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GA Review

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Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 13:02, 14 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'll take this on. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:02, 14 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

GA Table

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Rate Attribute Review Comment
1. Well-written:
1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct. (Depends on required changes to the text)
1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation. (Depends on required changes to the text)
2. Verifiable with no original research:
2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline. ok
2b. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose). ok
2c. it contains no original research. ok
3. Broad in its coverage:
3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic.
3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style). No, there's far too much detail, and it wanders. The topic is one that school pupils, both senior and junior, may look up, and the article is too complex for both those levels. The article is long enough for the problem to be resolved by splitting, leaving a generally comprehensible top-level article here, with a simple general overview (about its role in photosynthesis), and summary-style sections on the more advanced materials in main-linked sub-articles. As the article is now, it is simply going to overwhelm the general reader, let alone school pupils.
4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each. ok
5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:
6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content.
6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions. No, there are too many images, and a number are not relevant.
7. Overall assessment. Since there has been no progress for some days, and no sign of willingness by nom to make any of the suggested changes despite a clear way ahead having been proposed, must reluctantly fail this article this time around. Areas of improvement: focus and images.

Comments

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Two immediate remarks - really beautiful images, though rather large at the moment; and the article is probably too long for comfort, so we likely need to create sub-articles and leave 'summary style' paragraphs behind. I'll consider the way ahead. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:02, 14 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • The images are unusually large for a Wikipedia article. I think I understand why this has been attempted, but it gives an unfamiliar look which is not really acceptable despite the elegant graphics work. The usual limit is 300px; perhaps the lead image could be 330px by exception but images further down should use the default thumb width.
  • Most of the pictures in the article are 300px, it's the important ones (like the chloroplast ultrastructure diagram or the chloroplast cycle ones) that are enlarged. Some of the >300px images are very wide landscape-type images where limiting them to 300px would make them far too small. Most of the algae photos are 300px or less.—Love, Kelvinsong talk 15:23, 14 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That is not acceptable. I hear what you say, but the overwhelming and definite impression is of far too many oversized images. Normal images need to be at DEFAULT size with no pixel specification at all. The article will not reach GA without substantial pruning and resizing.
  • The 'diversity of red algae' assemblage of images is quite beautiful -- and far too much detail, way off topic, for this article. It might be all right in rhodophyte. Please remove it.
  • The table of contents is too deep and too long: it's overwhelming and suggests daunting technicality even for those of us happy with Scientific American. It should be limited to 3 levels.
  • Short sections (like Kleptoplastidy) - merge or remove - that one could go into dinoflagellate. We're telling so much refined detail here that I'm losing the basic plot.
  • The core terms like chlorophyll and photosynthesis are clearly fine. More specialized terms like Plastoglobuli, Rubisco and Pyrenoids should probably not be section headings - some currently have very short sections and 'main article's, so a merge, and probably briefer text here, is clearly feasible. For example, the coverage of the hornwort Pyrenoids could be reduced to the first two sentences of the paragraph without great loss.
  • The article is not going to pass GA without these changes to the article's length. I have already indicated that the sequencing is less critical, but reiterating your position on the article's length is simply unhelpful. Chiswick Chap (talk) 04:30, 16 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • For example, 'Pigments and chloroplast colours' is I think clearly a subtopic - this article is about the organelle, not about the pigments it may contain. The material should be made into a sub-article with a 'main article' link, leaving a single paragraph summarizing the typical (land plant) pigments. Readers who know what a Haptophyte is will then easily be able to navigate down for more detail.
  • Similarly, 'Protein targeting and import' is far too technical for a top-level article. The material should boldly be made into a sub-article with main link and one-paragraph summary here. Perhaps that's the 'Chloroplast DNA' split that's intended in the box? I think the circle image and one or two paragraphs should remain of the section; that may entail splitting off the whole section into a sub-article, rather than just the Protein targeting and import, but what is left should be brief and simple.
  • The sections on Endosymbiosis all need to be split off (probably as a single topic, Chloroplast endosymbiosis leaving a single, simple paragraph (it could almost just be the first paragraph of Primary endosymbiosis, actually) behind.
  • The cladogram is beautiful, ingenious, and should be about half as wide - you could I expect preserve the font size while bringing all the lines closer together.
It's a little better but now somewhat 'broken' in Firefox, and still very large by normal Wikipedia standards. Better compression by redrawing is needed.
That's strange—I designed the cladogram for firefox (though it works on other browsers too). I coded the cladogram for flexibility, so that it could compress or expand depending on the monitor width. But there's soft limit where lines start disappearing between the circles and text starts to collide. I don't think 45% width is bad at all (are "Wikipedia" graphics standards a bar to be reached or a floor to distance from?), and I don't think its a good idea to compress it further.—Love, Kelvinsong talk 23:31, 15 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • On Firefox 24.0 the label 'Archaeplastida' is crossed by a green circle, while 'Apicomplexa' is cut by the edge of the image area. The pale gray label 'Ciliatea' offers very low contrast against a white background.
  • Informality - please replace "it's" with "it is".
  • Specialized chloroplasts in C4 plants - should be reduced to one brief paragraph. The elaborate image of C4 anatomy should be moved to a target such as C4 carbon fixation as it is only tangentially relevant here.
  • Location. 'Distribution in a plant' is a starter school topic, and should be near the top of the article.
  • Function and chemistry. The topic of photosynthesis is core to the article, and must be near the top of the article.
  • The more detailed chemistry (there are way too many subsections here) already substantially overlaps Photosynthesis which is rightly marked as a main article, so please replace everything in the Photosynthesis section with a single summary style paragraph with links to ATP, NADPH, Photophosphorylation, etc, and no subheadings.
  • DNA replication is empty: either fill it briefly or remove.
  • See also - suggest we remove this altogether. If these need mentioning they should be linked in the text - stroma and thylakoid already are.
Done.

Article length and sequence

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I agree that the photosynthesis section probably duplicates Photosynthesis a lot, but I think it deserves plenty of weight in the chloroplast article, given how closely chloroplasts and photosynthesis are related. Notice I didn't really talk about the excitation/ionization of the chlorophyll molecule and other off-topic stuff, I mainly stuck to stroma molecules, proton flow across the thylakoid membranes, and thylakoid proteins. Some of the stuff like pH and the locations of various stages of photosynthesis are more closely related to Chloroplast than Photosynthesis. Either way, splitting this part off into Photosynthesis and figureing out which parts are already there and which aren't is going to be a daunting task, especially given the sorry state of the Photosynthesis article...

About the other sections, I do not think the Endosymbiosis, Structure, or Development sections should be cut. They are integrally related to the topic of the chloroplast, even the Development one which I tried to keep about chloroplasts as opposed to chromoplasts or amyloplasts. Chloroplast DNA is probably getting too big for the rest of the article, and I agree that the second part of it reeks of PROTEINDUMP. However there really isn't an existing Chloroplast DNA article to merge it into, and any article made from this section would probably go too off topic into protein import (which is fine in the larger scope of the Chloroplast).

The request was and is to split off a new Chloroplast DNA article, leaving a 'main' link and a short, simple, crisp, richly linked 'summary style' section (with the key refs only) behind. There might indeed be a separate article on Chloroplast protein import, or whatever, again leaving a summary behind.

Also there is a reason for the article's current sequence. I think it's most logical to start with the organelle's endosymbiotic history and its evolution, then into its genetics, and then its physical structure. Then it goes out into its cellular location, and then its organismal location. Then we have the Function section, and its development and reproduction section. So the article goes:

  1. Where it came from (and what organisms have a chloroplast)
  2. What happened to its genes as it evolved
  3. What these genes build (the physical structure)
  4. There the chloroplast itself lies
  5. What the chloroplast does (possibly can be switched with the structure and location sections)
  6. How it develops and reproduces itself

—Love, Kelvinsong talk 16:05, 14 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I hear this, whatever my personal preference. Your words here are far clearer and simpler than anything in the article ... you know what is coming here ... so why not take these simple clear phrases and make the article as comprehensible as they are? You are familiar I believe with Mitochondrion, a GA -- it has A FEW of your fine images, it's half as long as Chloroplast currently is, it starts pretty simply with history, and it has several summary style sections like Inner mitochondrial membrane, Cristae, Mitochondrial matrix, each with a Main article, and guess what, there's even a sub-article called Mitochondrial DNA. If you make this article like that, it'll be a GA in no time. It won't be very difficult, I think, just some splitting and summarizing. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:10, 14 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I see you are trying to insist on the lead image, but it is frankly much too complex as an introduction to a top-level subject, and it seems it is setting the wrong tone for the rest of the article - you are attempting to push through something far more complex and far more heavily illustrated than Mitochondrion, when that article is quite complex enough, and has quite enough images. Some prompt movement on this front is now necessary to avoid a quick fail. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:26, 14 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Image size

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I see that you've been removing all the specified image widths from the article. While this isn't much of a problem in some of the sections (like Structure), it's messing things up in the Endosymbiotic history section. Ironically your width removing has made some of the algae pictures bigger than they need to be (the cryptophyte-derived dinophyte one looks particularly funny). Please put the image widths back in that section. Also, I'd kindly ask that you don't touch the non-photographic pictures—for one, they look much worse with the thumbnail frames, and two, most of them (like the lead cartoon, and the thylakoid diagram, but not the Rubisco picture actually) are specially designed for the width they are displayed in the article—any other width makes the text very blurry. Ahh, the myth of the scalable SVG…—Love, Kelvinsong talk 17:50, 14 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The photographs should not become bigger, and I intentionally left the non-photos for now except the Rubisco which seems to be fine smaller - I suspect some will move into sub-articles and the rest we can think about. It isn't really acceptable to have so many such large images, it must be possible to thumbnail them somehow - at worst, there can be buttons 'click for image', after all. I'll tweak the dino. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:52, 14 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Lead image

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While I disagree that the lead cartoon is complex at all (other than making distinctions between the different types of thylakoids, it's actually quite basic in its labeling), I think its important for it to be included in the lead, and at a size where the text is readable—(the lower limit is 8 pt, which corresponds to a diagram width of 400 px). What would be acceptable for you in terms of size and content? Fewer (or no) labels? Removing the thylakoid stack at the bottom?—Love, Kelvinsong talk 23:22, 15 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with the images is many-fold. They are too large, as stated, likely causing problems on portable devices; they are too complex, which is making them actually unencyclopedic, if by that we mean suitable for a general Wikipedia audience; they are too numerous, crowding the text. The 'lead cartoon' is already above the general level, and is certainly not suitable as the way in to a top-level article, though it might possibly be usable further down after a general overview and then an introduction to the less familiar terms. You will see that some of the other images, even larger and more complex, are in these terms still less suitable for an article, while the mass of images of algae seems entirely out of scope. Chiswick Chap (talk) 03:40, 19 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Paulinella

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Not sure why you characterize Paulinella as a "weak" exception. Is it the only known example of a recent endosymbiotic event. If so, it would be better to say that, and leave out the word "weak", which sounds like an editorial value judgement. Plantsurfer (talk) 16:43, 3 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's because me and User:Sminthopsis84 decided a while ago that the chromatophore in Paulinella shouldn't be talked about as if it were a "real" chloroplast.—Love, Kelvinsong talk 18:03, 3 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well I wouldn't disagree with you and User:Sminthopsis84 on that, but the use of the word "weak" in that way conveys no information, says nothing about why, and leaves the reader wondering and guessing. Of course, now that the link to Paulinella is there, the reader can see a little more explanation, but the Paulinella article does not properly enlarge on the point you made above. I suggest that this is of sufficient interest and importance that you consider using up just a few extra words to explain. Or, if you wish, I can have a go at it. Plantsurfer (talk) 18:21, 3 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know how to say it in a nonawkward way, so feel free to take a whack at it—Love, Kelvinsong talk 18:38, 3 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Good discussion. I think that just removing the word "weak" is a good choice, and have implemented that. "With one exception..., all chloroplasts can probably be traced ... The chloroplast of Paulinella wouldn't belong in some discussions of the ancestry of chloroplasts, but I think it is fine to refer to it as a chloroplast in this context. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:54, 3 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Perfect! Plantsurfer (talk) 19:30, 3 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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