pretty bad definition. First, it mainly tells you what monkeys are not, instead of what they are, which is always a bad idea if you can avoid it. Secondly, haplorrhine (half nose?!) is a pretty obscure word, so we immediately follow the link and discover that:

The haplorrhines are the clade comprised of the prosimian tarsiers and all of the true simians: the monkeys and the apes, including humans.

Oops. Haplorrhines are tarsiers, monkeys, apes and humans, and monkeys are haplorrhines less tarsiers, apes and humans. These definitions are circular!

Thirdly, this definition is incomprehensible! Imagine some twelve year old kid trying to use Wikipedia to research a project and finding this stuff. Come on, primatologists, please fix this up or I might be forced to write something you won't like, like "monkeys are mischievous little furry humanoids with tails". 8^) --Securiger 09:48, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The problem is that the term "monkey" is a bad term. It doesn't describe one easily identifiable group of critters. the smallest group that includes all the monkeys is the Haplorrhini suborder. On that page, you get your second quote. when you look down to the classification, you see how the monkeys are related to the rest of the haplorrhines. Nonetheless, I'll see what I can work up. - UtherSRG 14:24, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Actually, I like the article as it is. The majority of the article goes on to disambiguate the circular definition you are complaining about. - UtherSRG 15:13, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I do not like the article as it is. It contains practically no useful information at all, and the same goes for Haplorrhini. Except for the photograph, to a person not already understanding all the terms these articles could just as well be about some type of plant, or families of (rather heavy) subatomic particles. When I look down to the classification, I don't "see how monkeys are related to the rest...", I see a tree diagram with little meaning to the non-specialist. What does it mean to say that Old World monkeys are a family, but New World monkeys are a superfamily? And the rest of the monkey article does nothing to disambiguate; it subdivides monkeys into two undefined families, and leaves it at that. If we drill down into Old World monkeys and New World monkeys we finally start to get a few snippets of facts, but even after heading off four layers deep in three directions, the reader is none the wiser about why tarsiers and gibbons are not monkeys but Golden Lion Tamarins are - never mind what monkeys eat, where they are found, or whether or not they have fur. '"Monkey" is a bad term' is not really a useful response. People are going to be coming to Wikipedia to look up "monkey", and that want to know what it means. Only a very few people are going to be looking for "Haplorrhini". May I suggest the ape article for comparison? Securiger 16:50, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Incidentally, while doing all that drilling down, I found another teensy problem - although maybe I'm just confused because we didn't worry about monophyletic taxons when I was at school. Monkey refers to Pongidae, and Catarrhini and Hominidae says that's ok because of orang-utans and Gigantopithecus, but both the Haplorrhini and Catarrhini trees omit it. It's confusing. Securiger 16:50, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Even Merriam-Webster uses an exclusive and general definition of monkey: 1 : a nonhuman primate mammal with the exception usually of the lemurs and tarsiers; especially : any of the smaller longer-tailed primates as contrasted with the apes

However, M-W's definition is both broader and less accurate than the one we currently offer. (It doesn't exclude enough of the prosimians, and the broadest view can also include the apes.) 'What do monkeys eat? Where do they live?' aren't questions that can be easily answered because monkeys aren't one group, and the general answers you get does not distinguish them at all from the other primates any better than "they aren't apes or tarsiers, etc". You seem to want an answer that will accurately and simply distinguish a monkey from other primates, or from other creatures in general. The general answer is that it is a kind of primate. The more specific one is that it is a creature from one of two groups: Old World and New World. At that point, any feature which distinguishes a monkey from the other primates is unique to one of those two groupings.

As for Pongidae, that classification is defunct and needs to be removed from all the articles (except in a way that shows it is defunct).

- UtherSRG 17:22, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I went and looked at the ape article. It is a great article. But 'ape' refers to one easy classification of creatures that gets subdivided. The distinctive commonalities of apes excludes all non-apes. The distinctive commonalities of monkeys includes some non-monkeys. I agree that a more expansive monkey article would be good. I'm just not the guy to do it. - UtherSRG 17:45, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I've tried to improve this difficult situation by giving a more ordinary language version of the technical definition first, and explaining why things are difficult. I know the same could be said of many other common-name groups, but I know from experience that this one is particularly likely to cause confusion. seglea 00:07, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I think you did a fabulous job! - UtherSRG 05:11, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Contents

1 vandalism 2 Hartlepool Monkey 3 linkage 4 vandalism redux 5 Page protection

vandalism

I've protected this page because it is a frequent target for dynamic IP anon vandalism. Please feel free to contact me or another admin if you wish to make (real) edits. - UtherSRG 14:03, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

Unprotecting after four days to see if the vandal has given up. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 13:29, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

He hasn't. Reprotected and blocked his latest IP indefinitely as it's never been used for anything other than vandalism. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 17:32, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The problem is that this page seems to atypically attract more random vandals than other pages. It's not just one user who is coming back time and time again, but a bunch of random vandals appearing sporadically over time. - UtherSRG 17:54, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

Hartlepool Monkey

There should be a link to the Hartlepool Monkey storey on the page. When the page is unprotected again, the link should be added. - 219.78.68.64

558 Google links? I don't think so. - UtherSRG 15:45, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

It's a fairly famous local legend but is much more appropriate on Hartlepool than here. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 13:32, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

linkage

the word "prehensile" on the Monkey page should be a link. - Brassrat

Good call. Please sign your name with <niwiki>UtherSRG</nowiki> or ~~~~ next time. People like to know who is saying what. - UtherSRG 14:53, Apr 16, 2005 (UTC)

vandalism redux

I've once again protected this article so that the vandals can be thwarted. Let me know if y'all have any changes here and I'll make 'em. - UtherSRG 19:58, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

I don't agree in protecting this page. So, it gets vandalised alot, but so does many other pages. It's something we have to live with, and it's not like it stays vandalised for long. Kids wanting to test the system here and deface articles will do so anyway, and having them do it in this article is as good as any other. We want everyone to contribute and improve on this article as any others, and asking them to message you or me or any other admin is not how it should be done. Shanes 20:05, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

And to add to that: I actually find this page usefull for catching vandalism on other pages. I have this one in my watchlist, and when I see it being vandalised, the history of those doing it usually shows other more remote articles that they have vandalised undiscovered as well. And then I can fix them. Shanes 20:09, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

If you look up this talk you'll see the vandalism is an ongoing event. I too have this page on a watchlist. While I agree that catching vandals in one place sometimes helps find other incidents of vandalism, I would much prefer a stable article that folks can deal with. When vandalism & reversion is happening as often as it does here, it increases the chance of an edit conflict - which I believe serves to dissuade newbie editors more than having to place the change request here on that talk page does. - UtherSRG 20:19, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I know, and I have fixed vandalism on this page more than once. But I don't see it as such a big problem. I guess I'm a very big fan of keeping stuff editable as much as possible. Having a wikipedia that Everyone can edit is sort of an important, uhm, mantra. And for every page where we give in to vandalism, protect it and reduce people's oportunity to edit, we move away from that. Shanes 20:25, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

I know. But let it sit for a few days or a week, and the vandalism will decrease for a few weeks. It's just a few kids with dynamic IPs. Once they get bored hitting their heads against the protection, they go away for awhile. - UtherSRG 20:33, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

Ok. Shanes 20:35, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

I've unprotected this page. Let's see how long until the vandals return.... - UtherSRG 14:20, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

3 hours, 47 minutes. *sigh* - UtherSRG 18:29, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

Page protection

Sorry, I edited the page before noticing that it was protected, so I reverted my own edits. Is there any chance of it being unprotected soon? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 23:09, May 20, 2005 (UTC)

Dont sweat it. The page is protected against vandalism, not due to content conflicts. I've un-reverted your changes. - UtherSRG 03:26, May 21, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, Stacey. I appreciate it. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 03:36, May 21, 2005 (UTC)

There is a link to savannah (placename). It should be changed to link to the grassland savanna.

I've unprotected the page, and made your correction. Thanks! - UtherSRG 21:32, May 24, 2005 (UTC)