Talk:Population

"Individuals within a population share a factor may be reduced by statistical means, but such a generalization may be too vague to imply anything."
(What the hell?)
--Tyranny Sue (talk) 06:03, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Another incomprehensible sentence is the last in the "Control" section: "To control of population structure,it measures through efficient mixed-model association (EMMA) method, which corrects for population structure and genetic relatedness in model organism association mapping." These garbled sentences should be rewritten or removed. Regards, ... PeterEasthope (talk) 12:59, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

The article refers to human population. We should split it into "Population (biology)" and into "Population". First paragraph is about population in biology. Teilolondon (talk) 08:42, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree. danielkueh (talk) 02:32, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

I agree that the article should to be split. To date, I have found at least one good definition of population in human biology: . Also, other possible choices for the titles are "Population" and "Population (human biology)". D6194c-1cc (talk) 09:36, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

Probably, my suggestion about "Population" for the population in context of biology isn't the best idea either, since there's another definition of a population in statistics (which include things and events). I think, that we should explicitly add the context to each of the titles, i. e. "Population (biology)" and "Population (human biology)". D6194c-1cc (talk) 20:28, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

Also, I've found out that there are many sources about population in context of ecology: . So it might be a good idea to create an additional article "Population (ecology)". As I understand, the Population (biology) article would be an umbrella article that covers both the ecology and genetics. D6194c-1cc (talk) 09:30, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

Wildlife population

I just made a separate article for non-human populations. I did not split anything and all of what I posted is original. @Loojad:/Teilolondon - gone for 15 years, and @Danielkueh:, you are also gone years. @D6194c-1cc: - check it out. Bluerasberry (talk) 21:09, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

Currently, I can't access the sources (there are some problems with accessing foreign resources in my country). But is this topic even notable? I tried to find some information on the topic when I was investigating the possibility of additional articles, but I couldn't find any appropriate reviews or sections in books, as I remember.

But an article about Wildlife census would be a good idea, and it is, probably, notable. This source can be useful for that: . As I understand, wildlife census and wildlife population (as a species population) are mostly reversible.

Also the lead sentence might be confusing. A species population is the total number of the individuals. But the "wildlife population" might mean just a population in a specific area. D6194c-1cc (talk) 13:30, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

I found a few sources which give an explicit definition for wildlife population: /, . D6194c-1cc (talk) 14:44, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

And one more source: , but I can't say whether it is a reliable one. But it has a few good examples of what can be considered a wildlife population. D6194c-1cc (talk) 16:21, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

It has been proposed in this section that multiple pages be renamed and moved. A bot will list this discussion on the requested moves current discussions subpage within an hour of this tag being placed. The discussion may be closed 7 days after being opened, if consensus has been reached (see the closing instructions). Please base arguments on article title policy, and keep discussion succinct and civil. Please use {{subst:requested move}}. Do not use {{requested move/dated}} directly. Links: current log • target log • direct move

• Population → Population (biology)Population (biology)
• Population (human biology) → Population

– I'm not exactly sure what should be done here but this is the worst of all possible situations, because the biological use of the word is not the primary topic. If anything, population (human biology) (which perhaps should be "Population (anthropology)" is, and I'd be almost as happy with a move from population (disambiguation) to population. Or an undoing of the split of this article, which was begun in September last year. The what links here page of population shows many uses of the term that deal with humans, and Britannica treats them both as an umbrella topic. Either way, this needs much more community review. I came across this situation due to this AWB request, relating to many errant links to this article (that shouldn't be there no matter what its topic is). Graham87 (talk) 08:28, 2 February 2026 (UTC) — Relisting. TarnishedPath^talk 14:28, 11 February 2026 (UTC) — Relisting.  veko. (user | talk | contribs) [he/him] 15:20, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Population (human biology) was intended to be about biology, not about demography. And as I remember, I didn't find enough sources, that would allow me to create an article Population (demography). As for the Population, it should be disambiguation pages. I didn't move this article because it can possibly break attribution in some external articles that might have borrowed something from this article using a link that is not permanent (a specific revision) as an attribution. D6194c-1cc (talk) 08:39, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

As for Britannica, it tried to combine both demography and biology under a single article, but it's wrong. I noticed it while I was writing the article. That's why I didn't describe demography in this article. Just examine the other sources that were used in the article. I have already found some other errors in Britannica and reported about them by email, but I have never received any replies. D6194c-1cc (talk) 08:45, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

I used Britannica as an example specifically because it's one of the closest comparable works to Wikipedia (i.e. it's also a general encyclopedia). I don't know about it being "wrong"; it's reflecting common usage. Like this Cambridge Dictionary entry and this from Merriam-Webster. It's a common word; writing an article about such words can be tricky, to say the least. Also if the article is moved around, there's the matter that for most of its history it's served dual roles. Graham87 (talk) 09:15, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

I provided a few sources about the differences in the references: , . Demography deals with the statistics of a population at a given time and it's change over the time, but it's usually about geographic locations, rather than about real biological populations. Anthropology is interested in evolution of the previous populations. Genetics is about the common gene pool of a population. And ecology is about populations of different species living together and interacting with each other. Mixing all together will make a mess. Demography has nothing to do with the interbreeding members of a population, for example. D6194c-1cc (talk) 14:54, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

Support Population as in the number of people in a given community is the primary topic. LivinAWestLife (talk) 23:58, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

As per MOS:DABPAGENAME, the primary topic for the population word should be a population in the context of biology. Human biology is just a branch of biology, it's not the primary from this point of view.
And removing the "human biology" suffix will make the article ambiguous, it's bad a practice. When an editor adds some information he must be sure that he places the suitable information in the right place. Otherwise, the article can become an original research some years later (like it usually happens). D6194c-1cc (talk) 09:16, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose I think a better alternative would be to move Population (human biology) to Population in human biology, establishing that it is a subtopic of the broader topic on population. Human population may also need to be disambiguated. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 08:31, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

  Soft Agreement with this. Population in human biology was my first thought, but quite honestly I think it would be better to simply move the namespace to Human population. I get the idea behind it redirecting to World population, but I think it's better served here.

  CSGinger14 (talk) 08:53, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

• Support. I think human population is the primary topic. Rreagan007 (talk) 03:52, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

  Support agree with this. Newystats (talk) 10:54, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Sociology, WikiProject Statistics, WikiProject Ecology, and WikiProject Geography have been notified of this discussion. TarnishedPath^talk 14:28, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

• Support as proposed, it should at worst be a dab page but I think the human geography concept is easily the most important Red Slash 20:58, 11 February 2026 (UTC)
• Partial support: I agree with moving Population → Population (biology) is urgently needed. But I'd propose moving Population (human biology) → Human populations, with a hatnote: "Population" redirects here; not to be confused with Population (biology). The plural form is not uncommon and would serve as natural disambiguation for the human population, the total world population. (Although the original editor of Population (human biology) argued its scope was meant to be restricted to human biology, it always included demography and geography definitions ; so, it could easily be expanded to accommodate related concepts, such as in epidemiology.) fgnievinski (talk) 04:57, 16 February 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose second. Weak support for the first, but other proposed alternatives are also acceptable. The base term should be a disambiguation page. Looking at wikinav for Population (disambiguation) , a very large portion of views are coming from Population, suggesting that readers are not finding what they wanted there. Among outgoing views, Statistical population gets the most with World population and List of countries and dependencies by population running neck and neck with Population (human biology). older ≠ wiser 17:22, 27 February 2026 (UTC)
• Primary disambiguation. Per Bkonrad and the divergent views about what the primary topic is. It seems likely that "population" is also likely to attract wrong links whatever topic is located there, and that's far easier to catch when it's a disambiguation page. Thryduulf (talk) 18:33, 27 February 2026 (UTC)
• Support per above, population as used by humans is more primarily going to be about humans first. DankJae 20:59, 3 March 2026 (UTC)