Talk:Sex/Archive 11

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No justification for blanket reversion

In view of the clamour (above) for blanket reversion of the article to remove CycoMa1's edits, it is worth noting here that the ban is a Topic ban prohibiting him from editing on medical articles due to perceived WP:CIR issues. The terms of the topic ban specifically permit an editor to edit the rest of Wikipedia, just not on the specified topic, medical topics in this instance. Sex is primarily a general biology article, not a medical article, although it may touch on medical issues, which TBAN prohibits him from editing. The rest of CycoMa1's edits to this article do not fall under the ban, and there can be no justification therefore for blanket elimination of them from the article or reversion of the article to a 'pre-CycoMa1' state. Plantsurfer 16:29, 2 March 2022 (UTC)#

Yes, the topic ban related to specific content. Which is no indication whatsoever that there aren't issues elsewhere (there are, as was noted in the ANI thread). And the reason that reverts relating to CycoMa1's editing in this article are being discussed is because there are problems with this article, not because of the topic ban. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:12, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

I think that CycoMa should get clarification on that before he takes your words at face value. He may in fact not be able to contribute to this article at all and should not assume otherwise without it being made very clear. Equivamp - talk 18:48, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

For the record, he did. He asked an admin about it and got confirmation that most of this article (the non-medical aspects) are fair game. He's noted that in a comment in the above section. Firefangledfeathers (talk | contribs) 19:02, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

If CycoMa wants clarification of the scope of the topic ban, this isn't the place to ask for it, so how about we stick to using this talk page for its intended purpose - to discuss article content, on a page that gets around 30,000 views a day? AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:43, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Considering the person opened discussion of reverting CycoMa's edits because he is topic-banned, discussion of whether or not the tban even applies to this article impacts a huge amount of this article's content. --Equivamp - talk 20:53, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Does it? The fact that CycoMa1 is an incompetent editor was well established in the ANI thread. With 30,000 views per day, this article gets a similar number of views per day to India or United States, and should be a high priority. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:16, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

@Hemiauchenia: If that were the case how come y’all are taking issue with this article now. I’ve been on editing this article since 2020. Why is it now that y’all are taking notice of this?CycoMa1 (talk) 22:29, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Negotiating a tban, broadly construed, is crazy hard. There are way too many possible missteps. No one who isn't an expert is likely to be able to edit nearby their tban successfully. valereee (talk) 21:16, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

If you're implying that it would be best if CycoMa1 didn't edit this page, then I agree, though I'd suggest a clear statement to that effect might be helpful. Firefangledfeathers (talk | contribs) 22:14, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Just to make things clear I went to wiki projects and asked other editors if certain sources were reliable or not.CycoMa1 (talk) 22:18, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Also as a side-note I spent months researching this topic in my free time. At this point I probably developed a knowledge on the topic.CycoMa1 (talk) 22:24, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Like many of y’all saw my contributions and didn’t have any issue with most of them. Why are y’all having an issue now?CycoMa1 (talk) 22:33, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

@CycoMa1: Your WP:RS and quotes may be all right, but there is a use of quotes which betrays lack of WP:CIR. tgeorgescu (talk) 23:08, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

@Tgeorgescu: Are you saying I’m misreading sources?CycoMa1 (talk) 23:17, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

@CycoMa1: Since I'm not an expert in biology, I'll pass that question. However, you might well lack an overview of the field, which is required to make sense of the sources. tgeorgescu (talk) 23:22, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

@Tgeorgescu: correct me if I’m wrong but aren’t the vast majority of Wikipedia editors amateurs? You don’t need to be an expert to understand what a source means when it says 5% of animal species are hermaphrodites.CycoMa1 (talk) 23:27, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

@CycoMa1: Amateurs, most of them. But not ignoramuses. Again, it is not my role to decide if you are an ignoramus in biology, there are other editors who are more able to speak about that. tgeorgescu (talk) 23:33, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Useful reading. [1] AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:05, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

A person being topic banned does not automatically mean (a) treating all their edits as garbage or (b) reverting past edits they made in that topic. If people want to extra-scrutinize the text here, they can, but this has long been a well-watched article with refinement of text being done. What exactly is wrong with this, for instance? I'm not a wild-eyed inclusionist but I do expect editors removing text to explain why the sources are bad or why the sources are not being represented accurately beyond calling it "garbage". Please read WP:PRESERVE which is policy. Crossroads ^-talk- 00:38, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

The present version is shocking. I am a professional in plant reproductive biology and have a number of degrees in the subject, including a PhD. could be a bald-faced lie, or it may be that they actually know what they're talking about. I incline for the later. tgeorgescu (talk) 00:46, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Unfortunately that editor stated he didn't wish to be involved with the article. But Plantsurfer states on their userpage that they have a PhD in botany, yet they seem to have consistently opposed a mass reversion. Plantsurfer has also been present at this article for a while in the edit and talk page histories, and has worked to refine CycoMa1's text. Crossroads ^-talk- 06:15, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

If anyone thinks that a study concerning data regarding feral pigeons can be cited for a general statement that "Birds that are larger in size are more sexually monomorphic than smaller birds", I can only conclude that they have more faith in the efficacy of uninformed Google-mining than I do. This is entirely typical for the way CycoMa1 operates. Type words into a search engine. Read a single sentence from something they lack the specific knowledge to understand, without even bothering to look at the context. Copy-paste, with maybe a word or two changed. Move on, and Google something else... AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:54, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

But it is that really a reason to delete an entire subsection because apparently one study? Also keep in mind IP I wasn’t the only individual making that section.CycoMa1 (talk) 02:13, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

I share Andy's concerns here that the sources used do not properly support the text. If you want another example look at the source supporting the sentence Most aquatic animals such as fish and corals mate using external fertilization, where the eggs and sperm are released into, and combine within, the surrounding water.. The source contains a statement in the mechanism of fertilization has been studied in "marine invertebrates, especially sea urchins" because it is easier to study external fertilization. The source supports the definition of external fertilization, but it doesn't support "Most aquatic animals" or "fishes". The rest of that section consists of a load of short sentences containing disjointed factoids, it doesn't read like a cohesive paragraph, it reads like a collection of random thoughts. 192.76.8.77 (talk) 01:35, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

You can actually see CycoMa1's MO directly, from citations. Take the last paragraph of the material I deleted here. [2] The statement concerned is that "In plants many sexually monomorphic species are hermaphrodites." Which may well be true (I suspect it may be, from my limited knowledge of plant reproduction). The source cited, a book on "Date Palm Biotechnology", may even possibly be a valid source for the claim, though it isn't ideal, as I see it. What is revealing however, is the URL for the citation: "https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=N3xf-80L-AQC&q=mammals+dioecious&pg=PA552&redir_esc=y#v=snippet&q=mammals%20dioecious&f=false". CycoMa1 was looking for a source for "mammals dioecious", came across something regarding plats instead, and added that to the article. This isn't the work of someone with knowledge of the subject matter, looking for citations to explain specific concepts. It is the work of a Google-miner. Someone looking for search-string results in the vague hope they are relevant. A knowlegeable writer wouldn't be looking for sources regarding hermaphroditic plants (or mammals!) in a book on date palm biotechnology. They'd be looking for a source which actually discussed the matter in depth, for sexually-reproducing plants in general. And hopefully they wouldn't copy-paste what any such source said into the article, either... AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:11, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

@AndyTheGrump: you can’t predict why people Google certain words. I’m the kind of guy who googles random words and see what I find. Trust me you find interesting things when you do that.

Also regarding dioecy is actually called gonochorism for animals. It’s just the terms dioecy and gonochorism get used interchangeably.CycoMa1 (talk) 02:18, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

At this point, I'm no longer sure that we aren't being trolled... AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:24, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

@AndyTheGrump: okay serious question is there some miscommunication between us? Because I’m trying my best to speak simple english here.

But anyway I google random words to find sources because some information is hard to find.CycoMa1 (talk) 02:30, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

You cannot write an article like this on the basis of a google self education and random word searching- you simply will not have the grounding and background knowledge to put together something decent. How are you supposed to know how to structure an article like this if you don't have the "overall view" of how the pieces fit together? How are you supposed to know what kind of stuff is essential information that belongs in an encyclopaedia article and what kind of stuff is overdetailed cruft without a background in the subject? How are you supposed to write content in your own words but without distorting the meaning without the background education to fully 100% understand what the content means?

P.S. Please read MOS:INDENTGAP. You shouldn't leave blank lines between indented text because it breaks the underlying HTML. 192.76.8.77 (talk) 03:00, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Googling random shit then tacking what you find together is absolutely terrible way of writing articles though, that's how you end up with a disaster like this where the entire thing is a barely readable mess of 10 word sentences bouncing between disconnected thoughts with no structure. Look at the aquatic animals section as I found it [3]. It starts with a sweeping generalisation that isn't supported by the sources, then jumps into discussing external fertilization. Then it jumps to a random sentence about how crustaceans are an exception. Then we have a super specific sentence about seahorses, in a section that is supposed to be a general overview. Then we have another sentence about seahorses being a weird exception. In the section that is supposed to be discussing marine animals in general half the content is about seahorses, the most important sentence here isn't supported by the source properly and the remainder is an awkwardly written short sentence jammed in the middle. I tried to read a few sections of this a few days ago to look at the damage and I couldn't get through it, it was just that poorly written. The more I look at this and your responses here the more convinced I am that a topic ban was too lenient and it should have been a full sitewide CIR ban. 192.76.8.77 (talk) 02:38, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

In the section that is supposed to be discussing marine animals in general half the content is about seahorses, the most important sentence here isn't supported by the source properly and the remainder is an awkwardly written short sentence jammed in the middle. like I said I wasn’t the only one editing this article. The section on aquatic animals was also copy edited by other editors like Kent Dominic or Plantsurfer. So I’m not the only guy who did this are gonna request a site ban to these people as well?

It seems odd to me that a heavily watch listed page like this is being attacked because of some ANI about a user being uncivil towards me.CycoMa1 (talk) 02:46, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

who are you anyway you sound like AndyTheGrump is not the move to be making here. IP 192, I agree about the issues. I'd add that we probably don't need to mention the part about external fertilization at all, as it tells us nothing about sex. Firefangledfeathers (talk | contribs) 03:01, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

There are some textbooks that use the terms interchangeably, as does the tertiary source Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Biology. I'd have deferred to sourcing in the Dioecy and Gonochorism articles, however CycoMa1 is a substantial contributor at both. Sideswipe9th (talk) 02:35, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

This isn't a discussion about Gonochorism, it is a discussion about Google-mining. About "googl[ing] random words to find sources", and then copy-pasting finds almost at random into previously-readable articles. It is a discussion of incompetence. Or vandalism. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:51, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Then you may wish to clarify this remark as it seemed to be in response to those two terms being synonymous.

As for CycoMa1's Google-mining technique, for myself it's quite understandable and easy to follow. That may be because I have ADHD and am autistic, and it fits with how my own brain searches for information. When wielded correctly, it can be a powerful tool, as many scientists like myself have used it to publish research papers and theses in the past. So I would ask that you be somewhat more understanding and aware of neurodiverse ways of thinking in general, without commenting on the specifics of this situation. Sideswipe9th (talk) 03:01, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

My remark concerning trolling was a response to CycoMa1's comment about being "the kind of guy who googles random words and see what I find". And I'm not going to get sidetracked into abstract discussions about neurodiversity, in a context where what matters (in an article that gets 30,000 readers a day) is article content. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:15, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

@AndyTheGrump: how was my comment trolling? I told you me Googling random words is merely a way for me to find sources.CycoMa1 (talk) 03:21, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

@AndyTheGrump: at this point it seems like you are misunderstanding what I’m saying.

WP:VD defines vandalism as On Wikipedia, vandalism has a very specific meaning: editing (or other behavior) deliberately intended to obstruct or defeat the project's purpose, which is to create a free encyclopedia, in a variety of languages, presenting the sum of all human knowledge.

Also you misunderstood me when I said I Google random words. I Google random words to find stuff like news articles and books.

When I find books I read about maybe a certain number of pages depending on the book. As user:Sideswipe9th said try to be understanding to us neurodiverse people.CycoMa1 (talk) 03:04, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Regarding CycoMa1's method of finding sources, regarding this content again, almost all of it was found by searching for "sexual monomorphism". That is a perfectly sound way of finding sources on the topic of sexual monomorphism. From there one needs to know how to sort good sources from lower-quality ones, and the ones he chose mostly look excellent - books from academic publishers, i.e. secondary sources that contain general expertise about the broad topic being covered. The feral pigeon one (which is a book, not a study) and the date palm one are more specific, but they are probably by experts on birds and plants, so I wouldn't necessarily consider them bad sources, just not as good as ones about birds or plants in general. I'd trust them more than newspapers or magazines, which are cited way more in other science articles than they should be, even though I don't see editors clamoring to chop that out.

I'd rather see more following of WP:PRESERVE, more careful edits. It would take a little more time, but result in a much better article than if large chunks are ripped out with little care. Crossroads ^-talk- 06:32, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

I agree with Crossroads. Chunk removal risks causing indiscriminate damage. The discussion above shows that you/we are quite capable of identifying individual statements that are wrong in whatever way. SO, we should edit or remove or replace them with better individually. That is the Wikipedia MO. Indiscriminate deletion without adequate explanation is vandalism. Plantsurfer 08:11, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

So, restoring articles to a coherent state, removing copyright violations, etc is 'vandalism' now? What utter nonsense... AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:19, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

You reverted a section with multiple sources. Are you saying that all four statements in that section were copied verbatim from the respective source. If not the text was removed without adequate explanation.Plantsurfer 12:35, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Are there further instances of copyvio in this article to your knowledge. If so, I suggest they are identified and enumerated here, so that editors who do not have access to the sources can see the evidence. Plantsurfer 12:52, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

I am not going to engage with you further until you withdraw your evidence-free and entirely unjustifiable accusations of vandalism. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:00, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

How about you both stop with the stupid accusations of vandalism and focus on fixing up the article? Andy - CycoMa1's edits were not vandalism. They were incompetent, yes, but were not made in bad faith. Plantsurfer - removing content from an article is not vandalism, it's a completely normal part of editing. If an editor has made problematic additions removing chunks of it is not an action taken in bad faith. Fixing this mess is going to involve a combination of both approaches - some aggressive pruning to remove the unsalvageable messes and some heavy copyediting of what we decide to keep. The big problem with CycoMa1 additions to this article is that they were not put together by someone with the knowledge to craft a well structured article, it was put together as a collection of random factoids and example cruft roughly sorted into sections, which naturally resulted in an article both full of an obscene amount of highly specific knowledge while failing to present a coherent story. I came here to suggest rolling back the Sexual reproduction section as I think it is unsalvageable and represents some of the worst of the issues with the added content (Confusing organisation with some information sorted by class, some by division and some by habitat; an abundance of barely connected examples and randomly placed facts; completely failing to provide "the big picture" (e.g. why does the plants section start off with some discussion of a bizarre seaweed genus?)), but I see Firefangledfeathers is already on it. 192.76.8.77 (talk) 16:44, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

By the way IP I wasn’t the one responsible for adding the mention of a seaweed genus at the start of the plant section. Plantsurfer was the one who did that.CycoMa1 (talk) 16:54, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Who added that specific sentence really doesn't matter, I could go and pick out dozens of other examples of the same thing in this article. I mentioned it because it's a good case study of the kind of content that's built up over the last couple of years. The important point is that a section focusing on presenting "sex in plants" to a general audience (who may not have any knowledge at all of that topic when they start reading) should not begin with a discussion of the one bizarre seaweed genus that is unlike anything else in the plant kingdom. That kind of information probably doesn't belong in a general overview at all and should be covered in a more detailed spin-off article, if it is going to be covered here it belongs in a paragraph at the end discussing oddball exceptions, not in the first sentence.

P.S. MOS:INDENTGAP 192.76.8.77 (talk) 17:38, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Who added that specific sentence really doesn't matter, I could go and pick out dozens of other examples of the same thing in this article.

Um earlier you said this The big problem with CycoMa1 additions

It appears like you were saying that example was my fault. Also what’s up with obsession about structure? Can someone link me a Wikipedia policy about structure.CycoMa1 (talk) 18:14, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Can someone link me a Wikipedia policy about structure. The IP editor already linked it; MOS:INDENTGAP. Sideswipe9th (talk) 18:22, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Oh okay.CycoMa1 (talk) 18:27, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

When you've contributed over half the text of an article it's rather difficult for you to argue that the fundamental flaws in the way it presents information are in no way related to your editing. Do you want me to dig out more examples of stuff that you added? I already discussed the issues with the "aquatic animals" section above, which spent over half it's text discussing how weird seahorses are while containing basically no information on everything else. When you talk about structure I hope you're not referring to structuring content in a way that makes sense and is actually readable. That is one of the fundamental competencies we assume everyone should already have before joining here. 192.76.8.77 (talk) 18:38, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Oh okay. But, can we just find ways to fix this article.CycoMa1 (talk) 18:43, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

That's what everyone is trying to do, but you keep on derailing this discussion to try and blame everyone else with your incessant WP:BLUDGEONING. Replying to literally every comment where people are pointing out flaws trying to blame others and pick holes that completely miss the point with comments like "it's not my fault, everyone else is to blame, they should have spotted I didn't know what I was doing years ago" or "I didn't write that one specific sentence you mentioned" is disruptive and is wasting everyone's time. I don't think that in this discussion you have made a single comment actually related to fixing the content of the article. 192.76.8.77 (talk) 19:27, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Agree completely with 192. CycoMa1, I strongly advise you not to be overly bent on correcting who did what in terms of adding content. You'll be plenty more constructive if you try to help the discussion on what content can be salvaged rather than try to defend yourself. Remember, no one is participating in this discussion because they want you to be further sanctioned or anything, we're all just trying to improve the article to the state we feel it needs as a highly trafficked and important page :). A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 18:16, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

The "bizarre seaweed genus" is all over our beaches. It is there because it illustrates a stage in evolution of plants that precedes sexual differentiation - i.e. there is sex with identical gametes, not differentiated into male and female. The first sentence of the article states "Sex is a trait that determines an individual's reproductive function, male or female". Well here is an organism that reproduces sexually but does not do male or female. You guys really need to bone up on plant sex - it is much more interesting than the animal stuff. Plantsurfer 18:51, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

I don't think there's a lot of bone in plant sex, Plantsurfer :P A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 18:57, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

very punnyPlantsurfer 19:01, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

And how on earth is a reader supposed to pick that up from a contextless mention at the start of the paragraph on plants? If the species illustrates a stage in evolution then the article should explain that it illustrates a stage in evolution, and this content should be presented in context in the section on the evolution of sex where it makes logical sense. You shouldn't need to have a large body of background knowledge on plant biology to realise why something has been added and understand the subtleties of it's inclusion, this is supposed to be a general purpose encyclopaedia. I believe it was Giano who said that the ideal featured article should be understandable by "an intelligent fourteen year old". Simply dropping stuff in because it's unusual or interesting results in an article full disjointed facts and examples cruft. 192.76.8.77 (talk) 19:11, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

The solution to that isn't to rip out material one feels is poorly presented, risking its total disappearance, but to put the effort in to present it better, via reordering and context if needed. As WP:PRESERVE states, Wikipedia is a work in progress and perfection is not required. As long as any of the facts or ideas added to an article would belong in the "finished" article, they should be retained if they meet the three article content retention policies (V, NPOV, NOR). Crossroads ^-talk- 05:42, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

Bizarre algae

@Firefangledfeathers If you want to avoid algae and the vagueness of 'most', it is true to say that all land plants have specialized male and female gametes. Plantsurfer 20:19, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Does the specific "bizarre seaweed" in question actually belong to Plantae, or is it part of Protista? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:39, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

It belongs the Division Chlorophyta in the unranked clade Viridiplantae that includes all land plants. Protista is merely a ragbag collection of all sorts of unrelated stuff Plantsurfer 12:48, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

So not really what a normal person calls "a plant". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:04, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

WP is here to educate the normal person, who or whatever that is. If you read the article Viridiplantae, you will find the following statement:

.... "But it is accurate to think of land plants as kind of alga."(sic) Plantsurfer 17:25, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

In the same way that it is accurate to think of a bird as a kind of dinosaur, or to suggest that there may be no such thing as a zebra, per S.J. Gould's Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes? I'd have to suggest that if Wikipedia is going to use words like 'plant', and to educate readers about them, it should probably try to do so in a manner that actually explains why scientific definitions differ from those used by those not so well-versed in cladistics. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:41, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

Good point, but that is outside the scope of this article, and is discussed elsewhere on WP. Plantsurfer 17:55, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

If we write that only "most plants" do this, we can predict that normal readers will interpret this as meaning that some plants do not. Their understanding of plants is what a specialist will call a "land plant". They will therefore incorrectly believe that Wikipedia Says™ some land plants do not. This is misleading. The sentence should use the word plant in a way that aligns with the most common understanding of that word, or first define the terms so that readers have been told that the word plant doesn't mean what they think it does. If you want to signal to the experts that you're talking about land plants specifically, then link to land plants. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:05, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Also, if may be accurate to think of land plants as a kind of algae, but that doesn't mean that it's accurate to say that algae are plants. That latter point is the one that would have to be true for us to be saying that plants don't all have specialized male and female gametes because algae don't. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:20, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

This is adequately discussed in the articles Plant and Viridiplantae. These articles represent the consensus of current opinion on the matter. Plantsurfer 21:37, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

We can't assume that people will read those other articles when they're reading this one. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:28, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

No, of course. The wording has changed slightly since this thread began, so perhaps you would like to edit the bits where you feel problems still remain.Plantsurfer 13:55, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Clarity

I'm concerned that the article's reading age may be wildly inappropriate for its likely audience. Would anyone object if I began a series of edits to try to reduce the reading age (particularly of the lede) without intending to change any meanings?—S Marshall T/C 19:40, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

As a general principle, I'd have to suggest that rewriting articles for a 'likely audience' shouldn't be done without first stating what you think the 'likely audience' is, and why you think so. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:35, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Well, I've just done an online Flesch-Kinkaid test by copy/pasting the lede of this article into this tool. The output was: Flesch-Kincaid grade level 13.7; Flesch reading ease score 28.3; reading level college graduate ("very difficult to read"). I'd agree with that assessment. The article clearly has primary authors who're accustomed to writing for undergraduates and/or adults in the top quartile of reading attainment. But, I put it you, the people who're consulting Wikipedia's article about sex are not necessarily in this category: we should be writing for a general audience. The lede in particular should contain a simple explanation of what sex is that could be understood by a curious child.—S Marshall T/C 21:19, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

• I was going to go ahead and tentatively change a couple of sentences, but then I found hidden text in the article that specifically asks me to discuss this proposal on talk first. For readability reasons I propose to revise the first two sentences of the article to read:

Living things that reproduce sexually are split into two sexes, male and female. An organism's sex is the trait that decides what gametes it makes.

This is meant to lower the reading age while keeping all the meanings intact. I would welcome your thoughts and criticisms.—S Marshall T/C 15:56, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Usually articles begin with "[Name of article] is..." Not always, but I don't know if this is such a big problem that it should be changed. I don't think we usually go for child-level readability, do we? Might it be better to tweak other parts of the lead? This sentence took a lot of time and back-and-forth to hammer out. Crossroads ^-talk- 05:54, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Yes, that shows. Most people don't naturally write sentences that convoluted. On Wikipedia, such sentences mainly come about after a hard fought negotiation in which people want the article to start with different things. But I don't want to change what the first two sentences say. I only want to change how they say it.—S Marshall T/C 09:54, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

I propose that the first two sentences be combined into the following:

Sex is a trait in sexually reproducing animals and plants that determines whether the gametes produced by an individual are male or female.

"animals and plants" could optionally be replaced by "organisms". Plantsurfer 10:21, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Awesome! Rephrased into the active voice that might read:

Sex is a trait in sexually reproducing animals and plants that determines whether an individual produces male gametes or female ones.

I prefer "animals and plants" over "organisms".—S Marshall T/C 10:29, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

P.S. I'm intrigued. Why are we not saying "Sex is the trait..."?—S Marshall T/C 10:36, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

yes, that would indeed be better imo.Plantsurfer 10:58, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Any objections to

Sex is the trait in sexually reproducing animals and plants that determines whether an individual produces male gametes or female ones.

? Plantsurfer 13:55, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Male and female aren't merely gamete types, though; they are types of the trait itself. How about this: Sex is the trait that determines an individual's reproductive function, male or female, in animals and plants that reproduce sexually. Or: Sex is the trait that determines an individual's reproductive function, male or female, in sexually reproducing species. Crossroads ^-talk- 01:33, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Again, "an individual's reproductive function" is academic-level English. We all might be able to parse a recondite disquisition phrased in that certain delicious sesquipedalian loquaciousness that is the usufruct of an erudite and scholastic education, but... in newspaper-level language please. How about "a creature's job as parent"?—S Marshall T/C 11:00, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

A lot of WP articles are written in academic gobbledygook because that’s the level of many contributors to “serious” subjects, just like how many companies/orgs are written in promocruft and many articles about topics English speakers generally don’t care about are written by people who definitely do not speak English at a professional level. Dronebogus (talk) 11:45, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

That's certainly true! The task of an encyclopaedist is abridgement: to summarize complex topics for the general public. I think we need to use language at different levels depending on the topic. So for example, it's reasonable to use scholar-level language in Casorati–Weierstrass theorem, because the general public are pretty unlikely to search for that. It's an article by mathematicians for mathematicians. In vital articles like this one, we should be comprehensible to everyone but a moron in a hurry (which is my third-favourite bluelink on Wikipedia). One of the challenges is that proper scientists (quite rightly) have a zeal for rigour and precision, and this leads them to insist on a level of terminological exactness that can be obfuscatory or off-putting for non-scholars.—S Marshall T/C 15:30, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

I like this simpler wording. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 12:18, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. Dronebogus (talk) 12:25, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

I don't know if it's too late to comment, but I did like the previous wording better. From what I understand, sex in evolutionary biology is much more than gamete production. If we're trying to present Sex as it relates to the concept in biology (i.e., evolutionary biology), sex is more about reproductive functions than it is about gamete production.

With respect to other editors, although we should balance clarity with correctness, it behooves me to ask who would search on Wikipedia for the term, 'sex,' unless they were intimately interested in a correct definition. A layman, everyday working definition for, 'sex' exists in almost all cultures and even foreign language readers, I hope, can translate their understanding of the word, 'sex' in their language, to the concept of 'sex' in the English language. When we're talking about gamete production for humans as for example teenagers might be interested in, so many other pages on Wikipedia cover this very topic including Man, and Woman.

In addition, simple wikipedia does exist.

I found this page extremely useful when trying to determine the actual meaning of the word, 'sex', when it relates to the technical, scientific, concept. When we claim that, 'sex' is synonymous with gamete production, we dilute the term and this isn't helpful when articles such as these exist. This page deeply helped me understand what the word 'sex' actually means, and by changing the lede we're denying that to other readers. Theheezy (talk) 18:16, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Autoconfirmed talk page?

If there's no precedent for making talk pages available only to autoconfirmed users, the recent spate of mischief here might be a good cause to establish such a precedent. Otherwise, what's the procedure for seeking and applying auto confirmation to this talk page? --Kent Dominic·(talk) 04:27, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Article talk pages are semi-protected occasionally, but there has not been enough disruption here. I suspect that a lot of IP comments at Wikipedia in the last few months are from experiments with bots and I use rollback to remove them (assuming they really are off-topic). The procedure is to ask for protection at WP:RFPP but there would have to be several nonsense posts per day for a few days to get any action. Johnuniq (talk) 05:11, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

IMO any edit from an IP to a talk page that creates a new heading with less than 5 words under it should be reverted by a bot (rather than autosigned as at present). These are invariably something stupid and it's not possible to say anything worthwhile about the page in under 5 words. Won't get all the trolling but it does happen that way on other pages too. Crossroads ^-talk- 06:18, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Gotcha. This article had been off my watchlist for a while, and I was troubled to see the numerous instances of mischief posts that were rightfully deleted. This talk page is proof that unfettered access comes with expected inconvenience. Ce la vie. BTW, the current lede Version 4.2 is tons different from the one I worked on, and it's simpler than the definition in my own lexicon, which has verbiage re X and Y chromosomal norms and deviations. Any lede is way better than the one I found here last year. If the current lede proves to be stable, I hope to revisit my original plan to link this article to my own lexicon while scrapping the definition I created in my readers' behalf. Kent Dominic·(talk) 13:24, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

• Hey, I wasn't able to edit Talk:Race and intelligence until today, when I got autoconfirmed. So there's some precedent for it. Happy (Slap me) 16:27, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Third paragraph

The terms male and female typically do not apply in sexually undifferentiated species in which the individuals are isomorphic (look the same) and the gametes are isogamous (indistinguishable in size and shape), such as the green alga Ulva lactuca. Some kinds of functional differences between gametes, such as in fungi, may be referred to as mating types.

— Current text

I suggest a revised version:

Some living things lack sexes. Certain species reproduce asexually. In others, such as the green alga ulva lactuca, where individuals are isomorphic (look the same) and the gametes are isogamous (similar in size and shape), the terms male and female are not used. Biologists sometimes describe them in terms of mating types.

— Proposed text

Your thoughts, please?—S Marshall T/C 17:49, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

S Marshall I like this change as it is much clearer to the average reader. :) — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 08:36, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

I agree that your proposed change is better, but the lead starts from the prejudiced position that organisms produce either male or female gametes. I am pleased to see that "or both" has been added recently, but "or are undifferentiated" is the fourth position that should be made clear in the first sentence. This male or female starting point results in problems with the sentence: "Males and females of a species may have physical similarities (sexual monomorphism) or differences (sexual dimorphism)...." because sexually monomorphic species are neither male or female, yet reproduce sexually. Plantsurfer 10:11, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

@Plantsurfer:

I agree.

But in order to include "or are undifferentiated" in the lead sentence while maintaining brevity and readability, we need experienced copyeditors who are expert in making concise sentences.

Help of such experts can be requested from WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors. — CrafterNova ^{[ TALK ] [ CONT ]} 18:44, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Fourth paragraph

The sex of a living organism is determined by its genes. Most mammals have the XY sex-determination system, where male mammals usually carry an X and a Y chromosome (XY), and female mammals usually carry two X chromosomes (XX). Other chromosomal sex-determination systems in animals include the ZW system in birds, and the X0 system in insects. Various environmental systems include temperature-dependent sex determination in reptiles and crustaceans.

— Current text

I'd suggest something along the lines of:

There are several sex-determination systems. Most mammals have the XY sex-determination system, where male mammals usually carry an X and a Y chromosome (XY), and female mammals usually carry two X chromosomes (XX). Other chromosomal sex-determination systems in animals include the ZW system in birds, and the X0 system in insects. Various environmental systems include temperature-dependent sex determination in reptiles and crustaceans.

— Proposed text

I am not at all attached to how I have proposed to phrase the first sentence. But I am not happy with the current first sentence which reads: "The sex of a living organism is determined by its genes." That is only trivially true; the sex of an organism with an environmental sex determination system is determined by the genes that lead to it having an environmentally determined system, and the sex of organism with a chromosomal system is determined by the genes that are (usually active) on given chromosome(s).

In the current text, sex-determination system is only linked in the third sentence as "Other chromosomal sex-determination systems in animals...". The link to sex-determination system should be in the first sentence, and in my proposed text I have replaced it in the third sentence with a link to a section:[[Sex-determination system#Chromosomal systems|chromosomal sex-determination system]]. Sex-determination system is really topic the fourth paragraph is dealing with, and that should not be buried three sentences in, after introducing XY sex-determination system. Plantdrew (talk) Plantdrew (talk) 02:06, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree with this change. The sex of many organisms with environmental sex determination systems isn't really determined by their genes, it's determined by their environment (except in the trivial way you've already mentioned). Loki (talk) 07:30, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I also support this change. @Plantdrew, would you make the edit? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:37, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

 Done Plantdrew (talk) 21:50, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Suggestion for Leading sentence and section

Remove: "Sex is the biological trait that determines whether a sexually reproducing organism produces male or female gametes."

"Sex is the biological trait"- This is not accurate sex etymologically & connotatively refers to divisions/sections.

Male and Female were originally used to refer to men and women in the general sense before being adopted in biology [for physical and physiological traits].

"Determines whether a sexually reproducing organism produces male or female gametes." This isn't necessarily the case as not all sex traits determine the type of gamete produced. The second paragraph of the suggested change provides why reproductive traits were the basis. The focus on reproductive traits is arbitrarily done as for consistency purposes there are clearly other facets of biological sex independent of reproductive ones.

The below suggestion is meant better align with how scientific organizations, journals, and papers both have been and currently are defining sex which really isn't different for humans or animals as was previously suggested in this talkspace. When talking of animals papers can also specify sex just as is often done with humans.

Suggested Change:

Biological sex refers to categorizations (male, female, and intersex) based on attributes that delineate distinct traits exhibited by organisms within each segment of a species and can be classified along a continuum using various schemes and criteria. Organisms can display traits that span the established divisions, and these traits can also be subject to change over time.

Gamete typology and chromosomes are often used for scientific purposes to determine an individual's biological sex for a consistent basis across species as they are often deterministic of sex. However, it is essential to recognize that these factors, among others, represent correlative facets of an individual's overall sex profile. For a more holistic determination of an individual's biological sex, a comprehensive and nuanced assessment of their dimorphized attributes or lack thereof is necessary.

References

Editor0525 (talk) 21:23, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I think you probably want to read about Etymological fallacy. It doesn't really matter what the origin of the word is.

I also think you should consider this subject from the POV of evolutionary biology on a geological timescale, and without focusing so much on the present generation of humans. There is no "continuum" between sperm or egg and no viable gamete that is mostly one but partly the other. We need to write something that is equally relevant to chickens and cockroaches and clams.

This article isn't about "an individual's overall sex profile." It's about the division of gamete production that makes Sexual reproduction possible. The article about whether various visible traits are associated with sperm or egg production is at Sexual dimorphism (as well as Sexual dimorphism in humans, etc.). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:54, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

If the article is specifically discussing sex as it relates to reproductive sex then shouldn't that be the Main title. (Sex (Reproductive)). The citation referenced for the current definition are also solely in regards to reproductive sex.

Also, I included the etymology of the word along with citations of its customary usage to demonstrate the consistency in how biological sex has been defined, as there exists laymen debate over the definition being changed or being strictly about reproduction. The continuum I refer to are sex profiles as a whole rather trait specific. Editor0525 (talk) 07:49, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

That would be to put the cart before the horse. Sex is primarily about reproduction, so that needs no qualification. Plantsurfer 10:10, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

"Sex is primarily about reproduction" is a factual claim that needs to be sourced. We have plenty of sources that say that sex is at least not primarily defined by reproduction, and they tend to be more recent than the sources that disagree. Loki (talk) 18:44, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

I could accept having Sex (disambiguation) renamed to this title. People may be posting these human-centric, opposite-of-gender suggestions here because they are simply not finding the articles that cover the subjects that interest them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:45, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

To clarify:

1.) While our conception of traits as sex traits arises from their potential to confer reproductive advantages or faculties. The primary purpose of sexing organisms is to effectively communicate their observed trait differences, irrespective of whether would effectively aid in or facilitate reproduction.

2.) Sex is classified on trait-by-trait basis or holistically. No single trait defines an individual’s entire sex. This is true regardless of biology field.

3.) "Sexes refer to the categories male, female, intersex, or hermaphrodite based on various attributes that delineate distinct traits exhibited by organisms within a species". This definition should be applicable across species.[17][12] Inclusion of the second sentence would just be for added clarity "organisms can display traits that span the established divisions, and these traits can also be subject to change over time." For the 1st sentence due to the extensiveness of the citations, I'd recommend excluding the dictionaries and out of the rest, keeping:

[6] (Discusses Genotype & Phenotype relationship),

[12] (Discusses importance),

[17] (Discusses use in animal and human research),

[9] (States authors should clarify methods (measure)),

[5] (Discusses use in human research)

[18] (Discusses history of the terms use in biology).

"When it comes to gametic sex" can be then be used to bridge into "male organisms produce small mobile gametes (spermatozoa, sperm, pollen), while female organisms produce larger, non-mobile gametes (ova, often called egg cells)."

The rest of the article should be fine as is. Editor0525 (talk) 20:55, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

I don't think this is true. For example:

• The primary purpose of sexing organisms is to effectively communicate their observed trait differences – Whose primary purpose? Communicate to whom? Is anybody out there communicating trait differences about clams? Which differences? If you're breeding livestock, do you really care about "observed trait differences" in general, or do you specifically care whether this chicken is the type that lays eggs?
• No single trait defines an individual’s entire sex. – Please name several sex-based traits in hens that aren't related to egg production and actually matter to a chicken farmer. If you can't, then your claim is false.
• irrespective of whether would effectively aid in or facilitate reproduction. – Can you explain how you think a trait that is both sex-based and irrelevant to reproduction matters in evolutionary biology? Remember, this is a field that classifies species solely according to their ability to interbreed, and classifies sex not in male vs female vs intersex, but instead as male vs female vs environment.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:05, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

"Whose primary purpose? Communicate to whom?":

Anyone, be it yourself or others, if you're discussing an organism's sex you are describing or characterizing and distinguishing them from the other sexes.

"Is anybody out there communicating trait differences about clams? Which differences?":

Yes, there are many differentiations of the sexes of clams:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00227-010-1398-4

https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/164/2/603/6050281

http://ssswxb.ihb.ac.cn/en/article/pdf/preview/10.7541/2021.2019.195.pdf (needs to put into a translator)

https://koreascience.kr/article/JAKO201505555186841.pdf (needs to put into a translator)

"[An organism's sex is not holistically defined by a single trait]", is a clearer and more precise way to express the idea that I wanted to convey. So, if you have an organism that possesses mostly male traits it would be inappropriate to classify their whole sex as female. A farmer may ID an animal along whatever lines he needs to but if he's basing it off of one trait it's still only based on trait. Arching back to what I said before: "Sex is classified on trait-by-trait basis or holistically."

"a trait that is both sex-based and irrelevant to reproduction matters in evolutionary biology" This is not what this says: "irrespective of whether would effectively aid in or facilitate reproduction." Example of what I mean: A Holistically female (ie. most of their traits appear female) individual without ovaries, the individual is still female overall irrespective of whether can reproduce (Notice how I use the word 'effectively' and address in the prior sentence where our conception of sex traits comes from). This does not mean evolutionary biology does not base sex on reproductive characters. Also, evolutionary biology is not the only field of biology.

Also, the environment is not a sex. "Environment" refers to the surroundings or conditions in which living organisms exist. It may determine sex, but it is not a sex.Editor0525 (talk) 20:19, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, with all due respect here, I don't think we should be basing the article on sex in general in all living organisms on the perspective of chicken farmers. Loki (talk) 02:28, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

No, I don't think we should do that either. But I think that we need a general definition that includes all of these perspectives, and these human-centric ones that are primarily focused on "Do I put an F or an M or an X in the official form?" are not achieving that goal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:48, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

I don't think a perspective that isn't designed around whether a chicken will produce eggs is necessarily human-centric?

Like, if you just go over from chicken farmers to cow farmers you'll find that reproduction is no longer the top trait they care about: instead, it's that female cattle produce milk and are generally pretty docile, while male cattle are much more aggressive and also have sharp horns. Reproduction is in there (it's the reason they keep any bulls around given the difficulty) but it's not the top consideration. Loki (talk) 03:00, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Sex is about primary sex characteristics. What you are talking about is Secondary sex characteristics. There is a separate article about that.Plantsurfer 10:49, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

This is not correct. Sex encompasses both primary and secondary sex characteristics. The words primary and secondary mean the order in which they appear:

"Primary" sex characteristics are the first to develop, while "secondary" sex characteristics typically appear later, often during puberty.Editor0525 (talk) 12:20, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Determining an individual's sex could involve looking at both primary and secondary sex characteristics, but that's not what the concept of sex is about.

Maybe this will help: Pretend that I have discovered this morning a large colony of magical dragons. It is a completely new-to-science class in the phylum Chordata. I happen to have noticed that there is visible dimorphism, with half of them being bigger and hornless, and the other half being smaller with horns. I assume that this dimorphism is sexual dimorphism.

I come to you and ask: What information will you need to know to decide whether the bigger/hornless ones get labeled "male" and the smaller/horned ones "female", or the other way around? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:46, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Primary sexual characteristics serve as a foundational framework for achieving high consistency when distinguishing sexes across species because primary characters typically determine the rest and there is little or less variability with primary characters. Nevertheless, the classification of an individual takes into account the both primary and secondary sexual traits, ensuring a comprehensive and accurate assessment of their sex. (This was addressed in my original suggestion)

Imagine I find both individuals with your dimorphism to be genetically and anatomically male but then I look at some more of the same animal and find that the larger hornless ones are generally female across the board. So now I want to describe the first large hornless individual as being genetically and anatomically male & female in their morphology.

If sex is only about classifying organisms along the lines of their primary characters than things like ‘morphological female’, ‘hormonal male’, ‘neurological male’, ‘female appearance’, ‘anatomical male’ and more don’t make sense. All of which are used throughout biology literature.

If you assert that secondary characters are not considered in the classification of sex, I kindly request reputable references supporting this claim.

The below definitions are not necessarily mutually exclusive, as secondary sex traits can contribute to reproductive success. However, even when considered exclusively, the concept of sex can be defined with precision in specific contexts. So such definitions would not be supportive:

"are divided on the basis of their reproductive functions."

"divided according to the function they have in producing young.[8]

"Sex is a biological construct premised upon biological characteristics enabling sexual reproduction." Editor0525 (talk) 20:21, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

My question is not about how to classify an individual. We are looking at two reasonably consistent groups dragons, each representing about half the dragons in the colonies. I have created a representative Biological illustration of each of the two groups, and I'm asking you: Is this the picture I should label "typical appearance of the males" in my species monograph, or is this picture the one I should label "typical appearance of the females"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:28, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

The classification of a trait as being linked to a specific sex is determined by its typical association with other sex-related characteristics. To ensure consistency across species, the foundational criterion for sectioning the male and female sexes relies on reproductive function. In practical terms, sexes are distinguished and defined based on a range of criteria associated with each sex, allowing for a comprehensive classification.

Without information about how an organism's morphological dimorphisms align with traditional foundational criteria for classification, determining the sex of the dimorphisms as male or female or other relative classifications is not feasible. Editor0525 (talk) 23:10, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

I notice that you said the foundational criterion, in the singular. What is that sole "foundational criterion"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:49, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Gamete typology, though other characters have historically been used. This was addressed in the original suggestion. Editor0525 (talk) 18:23, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Revised suggestion for first section (underlined sections are from current article):

Sexes refer to the categories male, female, intersex, or hermaphrodite that are distinguished and defined by a range of variable attributes typically possessed by each.

Sex traits exhibit significant diversity across species, reflecting how organisms evolve distinct characteristics and reproductive strategies in response to their unique environments. Males and females of a species may have physical similarities (sexual monomorphism) or differences (sexual dimorphism) that reflect various reproductive pressures on the respective sexes. Mate choice and sexual selection can accelerate the evolution of physical differences between the sexes. These traits, while they typically coincide with reproductive functions, may not always align with an individual's specific reproductive features.

Gamete typology is contemporarily used as a basis for classifying typically co-occuring traits as male or female relatively across different species. Production of small mobile gametes (spermatozoa, sperm, pollen) is male, while production of larger, non-mobile gametes (ova, often called egg cells) is female.[4] Production of both types of gamete is called hermaphroditic.[3][5] During sexual reproduction, a male and a female gamete fuse to form a zygote, which develops into an offspring that inherits traits from each parent.

The terms 'male' and 'female' typically do not apply in sexually undifferentiated species in which the individuals are isomorphic (look the same) and the gametes are isogamous (indistinguishable in size and shape), such as the green alga Ulva lactuca. Some kinds of functional differences between gametes, such as in fungi,[6] may be referred to as mating types.[7]

Move to Sex-Determination Systems:

There are several sex-determination systems. Most mammals have the XY sex-determination system, where male mammals usually carry an X and a Y chromosome (XY), and female mammals usually carry two X chromosomes (XX). Other chromosomal sex-determination systems in animals include the ZW system in birds, and the X0 system in insects. Various environmental systems include temperature-dependent sex determination in reptiles and crustaceans. Editor0525 (talk) 20:59, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm going to tell a story, because I think that might help. Years ago, a friend was teaching high school biology, and they'd reached the point in the curriculum in which the students were learning about the Central dogma of molecular biology. One of the things that impressed me was that most of a week's worth of lectures could be boiled down to a single learning objective: Students will be able to state that you can't start with a protein and go ("backwards") to DNA. That's it. Thousands of words, and the goal was one sentence.

We're IMO in a similar position for this article. Thousands of words, and the goal is just: the ones that make sperm are the males, and the ones that make eggs are the females. This explains, among other things, why the "pregnant" Syngnathidae are called males. At the end, we want the reader to say "Okay, if it makes sperm, then I guess it's male".

So with that context in mind, I have the following specific comments about your proposal:

• Intersex is not a gamete type, and is therefore irrelevant. Intersex is about individuals. This article is not about individuals.
• It is wrong to say that these categories are "defined by a range of variable attributes typically possessed by each". As we have just agreed, they are defined by a single foundational criterion.
• It is confusing to say that these categories are "distinguished...by a range of variable attributes typically possessed by each", as that leads readers away from the main point of the article. Again, the main point of the article is "Sperm = male, egg = female, both = hermaphrodite". The main point of the article is absolutely not "How do I figure out whether that person is really male?" or "It's so complicated to figure out whether this individual chicken is close enough to the Platonic ideal of a male or female chicken that it's nearly impossible to decide whether it's a rooster or a hen." We just need people to figure out that the reason males are males is because they produce sperm, and the reason females are females is because they produce eggs.
• "Sex traits exhibit significant diversity across species" – or not, depending on what you mean when you by "sex traits". We'd have to explain here whether we mean things like male gorillas are bigger than females, and peacock feathers are brighter than peahens, or if we mean that there is significant diversity in sperm and eggs.
• "Gamete typology is contemporarily used as a basis for classifying typically co-occuring traits as male or female relatively across different species" – I don't think this is true. Do we really classify traits "relatively across different species"? What exactly does that mean? Is this supposed to mean something like "Male humans tend to be bigger than female humans, so that's a masculine trait"?

WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:14, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

But sexes in general aren't defined by a single foundational criterion, and the sources are already pretty clear about that. So for instance, if sex was defined by gametes, do (human) women past menopause have a sex? It seems transparently obvious that they do, but they don't have any gametes, so if gametes was the foundational definition of sex they can't possibly have a sex.

Which is to say, reproductive sex is only one of the several senses that the word "sex" can take. It happens to be a particularly useful one for defining sex across species, but it's not the single foundational definition of sex, because there is no such definition.

Biologists talk about different types of sex in different contexts and while those types are normally defined so that they will usually agree with each other, biology is complicated and they don't always agree. A biologist that is mostly concerned about comparisons across species will mostly use reproductive sex, but other biologists working in other contexts will not.

And again, the sources agree here: all the recent sources I've been able to find use a multifactoral definition of sex. So this whole discussion is somewhat WP:OR. Loki (talk) 20:42, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

1.) "It is wrong to say that these categories are "defined by a range of variable attributes typically possessed by each". As we have just agreed, they are defined by a single foundational criterion." We are not in agreement on this. When I stated the it was I was foundational I did not state that sex is always defined solely along the along the lines of gametes I explicitly stated the opposite. Gametes define whether sex TRAITS are classified as male or female. This still fits that sex is "defined by a range of variable attributes typically possessed by each [category]"

2.) Why claim that this article's main point is about one aspect of sex when it speaks of sex in general. The article is titled 'Sex' not 'Gametic Sex'. The article contains an abundance of discussion about non-gametic sex traits without contextualization around how they relate to gametes.

3.) "We just need people to figure out that the reason males are males is because they produce sperm, and the reason females are females is because they produce eggs." The whole sex of an individual is not dependent on whether they produce gametes. Defining the entire sex along any one trait when discussing sex in general is not accurate and leads misconceptions and exclusivity.

4.) The word "relatively" was inserted to convey the categorization of traits being carried over to other species relative to gamete type produced. Your point here is fair as the sentence could be revised be less confusing. Editor0525 (talk) 21:23, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

5.) "Sex traits [may] exhibit significant diversity across species" fixed. Editor0525 (talk) 21:29, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Revision: "For consistency, gamete typology is contemporarily used as a basis for classifying traits that tend to co-occur with the types of gametes produced as male or female across different species." Editor0525 (talk) 21:53, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

@Plantsurfer Again, that's an assertion that needs to be sourced. Especially since we have many sources that don't agree, and say that sex is about all sex characteristics without particularly privileging any of them as a single defining factor. Loki (talk) 20:38, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

References

WP:RFCBEFORE: Definition of Sex

It seems like the discussions on this page aren't going much of anywhere, and I want to open this up to a broader pool of editors. Do people agree the following RFC phrasing is neutral?

Should this article use a multifactoral definition of sex, such as:

Sex is a biological construct based on traits including external genitalia, secondary sex characteristics, gonads, chromosomes, and hormones.

or a reproductive definition of sex, such as:

Sex is the trait that determines whether a sexually reproducing organism produces male or female gametes.

?

Loki (talk) 20:53, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

This confuses the definition of sex, with the determination of what sex a particular individual organism is. That is, the "multifactoral definition" is no definition at all. Void if removed (talk) 12:14, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Since the only complaint I've got is an argument that best fits inside the RFC and not an actual complaint about the wording, I suppose the consensus is that this wording is neutral and so I'll go ahead with it. Loki (talk) 07:56, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Is the gamete-based definition really sound and up-to-date?

Currently, we define "sex" by gametes, sourced to the OED (not a WP:MEDRS source) and a two-decade-old high school textbook.

Meanwhile, we have the following contradictory sources:

• The American Anthropological Association says as of just a few days ago that

  There is no single biological standard by which all humans can be reliably sorted into a binary male/female sex classification.

• The NIH (Office of Research on Women's Health) defines sex as

  a multidimensional biological construct based on anatomy, physiology, genetics, and hormones.

• The Canadian Institutes of Health Research defines sex as

  a set of biological attributes in humans and animals. It is primarily associated with physical and physiological features including chromosomes, gene expression, hormone levels and function, and reproductive/sexual anatomy.

• The WHO defines sex, somewhat tautologically, as

  the biological characteristics that define humans as female or male

• The CDC defines sex as

  An individual’s biological status as male, female, or something else. Sex is assigned at birth and associated with physical attributes, such as anatomy and chromosomes.

• The American Psychiatric Association defines sex as

  a biological construct defined on an anatomical, hormonal, or genetic basis

• WPATH defines sex (on p96) as

  Sex is assigned at birth as male or female, usually based on the appearance of the external genitalia. When the external genitalia are ambiguous, other components of sex (internal genitalia, chromosomal and hormonal sex) are considered in order to assign sex (Grumbach, Hughes, & Conte,2003; MacLaughlin & Donahoe, 2004; Money & Ehrhardt, 1972; Vilain, 2000).

• This piece by the Yale School of Medicine refers to a 2001 definition by the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academies of Medicine) as

  a classification, generally as male or female, according to the reproductive organs and functions that derive from the chromosomal complement [generally XX for female and XY for male].

  but also explicitly argues that this definition is outdated and should be updated.
• The National Academies of Medicine themselves in a recent publication define sex as

  a multidimensional construct based on a cluster of anatomical and physiological traits that include external genitalia, secondary sex characteristics, gonads, chromosomes, and hormones

I will say that these are all medical sources, so they're all talking about sex in humans from a medical context and not necessarily sex in animals from a zoological context. I think we might get different definitions from those sources, but even if so we should at least make clear the source split instead of just going with the sex-in-animals definition.

Because I think I'm backed by the sources, I'm going to take the NIH/NOM definitions as the clearest ones and replace the definition in this article with them. But if anyone disagrees or has contradictory sources, please do respond here. Loki (talk) 04:17, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

A lot of those are human-centric sources, which I don't think is an appropriate focus for this article. The definition we give needs to work equally well for every organism that reproduces sexually. Also, your paraphrase has introduced some concepts, such as secondary sex characteristics, that don't necessarily exist in some organisms. (Do clams have external genitalia? Do apple trees have secondary sex characteristics?) WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:18, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

For sources, consider this 2018 textbook, Biology of Sex, pp 43–44, which is non-technical in nature but still entirely focused on gametes (both the size-based egg/sperm division and the +/- system for isogamous gametes). Anyone should be able to read that text and understand it, even without a background in biology.

If you'd like something more technical, then The Biology of Reproduction by Fusco and Minelli (2019, ISBN 9781108499859) looks good, but I don't have a copy (and don't know what it says on this point, although it looks like the kind of book that will have detailed information on every possible variation).

This book, Vegetal Sex, has a good page on some of the complexities: "More specifically, sex is defined in terms of anisogamy [size difference in gametes produced]....the popular, everyday understanding of sex...refers mainly to types of embodied individuals, whereas the scientific definition bears specifically on the process of sexual reproduction". I particularly recommend this page to anyone who has thought "but what about menopausal women and infertile people, because they're not producing gametes right now?!" in a sex–gender discussion.

Also, I would like to share the title of this paper: "Sex is a ubiquitous, ancient, and inherent attribute of eukaryotic life" because it makes me happy, and it might make other people happy, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:05, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

I realize my edit introduces concepts that are not universally applicable to all organisms. However, it's really up to the sources how applicable this concept even is to all organisms. It appears many medical organizations give definitions that only apply in humans, or humans and animals, and they're no less reliable for it.

I also think that by referring to two textbooks about the biology of sexual reproduction (in context, the "sex" in "The Biology of Sex" is clearly referring to a type of reproduction and not a type of organism), you're begging the question. Of course textbooks about reproduction will define sex in reproductive terms. But that doesn't settle the matter for us, who need to define it in a general way for this article.

Now, it may be impossible to reconcile these sources, because they may well not be talking about the same thing. But in that case there's no reason to say that the reproductive definition of sex should take precedence over the medical definition of sex for the article simply called "Sex". In that case, we should figure out which article should take precedence and split off the other one. Loki (talk) 07:54, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Of course sex (the trait) has to do with reproduction. That is the whole reason for its biological existence. It's not like these types exist for no reason or just because.

All of the sources you cited are about humans and have to do with classifying sex in humans. The definition and topic here is far, far broader, yet the definition here also includes humans are humans are also eukaryotes. But for humans it is easiest to go by primary and secondary sex characteristics as a first resort, and hence medical sources focus on that. Crossroads ^-talk- 18:42, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

While my sources are human-focused, that doesn't make them less reliable. Also, several of them explicitly also say they apply to animals as well.

We need to follow the sources and it's seeming to me like the primary definition of "sex" in the sources is the broad way sex is defined in humans, while the definition used in this article is a jargon definition used only among biologists specifically. Loki (talk) 19:55, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

It doesn't make them less reliable, but you can't take a source about "sex as it manifests in humans" and generalize it to "sex" without violating NOR. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:25, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Who's generalizing? The sources are simply about "sex".

It's us that are coming to the conclusion that there are two groups of sources talking about two different things here, not the sources themselves. If you want to stringently avoid any hint of OR, you would need to just lump in all the sources together, which in this case would mean we'd go with the medical definition since there's more sources that support that. Loki (talk) 22:32, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

(I should probably clarify, I don't think WP:NOR means we can't say the sources are about different things. That's the whole point of WP:FRANKENSTEIN. But my assertion is that if most of the sources define sex from a medical perspective rather than a biologist perspective, the main article on sex should be from that medical perspective.) Loki (talk) 22:34, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

The sources aren't simply about "sex". As you noted above, "they're all talking about sex in humans from a medical context". "Sex in humans from a medical context" is not the same as "sex".

The correct process for determining the subject of an article is to decide what the scope is, not to decide what the most common meaning of the current article title is. It doesn't matter if the human-centric medical definition is the most common in your search results; the subject of this article is not the human-centric medical definition. Sex identification in humans would probably make a fine article. It's just not this one. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:48, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

You've linked to an essay when you really should have linked to the guideline WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, which defines two criteria for which topic is primary:

1. A topic is primary for a term with respect to usage if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other single topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term

2. A topic is primary for a term with respect to long-term significance if it has substantially greater enduring notability and educational value than any other topic associated with that term.

I don't think either of these is primary with regard to long-term significance, but the medical conception of sex is definitely primary in regard to usage. The large majority of sources and the large number of searches will be for that conception of sex compared to the reproductive conception of sex. Loki (talk) 23:47, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm familiar with the policy, but you've skipped the first bit: "A topic". Step one: Figure out what the topic ("the scope") of the article is.

We could make an argument that this page is badly titled. I'm sure there are quite a few people who expect to find the topic of Human sexual intercourse under this title. But that suggests renaming the page, perhaps to something like Sex (biological division) (which currently redirects here), and not rewriting the article about the basis for multicellular life on Earth be all about how to determine whether a human baby is going to produce sperm or eggs. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:30, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

I've just checked. 11% leave this article for Sexual reproduction. 10% go to Human sexual activity. Only 3.5% go to Sexual intercourse. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:33, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Here's a source that have a good explanation of sex definition: [4]. Hope it'll help to make the definition more universal. D6194c-1cc (talk) 10:30, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Also, some information about sex identification in eukaryotic microbes: [5]. D6194c-1cc (talk) 11:05, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Also, as I understand, base definition may mention that it is feature of eukaryotic organisms: [6]. D6194c-1cc (talk) 16:26, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Prokaryotes can share DNA (e.g., in ways that promote antibiotic resistance), but that's unrelated to reproduction, and therefore not related to sex. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:38, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Please post the definition here, as the page is not visible to me on Google books. Zenomonoz (talk) 21:53, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

I can see it, so I'll type out the first paragraph linked to here:

Acquiring the phenotypic characters specific to a given sex, during development or at some other point during the life cycle of an organism, is usually a complex process. Although the sex of an individual is conventionally defined on the basis of the type of gametes, either eggs or sperm, that it is able to produce (see Section 3.2.1), the phenotype of each sex is generally composed of a multitude of characters. Each of these characters can present a certain degree of independence from other sexual traits in the same organism, be subject to different developmental controls, and show different degrees of sensitivity to the environment. Sexual differentiation is therefore not limited to the development of characteristic reproductive organs and the production of a given kind of gametes, but also extends to the development of the so-called secondary sexual characters, morphological, physiological and behavioural, or combinations of these.

(This appears to be The Biology of Reproduction by Fusco and Minelli that WhatamIdoing mentioned above, FWIW. I'd like to also type out whatever Section 3.2.1 is here but unfortunately chapters 1-3 as a whole are missing from this preview.) Loki (talk) 22:17, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Or, to put it more briefly, sex is whether the organism produces sperm or eggs, exactly like this article has said for years.

It seems to have been popular for the last decade or so to talk about how extremely difficult it is to figure out whether a human is "truly" male or female, with some people putting forward expansive definitions of intersex conditions, etc., but they are mistaking the map for the territory. The actual definition of sex involves a single-criterion decision: "Does this one make eggs or sperm?" You only have to rely on things like genitalia and chromosomes and hormone levels when you can't directly inspect the gametes (e.g., because the individual is too young to produce them yet). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:21, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, but that's just not what the sources say. I've already listed plenty of contradictory sources above. Loki (talk) 23:48, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

You misunderstand what the sources say. There are different ways of how to determine the sex of individual in different classes of organisms. But all of them share the same feature to produce gametes, so that gametes of the same type cannot fuse together. That is what the sex is. In humans, male and female gametes can be determined by the X and Y chromosomes, so sex definition in humans might be more concrete. In other organisms such as hermophrodites sex definition may differ. But those differences just determine how and when sex of an individual can be determined. For example, sex in humans is determined after conception. D6194c-1cc (talk) 07:54, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Also, the cited source (by Giuseppe Fusco and Alessandro Minelli) mentions sex phenotype. Sex phenotype is not equal to sex. Sex phenotype is based on the secondary characteristics and external genitalia, whereas sex is based on the produced gametes. D6194c-1cc (talk) 08:21, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Personally I don't have much to add to the discussion, but I'd like to share my input.

• As you note, all the sources are talking about sex in humans from a medical context. In my mind, altering the definition based on these human-focused sources is speciesist (yes, I'm using this word unironically) in a very weird way. This is a level-3 vital article on a very clearly high-level topic; to generalize all organisms based on a human-specific definition is problematic.
• It feels like you've compiled a list of sources to further a specific point, considering that you do note that other potentially contradictory sources exist. As far as I'm aware, you've made no effort to compile them as you've done with the sources above, and have instead placed the onus on other editors to prove you wrong by examining sources on their own. Not that there is anything explicitly wrong with this, but the idea... it just doesn't jive with my spirit.
• I am sure that your sources can be included in the article alongside the gamete definition, but completely taking out the gamete definition (replace the definition) seems odd to me. It's not like a definition of sex based on gametes isn't verifiable—it's been verified multiple times in the body.

If I'm characterizing anything incorrectly please let me know. Cessaune [talk] 03:59, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

So, for what it's worth, I dispute point 2: I am aware contradictory sources exist because I included one above. I included all the sources I could find from web searches. The reason I didn't include more contradictory sources is that a lot of the contradictory sources seem to be biology textbooks, and I don't have easy access to arbitrary physical books.

I also kind of dispute point 3: the sources we were actually using for the gamete definition at the time were pretty weak, especially compared to the multiple WP:MEDORG sources we found for the pluralistic definition. A dictionary and a two-decade old textbook aren't very good sources for a WP:MEDRS topic, and especially not one where recent sources explicitly say the definition has been updated recently. (Obviously, the Biology of Sex source and some of the others people have found in this thread are better, and do verify that the gamete-based definition is still being used.)

I don't disagree with point 1, though I do want to say that some of the sources I found do explicitly note they are including animals in their definition. But it's just true to say they're mostly from a medical perspective and not a research perspective. I don't think that really should be dispositive but it's definitely worth considering. Loki (talk) 20:34, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

The only source arguing the definition has been (more accurately, should be) updated is the one from the Yale School of Medicine, which is by far the weakest source because it is simply an article on a university website. Medical human-focused sources focusing on primary and secondary sex characteristics have been around for decades, that's not a new thing. Crossroads ^-talk- 18:54, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

If you want to make a new page called "Human sex" that begins with a similarly garbled and tiptoey definition, that would be fair enough, but this is about sex across eukaryotes. Sex is not assigned to fruit flies at birth. Zanahary (talk) 01:15, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

I just posted this discussion to the relevant WikiProjects so we can get some outside input. Loki (talk) 20:01, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Update: the college-level biology textbook Campbell Biology by Urry, Cain, Wasserman, Minorsky, and Orr defines sex this way on page 298:

Although sex has traditionally been described as binary—male or female—we are coming to understand that this classification may be too simplistic. Here, we use the term sex to refer to classification into a group with a shared set of anatomical and physiological traits. In this sense, sex in many species is determined largely by inheritance of sex chromosomes. (The term gender, previously used as a synonym of sex, is now more often used to refer to an individual’s own experience of identifying as male, female, or otherwise.)

This textbook also very much is referring to sex from a biologist's point of view, as it goes on to talk about sex determination systems in non-human animals, and also later mentions sex in the context of fungi and plants. Needless to say, I'm starting to suspect that I was incorrect in presuming that the above definitions were the way they were because they come from medical organizations, and am instead beginning to suspect that this is a change happening all over the biological sciences. Loki (talk) 04:58, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

The next sentence appears to be "In this sense, sex is determined largely by chromosomes", which undermines the idea of it being a phenotypic description.

What I don't see at a brief glance is an explanation of why the chicken with matching sex chromosomes is called "male". (The answer is "because it makes sperm".) The chromosomes are the mechanism, but what we're looking for is why humans choose to call a rooster male despite the rooster having the chromosomal characteristics that are more commonly associated with female animals. Perhaps the "anatomical and physiological traits" that matter are the ones involved in sperm production? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:52, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree it's a vague definition but it is a definition used in a reliable source. Trying to make it mean something that it doesn't say is WP:OR. Loki (talk) 01:13, 20 October 2023 (UTC)