Talk:Abnormal behaviour in birds in captivity

Peer review of 'Abnormal behaviour of birds in captivity' by Lb6578

The article does a good job of explaining different types of abnormal behaviour caused by poor conditions in commercialized captivity.

Your current definition of abnormal behaviour as a result of captivity could be improved. You may want to try providing a definition of abnormal behaviour first, and then provide examples of it in captive birds. Your lead section structure is good and covers the information you address below. I don’t think explicitly saying what the article will or won’t say is proper for a Wikipedia article. If some information isn’t relevant to the topic then it shouldn’t be mentioned. For example, when you say “this article will ignore any one-off accounts of …”, I feel like that information could be put into a “misconceptions about abnormal behaviour” section, or something along those lines, instead of addressing it as unimportant information in the lead section. Also, several of your sentences in the lead section have errors as they possess redundancy (the sentence that uses the first reference) or are run-on (the next sentence). You cover abnormal behaviours exhibited due to commercialized captivity in the lead section, but you don’t address the social deprivation information below.

When referencing facts from the scientific literature you should not say the something “seems to cause” something else. Say that the studies indicate the relationship, reassuring that science is backing up the information in the article, otherwise you should reference alternative theories for why this behaviour occurs. This would be important information to put in the article. Most lead section references are great. However, for citing a definition, it would probably be beneficial to find one that is specific to this topic from the primary literature.

You should organize your sections with headings instead of subheadings. This would make your article look better and more organized as well as letting readers know when the type of information is changing. For instance, a section could be made for common abnormal behaviours in commercial captivity. And all the subsections you’ve made so far could go under that heading. Another heading could be about social deprivation abnormal behaviours, etc. The lengths of all your sections seem good. You may want to refine them though, there seems to be a lot of redundant information in the beginning. It does not need to be restated that these behaviours are occurring in captivity. Also, in the “Cannibalism” section, make sure you avoid value driven statements like it being “a disturbing behaviour”. You may also want to include more references for your statements. It seems one of your references are used three times in the references list, this could be construed as misleading so make sure to reuse references instead of remaking them. Lb6578 (talk) 00:38, 6 November 2019 (UTC)