Talk:Macrobdella decora

Commas

Hello @Cremastra, regarding this revert I disagree with that the commas are beneficial and I think they should be removed for the following reasons:

• In the sentence: "Today, they are sometimes used by fishers for fishing bait, and may be transported for that reason.", the phrase "may be transported for that reason" is not an independent clause. Therefore, a comma with a coordinating conjunction is not appropriate here.
• For the second sentence ("However, they are not a very favoured choice, due to a tendency to get free of collection traps.") both phrases (before and after the second comma), are very choppy phrases that need to be connected in order for the sentence to flow correctly.

MossOnALog^Talk 22:10, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

For the first one, I'd rather add "they" to the second phrase to make it an independent clause than remove the commma.

The second one is entirely subjective. Reading it, I put a strong pause after "however", accompanied by a rising tone, and just a slight pause after "choice" to aid the flow. Cremastra (talk · contribs) 22:17, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

According to the cited paper: "Some non-sanguivorous species are also used as bait by anglers, which makes their dispersal even more mercurial (Anderson et al., 2020)." So, since Macrobdella decora is a sanguivorous species, this statement does not actually apply here anyway, and even if it did, it should cite the paper where the claim originated (Anderson et al., 2020) rather than a paper that mentioned the fact as a cited statement.

The paper goes on to say "In modern times, leeches are commonly transported between bodies of water as bait for sport fishing, but M. decora is an unpopular choice, since they can easily escape bait collection traps and are anecdotally less enticing bait for fish than other species such as erpobdellids due to their less erratic swimming pattern (Moore, 1923). Therefore, this is an unlikely reason for the lack of genetic structuring." So again, the original paper making this claim would be a more appropriate citation, but I am leaning towards removing this statement all together since its merely anecdotal. MossOnALog^Talk 22:31, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

You're right, the first quote you raise doesn't apply here, since it doesn't apply to the species. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

For the second quote: firstly, there is no policy-based reason to insist on tracking down hundred-year-old sources when modern sources say the same thing; secondly, only the thing about "enticingness" is anecdotal and it's clearly a widespread enough belief that the authors bothered to include it in their paper. There's no reason not to give it a mention.

Why are you so intent on finding problems in this article where none exist? Cremastra (talk · contribs) 22:43, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

I have made multiple improvements to this article—some examples include: , , —and I am continuing to address legitimate concerns that I have in a good-faith effort to improve it, especially since it is a featured article.

Your question: "Why are you so intent on finding problems in this article where none exist?" comes across as a belittling of my concerns or an accusation of bad faith—I'm not sure which one but I would appreciate that being struck from the conversation or otherwise adequately addressed before moving on with the discussion of the concerns I have regarding this article's grammar, citations, and validity of statements. No article is perfect or ever complete (WP:NOTFINISHED) and statements implying otherwise with the intention of getting other editors to comply is not valid discussion (WP:OWNBEHAVIOR: number 6, under "Statements"). MossOnALog^Talk 23:02, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

@Cremastra For the first point, I'm trying to make the point that the cited source is not actually a very good source for the stated information. For your claim that there's no policy for tracking down hundred year old sources—that's a misrepresentation of what I'm saying for two reasons. First, you don't have to track it down because the citation and link are right there in the cited article link. Second, Wikipedia does explicitly prefer secondary sources, and a paper that cited another paper to make a claim is a tertiary source for that claim in particular, unless it was also gathering that information independently. Citing the paper that originally made the claim is a better practice than citing articles that just repeat the same information without additional processes to vet such claims (such as research building on or testing the claims of the older paper). MossOnALog^Talk 23:45, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

I apologize I snapped. I was just somewhat irritated at what I saw as nitpicky concerns.

I do not see the secondary source thing as an important problem. If you want, you can request a third opinion, but I think we both have better things to do than split hairs. Cremastra (talk · contribs) 16:45, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for the apology. My bad for treating the review of this article like a scholarly review and thank you for your attention to making improvements. Agreed that efforts are probably best focused elsewhere for now. Happy editing. MossOnALog^Talk 16:49, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

Explaining the "by whom" tag

@Cremastra thank you for adding a clarification to the sentence that I had tagged with "by whom?". I think it's important to clearly state who is making such anecdotal claims, as it could be biological/ecological researchers, anglers, natural resource managers, or industrial stakeholders. I don't need to discuss this change further, but I wanted to add my explanation here due to the tone of your edit summary. MossOnALog^Talk 23:55, 9 December 2025 (UTC)