Talk:Slime mold

I went to the article after seeing the picture on the main page, 7/11/25. After reading the very first paragraph, which I hoped would tell me what slime mold is, I have questions:

1) Is it a plant or an animal, or neither? (The picture looks like a plant, but some undersea animals look like plants.)

2) Is it single-celled or multi-celled, or does it grow from single to multiple?

Yes, I realize the answers to these questions are probably contained in the first paragraph (and beginning of the 2nd). However, the answers are masked in impenetrable scientific jargon, with which, as a generalist, I am not familiar. Yes, I realize the scientific terms are all linked to their own articles elsewhere in the encyclopedia. With sufficient time, I could hover over or go to each linked article for explanations, but the introductions to those articles also have their own unfamiliar jargon.

I look to Wikipedia extremely frequently (and, of course, I'm nearly always directed to it from Google) when I want to learn about something. Sometimes, I get the answer immediately in plain ordinary English in the first paragraph of an article. But many other times, like this one, I'm greeted by a paragraph of text that might as well be in a foreign language, and does not clearly answer the most basic questions I--or any reader--might have.

Wikipedia has several policies and guidelines that emphasize the importance of writing an article introduction in readily understandable terms. Sometimes, however, a subject is very, very technical and the use of some scientific jargon in the introduction is almost unavoidable. But I don't think "Slime mold" is one of those subjects. And, I think the first sentence in slime mold does not really require ten instances of quite unfamiliar linked scientific jargon. I also want to point out that the very name, "Slime mold", is one that many people--not just biologists or botanists or taxonomists--but general readers, find a bit humorous and strange and would like to know just what it is. Because of that, I think this article probably gets many more views by the general public than other articles with very technical titles. That is all the more reason for readers to be able to peruse the first sentence or even the first complete paragraph and get a good idea of what slime mold is--even if they don't have a scientific background or a specialized post-secondary education that would enable them to understand words that are found almost nowhere but university textbooks and peer-reviewed scientific papers.

I ask editors of this article to please respond to my comments. Later, I can offer a suggestion for rewriting the introductory paragraph in a way that explicitly answers the questions above and makes the text quickly and readily understandable to average readers without requiring them to consult multiple--or any--linked articles DonFB (talk) 06:17, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the detailed thoughts. The first paragraph of the lead says they have both single-celled and many-celled stages; and that they are a grouping of several unrelated clades, which (you can see) do not include Animalia or Viridiplantae. There is no particular reason why an article should say "this is not an animal or plant": plenty of groups are neither. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:51, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the timely reply.

In the first sentence, where I would like to quickly learn what a slime mold is, I can understand this part:

"Slime mold or slime mould is an informal name given to a"...

The next part of the first sentence, I mostly do not understand, because I don't know the technical terms:

"a polyphyletic assemblage of unrelated eukaryotic organisms in the Stramenopiles, Rhizaria, Discoba, Amoebozoa and Holomycota clades".

As a non-specialist, I am surprised to learn, from your comment, that plenty of groups are neither animal or plant. That's new information to me, but I certainly take your word for it. I am going to speculate that many people who read Wikipedia are not aware that plenty of groups are neither animal nor plant. Perhaps you have some insight into that question.

Not being a biologist or botanist or any kind of scientist, when I read "Stramenopiles, Rhizaria, Discoba, Amoebozoa and Holomycota", it is not apparent to me that these groups do or do not include animals or plants, because the words are utterly alien to me (with the partial exception of "Amoebozoa", in which I can recognize amoeba, giving me an impression that maybe slime mold is a form of bacteria). In any case, the first sentence tells me they are organisms, so I know they're living things. In looking at the photo, I get the strong impression that slime mold is a plant, little things growing out of rotten wood, as the second paragraph tells me. So, I actually now have conflicting impressions: maybe it's a form of bacteria, or maybe it's a plant--sure looks like it. As you've explained, though, both impressions are wrong. But of course I would want my mis-impressions to be pre-emptively answered in the article itself, rather than serendipitously learning a basic fact about the topic in a chat session like this. So, in my view, the article introduction should explain that slime molds do not belong to either the animal or plant kingdoms, but rather to another classification (protists? I defer to your expertise).

The second sentence provides useful and comprehensible information--that slime molds can be either very small (almost microscopic) or visible--but the sentence also includes a couple of distracting pieces of jargon that don't increase my understanding of the topic, because I don't recognize the words:."Myxogastria" and "plasmodial".

By now, in my reading experience, some frustration is developing. In the first sentence, I encountered "polyphyletic", which seemed important but was unrecognizable. Hard on its heels came "eukaryotic", a word I've seen, but also does not impart information to me. And the strange names of five clades, also in the first sentence, offered no useful information to me, as a non-scientific generalist. They simply took up space that could be used instead for some plain English explanation about what slime molds are and what they do.

So, in the first two sentences, here's what I've learned: slime molds are alive and can be almost microscopic or visible. I have not learned if they are plants or animals, a question I'm fairly confident any reader would likely have. I also have not learned anything about their behavior (a topic mentioned in the last paragraph). These seem like fundamental facts that belong in the first couple of sentences.

Here is a suggestion for the opening sentences that I ask you to consider:

"Slime mold is a name used for a group of simple life forms that are not plants or animals. Some live as single cells, but they can also come together to form visible larger moving structures that grow and search for food."

I will defer to your expertise in the matter of accuracy, but I believe this proposed wording includes and supplements information now in the opening and affords readers a quick and easy understanding of basic facts without needing to negotiate a thicket of words that are unfamiliar and strange to them.

I have no objection whatever to the use of technical and unfamiliar terms within the body of the article. I am emphatically not suggesting that the technical terms in the introduction be eliminated from the article. Only that they be airlifted out of the introduction and replaced with plain English words that will be immediately recognizable and understandable to anyone who reads them--without the need for repeated annoying interruptions to see what multiple linked articles say. The replaced jargon can go in appropriate places in the body of the article.

I'm going to assume that you know that most people only read an article introduction; it's a minority who dive into the full text. For that reason, as explained in Wikipedia policy, introductions should be written to be as broadly accessible as possible, because that's the part of articles that most people, like me, ever see. DonFB (talk) 10:49, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

I sympathise with your concerns, but we have to make the lead as a whole summarise the rest of the article, and that is inevitably technical. I've written a simple first paragraph, at the risk of repetition and oversimplification, probably worth it for the very top of the article. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:05, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

The issue with saying "neither plants or animals" in the first sentence of the lead is that most of the diversity of life is neither plant or animal. That's why we have other, more general articles such as Animal, Plant, Life... where this concept is covered. If we write this phrase in every non-plant & non-animal article, it would seem as though they have to be plants or animals by default. It would get repetitive. For the sake of oversimplification, it's the equivalent of saying that every Asian location is "neither American nor African".

However you are right that the mention of clades and other technical names such as Amoebozoa outright is not helpful at all for generalist readers. I was actually surprised to see that there was an overly technical lead in this article, since it's not a very specific topic, so thank you for communicating this. I think we (editors that edit on biology-related articles) generally try to avoid technical terms if they can be explained simply, and when we do introduce them we try to explain them to the reader as best as possible, but there are many articles where that is not yet the case. So, these comments are useful to keep us grounded. — Snoteleks (talk) 12:15, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for commenting.

I reiterate my surprise that most of life is neither plant nor animal. I will guess, again, that most people, not being biologists, don't know that. I guess further that if someone were to read a great many of the encyclopedia's articles about forms of life, seeing in the introduction that "it's neither plant nor animal" could get repetitive. But if someone is reading only this specific article, that doesn't seem like it would be a problem. The reader would learn an essential and not-obvious fact about slime mold, which would be particularly informative if the reader is not already aware that life is mostly outside the two familiar categories. I began my first post by saying I could not tell from reading the introduction if SM was plant or animal. I can't see a reason for the article introduction not to answer that question. An entire section, "Taxonomic history", is devoted to the subject of classification. I note that a source has part of its title translated to English: "Life forms between animals and plants". DonFB (talk) 13:32, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

Aristotle divided living things into Animals and Plants; since then, von Leeuwenhoek and many others have described microscopic organisms which didn't really seem to fit in either category ... and modern genomics has told us the truth, as illustrated in the cladogram in this article, and those in many others. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:09, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

@Chiswick Chap: To be clear: I'm not arguing against statements that life exists mostly outside the two familiar categories (I have expressed my surprise at learning this). I'm simply saying that the introduction should include a brief mention of a topic, taxonomy, to which a whole section is devoted. That mention should not get into the weeds about phylum and genera and species & etc, etc. But it should inform readers, in plain English, of an essential fact about the subject: where it lies on the spectrum of life. DonFB (talk) 14:32, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

That's a very good point. Part of the early history of knowledge of a lot of these organisms, like slime molds and fungi, is essentially discovering that they do not fit into the plant-animal categories. And, since sources are available, they should be used to make this information more accessible. — Snoteleks (talk) 14:12, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

That would be for articles with a far wider scope than this, such as Eukaryote, Zoology, or Botany. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:14, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

If the sources talk about that for slime molds, it's not out of scope in the slime mold article. It's also a wide enough term that it fits here. I would say anything more specific than slime mold would be too specific (although articles like Euglena still do it), this one is just general enough. — Snoteleks (talk) 14:31, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

I slightly doubt it, as any genomics paper on slime moulds will take not being an animal for granted: indeed, the paper's reviewers would think the authors daft for mentioning such a thing. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:33, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

Well good thing we're not talking about genomics papers. — Snoteleks (talk) 15:56, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

Chiswick Chap, I think your point about "daft" is well taken, regarding genomics papers. But that logic does not apply to Wikipedia, which is not populated exclusively by PhDs and other highly educated and knowledgeable readers. I think most general readers who see this article won't scorn the inclusion of the information, because they don't have such specialized knowledge. For them, the information will be....informative. DonFB (talk) 16:19, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

Featured picture scheduled for POTD

What is it

Related Articles