Talk:Epsilon Eridani/GA1

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

GA Review

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Reviewer: Modest Genius ^talk 01:28, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

Is it reasonably well written?
A. Prose quality:
The prose is mostly fine, with two caveats: 1) The early parts of the article have lots of short, sharp sentences saying 'the X is Y' and nothing more 2) Many of the sections are very long and should be split up into subsections
I think I addressed most of these. The last two sections don't have good break points, so I left them be for now.—RJH (talk)
I split up the planets section, feel free to revert if you don't think it works. Modest Genius ^talk 23:43, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I was a little reluctant to do that because of the resulting brevity of the sections, but I guess it's okay. Thanks.—RJH (talk)

B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:
The external links section is formatted as list of references, despite the fact that these items are not actually used as such. If they support something in the article, they should be incorporated into the reference list; if not the papers don't add anything and should be removed.
The two reference-style entries in the external links section were superseded by subsequent journal paper that are cited in the article, so I removed both.—RJH (talk)
Is it factually accurate and verifiable?
A. References to sources:
~~Gai et al appears twice in the reference list~~

~~The Potemine reference gives the publisher as 'Cornell University Library'. This is incorrect. The link provided goes to Cornell's mirror of the arxiv; this reference should be cited properly.~~

The Neugebauer reference is a general description of IRAS. Does it mention this star at all? If not, the reference has no place in this article, since anyone interested in IRAS can read our article on the subject (where this reference should appear).
Still not sure about this one, but not a major point. Modest Genius ^talk 00:32, 24 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

~~The Greaves reference, which currently goes to an archived personal website, was apparently submitted to ApJ Letters. If it was published, the paper should be found and substituted for this reference.~~

~~I found at least one reference whose title was given incorrectly (Whitehouse). You might like to check the others.~~
I've addressed these and checked the bibcodes for the linked Journal articles to confirm they match the titles. Hopefully they are all correct now. Thanks.—RJH (talk)

B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:
~~There are a few {{fact}} tags that need addressing.~~

I'm not sure whether arxiv papers which have not been published in a peer-reviewed journal meet the requirements of WP:RS or not. The Chinese Journal of Astronomy & Astrophysics is probably OK, but only just (I've read an awful lot of crap in there).
For the arXiv paper, I put in a brief qualification that this is the results of a simulation. There doesn't appear to be an alternative source for that information at present.—RJH (talk)
I checked - unpublished arxiv is not generally an RS, unless the author is clearly a well-published researcher in the area. I'm not going to get paranoid about it though. Modest Genius ^talk 00:32, 24 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Okay. As best I can tell, Dr. Potemine appears to be a mathematician at the Paul Sabatier University. I think he has published mathematical papers in peer-reviewed journals, so I'm not quite sure why his astronomy papers posted to the arXiv weren't also submitted. To me the paper seems on a par with a book reference.—RJH (talk)

C. No original research:
Seems fine. There was a section which was written to read like OR, but was supported in the source - I've rephrased it.
Is it broad in its coverage?
A. Major aspects:
Most things covered, see below for areas that need expanding

B. Focused:
See comment below on SETI
Is it neutral?
Fair representation without bias:
No problems I can see, seems to do a good job handling the reality or otherwise of the planets.
Is it stable?
No edit wars, etc:
Seems fine
Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?
A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:
Look good to me. I tweaked author info for one image, everything else checks out.

B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:
Images seem fine, ~~but some captions need improving. Each image should specify what is being shown, and artists impressions should be captioned as such. Nice work on the images you made yourself!~~
I've attempted to enhance and clarify the image captions. Thank you.—RJH (talk) 20:17, 21 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I did some further tweaking of my own, they look good now. Modest Genius ^talk 00:32, 24 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Overall:
Pass or Fail:
Nothing too major to fix, on hold.

Specific comments

~~I've added a few {{clarify}} {{specify}} etc. tags at various junctures. The exact queries are in comments in the article code.~~
- These were addressed.—RJH (talk)
  - I've struck this, but will need to have another detailed read to check. Modest Genius ^talk 00:32, 24 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
'Epsilon is the fifth letter in the Greek alphabet, and it was normally assigned to the fifth brightest star in the constellation' This is not true. Bayer (mostly) assigned letters to each (naked eye) magnitude in turn, but within each magnitude class the order was from the 'head' to the 'tail' of each constellation. See Bayer designation, this is also the explanation for the 'reversed' names of alpha Ori and beta Ori.
- Fixed. Thanks for the clarification.—RJH (talk)
The revised Hipparcos parallax is 310.94±0.16 mas ([1], 2007A&A...474..653V) which should be used instead of the original 1997 value. The proper motions should also be taken from the revised catalogue.
- Done. —RJH (talk)
The observation history section gives an awful lot of weight to SETI observations. If the reader didn't know better, they would think this was the main source of interest in the star. I suggest splitting the SETI information into a subsection, separate from the conventional observational history (which would be nice to expand, but not necessary for GA).
- Done. I think I've pretty much covered the observation history prior to the modern period. It just wasn't considered a very interesting star until recently. But I'll look some more.—RJH (talk)
  - Thanks. Nearby K stars were indeed considered somewhat boring until exoplanets came along. Just a random thought - is e Eri included in any of the transit surveys? Might be in SuperWASP's programme. Modest Genius ^talk 00:32, 24 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    - I checked the SuperWASP public archive, but there were no results for Epsilon Eridani.[2]—RJH (talk) 20:49, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If the star is indeed part of the UMa moving group, that implies an age of 500 Myr, ~~which should be mentioned in the discussion of the age.~~
- Done.—RJH (talk)
Given that an entire article exists on Epsilon Eridani in fiction, a paragraph or two should be added on this and {{main}} used to link to that article. The same use of {{main}} should be incorporated for the b and c planets.
- That article is completely unsourced and mostly consists of trivial drek. It just didn't seem worth adding.—RJH (talk)
  - Fair point. Same with the rather bizarre X-rays from Eridanus. I've added links to the two planet articles using {{see}}, since they have less prose but more data than this one. Modest Genius ^talk 00:32, 24 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Because of its proximity and probable planet(s), this star has been discussed as a plausible target for an interstellar probe, which should be mentioned. See eg. [3] [4]
- Yes I was a little borderline on adding that one, since any information I added would be more or less true for multiple nearby stars. But I added a sentence with sources for the interested reader.—RJH (talk)
'where an astronomical unit is equal to the average distance between Earth and the Sun' I have two problems with this statement: 1) It's towards the end of the article, after AU has been used many times already; 2) It's not quite true, see astronomical unit#Definition. Either correct it and move it to the first usage of AU, or remove it.
- Okay, I just removed it since there is a unit conversion in the lead.—RJH (talk)

Not required for GA

These are some comments of problems/things that could be improved which are not necessary to pass the GA criteria, but I thought would be useful to note down anyway.

There are several date formats in use in the reference list, and multiple forms of journal titles (eg. both 'Astronomy and Astrophysics' and 'Astronomy & Astrophysics' appear, with inconsistent linking)
- These should be fixed up now.—RJH (talk)
Whilst there are excellent images for the planetary system, the rest of the article is a bit bare. Since this is such a bright star, there should be suitable some freely-available images somewhere eg. from amateur astronomers, perhaps of the constellation or the Ori-Eri shell.
Running through the checklinks tool (see top right of this page) shows a mix of linking for references - some go to arxiv, others to ADS, and a minority to the journal web pages. This should be consistent - I think the guidelines are to link the title to the journal website and additionally include arxiv, ADS and doi links in the relevant template parameters.
- I believe I have them all set okay now.—RJH (talk)

Review placed on hold for one week

Modest Genius ^talk 05:24, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the detailed review. I think I've addressed the fact tags; the remainder will take longer.—RJH (talk) 18:09, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OK, it's almost there, just a handful of items left to fix. Modest Genius ^talk 00:32, 24 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I'm on vacation this week so I haven't had a lot of time to work on the remainder. I'll try to address them when I have more time, but feel free to fail the GAC if you feel the need. I can take it through again when it's fixed up.—RJH (talk) 20:52, 24 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nah, no problem, I'm happy to extend the time period. Modest Genius ^talk 03:10, 25 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

GA nomination passed

Righto, all my concerns have been addressed, so I'm passing the GA nomination. I'm supposed to encourage you to review one of the articles on WP:GAN to help reduce the backlog. Congratulations! Modest Genius ^talk 01:59, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Great! Thanks again for taking the time to review the article. You've been very helpful.—RJH (talk) 19:49, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.