Talk:Dryomyza anilis/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Ajpolino (talk · contribs) 20:50, 10 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry this has been such a long wait for review (we're a bit backed up at WP:GAN). I'll be able to get to this over the next week. Looking forward to reading it! Ajpolino (talk) 20:50, 10 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ok made a first pass through the article. It's certainly a massive improvement over how the article looked before you started on it! The biggest weakness of the article now is that overuse of separate sections (in an order that sometimes seems somewhat arbitrary) muddies the flow of the article. If you can streamline and re-organize the article, I think you'll find it makes it a quicker and clearer read (and no less informative)! The second thing is that the article is often wordy and jargony. I'll go through and copyedit it, since I think it's often challenging to remove words from your own writing. Please make sure I haven't changed the intended meaning of any of the sentences. Thanks for the interesting read! I assume it's exam time at Wash U, so no rush on this. We can hold the review open as long as need be. Happy editing! Ajpolino (talk) 04:35, 13 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Ajpolino: Thanks once again for taking a look at the article, and for your understanding with the timeline! I definitely agree with the changes you have suggested--especially as far as flow, organization, and jargon go. I believe I have been able to work on implementing most (hopefully all?) of them. Please let me know what feedback you have for me from here and what else I can do to improve this page.

I ended up moving the "Reproductive anatomy" section under Mating to avoid the issue you noted with tapping being introduced too early. Let me know if you think this is an appropriate fix.

AnuBalasubramanian (talk) 00:15, 17 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@AnuBalasubramanian: Just a note to say this is on my todo list, but it may take me a week to get the time to take another pass through this. Sorry the process here is so long! Ajpolino (talk) 16:12, 21 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Ajpolino: No worries at all! Happy holidays -- I appreciate your taking the time to look through the page once again. AnuBalasubramanian (talk) 22:16, 22 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Ajpolino: Hello again! Just checking in on the status of this GA review, no rush at all. AnuBalasubramanian (talk) 22:34, 5 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@AnuBalasubramanian: Thanks for checking in! I see you did a lot of restructuring. I'll go back through in the next couple of days. Ajpolino (talk) 19:25, 7 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I merged the mating material into a "Behavior" section to make it easier for the reader to connect related topics. I also pulled out some of the detailed information you had in the "Territoriality" section; it's too bad that relatively little has been written about D. anilis behavior, so I understand the desire to squeeze a lot of mileage out of the few sources that exist. But for an encyclopedia article, we tend to go with the larger conclusions of studies, rather than citing the exact data line and verse (for an example of an encyclopedia-style behavior section, you can see the much-more-written-about Lion#Behaviour_and_ecology). If there's particular parts you feel are essential that I've removed, I'm happy to discuss them, or we can ask for more opinions at WP:INSECTS or WP:TOL. Also I pulled out some of the broader discussion of animal behavior concepts. It seems a bit broad for an article on this fly. But if you're interested in animal behavior generally, you'll find lots of room to improve articles like Territory (animal), pretty much every blue link in Ethology, and like-minded editors at WP:ANIMALS!

I'm still working my way through the article; hoping to wrap up in a day or two. Sorry for the long wait! Ajpolino (talk) 22:03, 7 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Ajpolino: Understood! I'm spending the next hour or two going through and seeing what progress I can make on this-- I know you're not all the way through but I'll do the best I can to target portions that are primarily focused on one source, and rewrite them. Thanks again. AnuBalasubramanian (talk) 02:58, 9 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Ajpolino: I've re-phrased sections from Mating on to the end of the page, deleting some sentences here and there. I'm having trouble re-wording sections of "Life History" as there don't seem to be many other ways to phrase the information provided. Please let me know if you have suggestions/if you feel like the edits thus far are effective. My semester starts back up on Monday so I would love to get to the majority of changes before this if that seems at all realistic. AnuBalasubramanian (talk) 04:09, 9 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@AnuBalasubramanian: Woo, almost done. Well this has been much more involved than I'd intended; I apologize for that. Allow me to give some unsolicited advice:

Don't copy/paste someone else's writing into a space that will become your writing. It's too easy to forget what came from the other mind(s) and what came from your own. Similarly, if you open a source and start moving technical information into your own writing, you'll find yourself phrasing things exactly as the source did. Instead, I'd suggest you read through some sources and get an idea of what they say, then craft your text from your own understanding of the topic, checking back to make sure you're not bungling the technical details.
Less is more. People get lost in long, winding text of a topic they don't understand. Help your reader by removing all unecessary words and making sure every sentence conveys some essential meaning. If two sentences contain the same meaning, they can probably be condensed into one.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written for a general audience. If your mother wouldn't understand it, neither will most of our readers (change the analogy if your mother is an entomologist). Similarly, not all information on a topic needs to go into its Wikipedia article. Our articles should answer the topic "What is Article title?". If you're Merja Otronen and you're writing ten academic articles on fly sex, then speculating broadly on the mechanisms and theoretical underpinning of sex selection is good. If instead you're a lowly, unpaid Wikipedia editor trying to teach random people about flies, then it may be a bit much.
I'm sorry this has been such an ordeal. As with most everything in life, you get better at writing for Wikipedia as you spend more time doing it. I hope having one prolonged, potentially negative experience doesn't dissuade you from contributing more. This is a good community and an accessible way to learn about weird stuff and feel useful (e.g. Now you know everything about fly sex. Also before you got here this article looked like this! So much improved!).
On a practical note, I think we're almost to GA-shape. I'd like to work on the jargon in the life-history section more so that it's understandable to a broad audience (i.e. criterion 1A the prose should be "clear and concise"), but I'll have to learn more about fly anatomy to do so. If you've got time now that the semester has started, any clarifications would be an improvement.
Also, if you feel I've been unfair, unhinged, or am slicing perfectly wonderful material from the article, feel free to push back on my edits here, or you can request another set of eyes from WP:INSECTS, WP:TOL, or help from another reviewer at Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations (that's probably the place to start). I won't be offended. If not, I'll keep chugging along on this. Hoping we can finish it up in another week or so.

That's all for now. Sorry for the long-winded message! If you have questions or concerns I'm all ears. Good luck with the new semester, and happy editing! Ajpolino (talk) 08:33, 17 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Ajpolino: Thank you! No worries at all, all of these edits and suggestions throughout have been greatly useful and I do look forward to contributing to more articles in the future. I really appreciate all of the time and energy you have spent combing through this page to improve it. I will work on clearing up the jargon around anatomical terms and post an update here when I'm all set. In the meantime, let me know if there are any other changes that you notice. I look forward to (almost) reaching GA-shape. AnuBalasubramanian (talk) 20:36, 17 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Ajpolino: Hello again! I have gone through the Life History section and removed some items (those which felt too in-depth), and clarified a lot of the other terminology included. I hope it is now an easier read. Let me know what further feedback you have for me. Looking forward to hopefully entering the final stretch. AnuBalasubramanian (talk) 21:47, 20 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@AnuBalasubramanian: Excellent! It looks much better. I also went through and trimmed the conservation section to focus on D. anilis, then merged the reproductive anatomy section into the part of the mating section where you discuss tapping. Take a look and make sure I haven't got any of the facts wrong. Otherwise I think we're looking good here. I'll take another look in a minute, then do the paperwork. Ajpolino (talk) 23:52, 22 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Ajpolino: Just read through, I don't think you've altered any of the details! Thank you once again.

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

Is it well written?
A. The prose is clear and concise, and the spelling and grammar are correct:
•Just a thought, the lead currently begins with a taxonomic note. This seems like it would be of interest only to a limited number of readers (i.e. a subset of fly enthusiasts) whereas the other material about its appearance and range would be of interest to nearly all readers. Perhaps we could flip the order so the lead begins "Dryomyza anilis is a common fly from the family Dryomyzidae. It is found through a variety of areas..." and then the taxonomic note at the end of the lead? If you feel strongly about the current setup, it's no big deal.

•"The owners were, on average, smaller than the territory owners or copulating males, respectively." - This sentence is confusing. Sounds like you're saying the territory owners were smaller than themselves. Can you reword it to clarify?

•There's a lot of jargon in the "Life History" section. Certainly some jargon is necessary to differentiate morphologically similar flies. But anywhere you could clarify jargon by wikilinking terms to places they're explained, using the wikilink text function to clarify something (e.g. [[Jargon word|layman's description]]), or just explaining a term in a parenthetical phrase wherever it's not too awkward to do so would greatly improve the readability of the article.

•"Males do not need to maximize their gain rate in each individual mating, but rather should seek to maximize their average gain over several matings." - Can you rephrase this? Right now it reads as if we're giving advice to male flies...

B. It complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation:
~~•Perhaps the "Morphology" subsection under "Description" should be renamed "Taxonomy" since that seems to be the real topic of the paragraph...~~

•Maybe the "Home Range and Territoriality" section would be better-named "Behavior".

•Also I'm not convinced you need separate subsection headings for every paragraph in "Home Range and Territoriality". It would probably flow just fine as a single un-interrupted section with several paragarphs... (though again if you feel strongly about this I probably won't fight you on it).

•I think the "Reproductive anatomy" section should be merged into other sections. Either into the morphological description in the "Description" section, the morphological description in the "Life history" section (which maybe should also get moved into the "Description" section), or the "Mating" section. It's weird that in the current configuration we hear about tapping in the "Reproductive anatomy" but don't learn what it is until the "Mating" section below...

•"Enemies" is a weirdly short section. Maybe it can be merged with "Food resources" and "Conservation" sections into an "Ecology" section? Or put somewhere. Sometimes having more sections just muddles an article...

~~•Same with the "Protective coloration and mimicry" section - It seems too short (and random) to justify a section devoted to it. Perhaps in the Description or Life History>Eggs sectoin?~~
Is it verifiable with no original research?
A. It contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline:
•"D. anilis adults are medium-sized, ranging in overall length from 7–144 mm, but are typically 12 mm long. Their coloration is light brown and orange with large red eyes." is cited to [1] which says "length about 12mm." Could you add a citation to wherever you found the "7-144mm" bit?
•Ah, pretty sure 7-14mm is meant from the "Biology and immature stages of Dryomyza anilis Fallen (Diptera: Dryomyzidae)" reference. For facts and figures, even though it can be tiresome, it's nice if you always have the relevant ref at the end of the sentence it supports (even though this may mean repeating some references several times). That way if other editors add more information to your paragraphs in the future, it'll still be clear what figures came from what source.

•I did some re-ordering in the "Home Range and Territoriality" section, in order to (hopefully) make it flow better. I skimmed the sources you cite and couldn't find mention of males defending feces as a territory. Maybe I just missed it? I left it out for now, but happy to add it back.

B. All in-line citations are from reliable sources, including those for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons—science-based articles should follow the scientific citation guidelines:
•The reference "Male contesis for territories and females in the fly Dryomyza Anilis" is spelled wrong. It's spelled wrong at the Elsevier website as well, but if you open the PDF you can see it's supposed to be "Male contests for territories..."

C. It contains no original research:

D. It contains no copyright violations nor plagiarism:
•As I've been going through more closely, there have been several instances of very close paraphrasing from sources or word-for-word copying of a couple of sentences here and there. This needs to be scrubbed from the article. I removed/reworded ones I found in the territoriality section.

An example in the mating section:
"In mating, the male D. anilis fly mounts the female, and facing the same direction as her, persuades her to spread her wings. He facilitates this process with the assistance of the tip of his abdomen and hind tarsi. Meanwhile, his fore tarsi are placed either on the substrate or on the female's head, his mid tarsi are on the substrate or the base of the female's wings, and his hind tarsi grasps the female's abdomen near the midlateral line of segments 3 and 4. Throughout the entire duration of mating, the male's wings are in the resting position."

Compare to the source (the 1984 paper you cite):
"A male mounts a female and, facing in the same direction, persuades her to spread her wings with the assistance of the tip of his abdomen and his hind tarsi. The male's fore tarsi are placed either on the substrate or the female's head, his mid tarsi are placed either on the substrate or the bases of the female's wings, and his hind tarsi usually grasp the female's abdomen near the midlateral line of segment 3 or 4. The male's wings remain in the rest position over the abdomen during mating."

It seems that often when you have an entire paragraph cited to a single source, the wording is too close to that source. Do you have time to go through and clean this up? I'm sorry to say it may take some time to go through and re-word these. I'm not sure how many examples there are yet...
Is it broad in its coverage?
A. It addresses the main aspects of the topic:

B. It stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style):
Is it neutral?
It represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each:
Is it stable?
It does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute:
Is it illustrated, if possible, by images?
A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:

All on Commons with valid-looking rationales.Ajpolino (talk) 04:50, 23 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

B. Images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:

Images are a strength of this article. File:Face of Dryomyza anilis (22297536533).jpg is particularly excellent. Ajpolino (talk) 04:50, 23 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Overall:
Pass or Fail:

@AnuBalasubramanian: The article looks good to me, so I'm going to call this review a pass. I hope you feel the article is improved from this process. This review was more involved than usual, so don't be discouraged if you felt that was more time than you expected. I hope you decide to stick around Wikipedia and help improve articles on whatever you're interested in. If you need a hand, you can always find me at my talk page. Good luck with the semester. Thanks for all your work on this page. Idk if I can un-learn all those fly sex details... Happy editing! Ajpolino (talk) 04:50, 23 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]