Talk:Flowering plant/GA1

GA Review

Passed. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:53, 31 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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.

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Reviewer: InformationToKnowledge (talk · contribs) 10:54, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks for the review. I'll get to this in the next few days. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:45, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

It is reasonably well written.
a. (prose, spelling, and grammar):

"Uses" section really drags this article down: it is very messy, and cramped. List of flowering plants from various families that are used by humans seems like it would be more readable as a table. General description of materials and feed could probably be its own paragraph, and flowers in art definitely deserves its own paragraph/sub-section. "Fossil history" is more than a little confusing: it mentions Darwin's "abominable mystery" in the past tense (implying that it had been resolved), but then it only lists disputed claims and suggestions, many of them quite dated, without really explaining the current scientific opinion/consensus on the subject. "History of classification" is very cramped and confusing - it jumps from 1851 to 2009 and then to 1968, namedrops Cronquist system without explaining anything about it, and likely uses overly complex language without any simpler explanations. "Fertilisation and embryogenesis" has a missing space between the first and second sentences.
Uses: Reorganized with new headings and table.

List of uses by family: Converted to table.

Materials and feed: Own paragraph as suggested.

Flowers in art: Added.

Fossil history: Cut down radically; Darwin's mystery removed. The APG covers multiple dates both sides of 2009 so we can't avoid having a jump of some sort.

History of classification: Simplified, removed Cronquist.

Fertilisation and embryogenesis: spaced.

b. (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

As of now, a significant fraction of the article is devoted to Darwin's "abominable mystery", yet there is no mention of it in the lead, contradicting guidelines on including "major controversies" at the start. "Uses" contravenes guidelines on paragraph size/structure and excessive linking.
Mystery: As above, removed.

Uses: As above, reorganized.
It is factually accurate and verifiable.
a. (reference section):

I would prefer that more of the bibliography was used as inline citations. In particular, inline citation 84 refers to a source within bibliography. Why not just make it an inline citation in the first place? Otherwise, I cannot fault the list of references.
Moved ref 84 inline.

b. (citations to reliable sources):

The inline citations are all solid primary sources. While more secondary sources are ultimately preferred, this is more relevant for FA nominations. However, "Uses" lists 8 plant families one after the other in an information overload, yet only provides inline citations for the last two. I presume the other six are meant to be covered by sources in "Bibliography"?
Noted. Repeated ref, the two refs you mention were inserted into cited text.

c. (OR):

"Fertilisation and embryogenesis" consists of a whole paragraph supported by a single citation - and that citation is paywalled, making it difficult to answer this question conclusively. Same for the first two sentences of "Fruit and seed". Open-access sources I checked appear to be used appropriately.
These are basic topics in botany; it feels necessary to provide a brief summary of them here, supported by a reliable source in each case. Much more detail is provided in the linked subsidiary articles.

d. (copyvio and plagiarism):

As above. The citations I could check appear fine, but for all I know, "Fertilisation and embryogenesis" & the beginning of "Fruit and seed" could have been ripped out word-for-word, or it could be nothing like its source.
Noted.
It is broad in its coverage.
a. (major aspects):

Besides the inexplicably short "Uses" section, I do not believe this article can be considered complete without addressing how the biodiversity of flowering plants has already been affected by anthropogenic activity to date, and future impact from climate change and the other anthropogenic pressures.
Uses has been reorganized and extended, including a section on conservation and climate change.

b. (focused):

~~Detail devoted to "Fossil history" feels absolutely disproportionate, and is unlikely to be of interest to general reader, particularly given that a sub-article on the subject already exists.~~
Section has been cut down.
It follows the neutral point of view policy.
Fair representation without bias:

In an article like this one, there is little scope for non-neutrality. "Fossil history" may be the only one where it's not clear how representative the examples provided are.
Cut down the examples there.
It is stable.
No edit wars, etc.:

The past three months' edit history is dominated by minor and mostly stylistic edits, and the only significant discussion appears to have been about image choice.
Noted.
It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.
a. (images are tagged and non-free content have non-free use rationales):

This article features dozens of images. The five I checked at random all seemed to have their licenses in order. I presume the rest are in a good state as well, but I see no reason to check them until I see progress on the weaker parts of the article.
Noted.

b. (appropriate use with suitable captions):

Extraordinary visually appealing article with a great selection of images, and a fitting use of captions. If anything, some may argue image-to-text ratio is too high, but I won't.
Thank you, and noted.
Overall:
Pass/fail:

This article is extremely well-illustrated and is supported by many references, yet its text is lacking. One gets the impression some paragraphs were designed to avoid messing with image flow ahead of anything else. There is far too much information on taxonomy, far too little on uses, and nothing about conservation status of various plants, challenges to biodiversity, etc.
Taxonomy cut down.

Uses: reorganized and extended.

Conservation: Added.

I suggest that "Fossil history" section is halved in length (and an attempt is made to describe if any consensus on Darwin's mystery exists nowadays), while the "Uses" section is doubled - information about timber and the like should probably be in a separate paragraph from the initial list of major edible plants. That last, throwaway sentence deserves to be its own section with a title like "Flowers in fiction". A section on "Conservation" with a subsection on "Climate change" (possibly a sub-section on homogenization of domesticated crops as well) is desperately needed. I suggest that the lead is rewritten to combine second and third paragraphs into one, with the new third and fourth paragraphs devoted to human use and conservation, respectively.

Fossil history: cut down as mentioned.

Conservation: added, with discussion of climate change.

Lead: updated to reflect GAN changes.

Given the obvious effort from the primary contributors to this article to date, I am confident in seeing progress on everything mentioned above while this review is on hold.

(Criteria marked are unassessed)

InformationToKnowledge: All items to date have been addressed. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:59, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Further

This is so much better! I just have a couple more notes before I'll approve this article.

Thanks!

I really like your efforts to be representative with the examples selected for "Cultural uses". In particular, I suspect Bird-and-flower painting is something not too many people are aware of, particularly on the English version of the encyclopedia. Perhaps illustrate the section with a kingfisher painting from that page?

Added.

Now that practical uses takes up a bit more space, thanks to that table, it seems like there's a space to add one more image next to the mechanized rice harvest. I think a fully plant-based dish would go well here?

Added.

Can you explain why "Major food-providing families" table has a citation next to its heading, and then no citations for all entries...until the last two? This is what I was getting at before. The disparity just looks strange. I checked ref 70, and it makes no mention of Solanaceae and Brassicaceae, so it would be a good idea to find references for at least those two. At most, a reference for every family wouldn't be amiss (ref 70 only really mentions one-two plant per family out of the many mentioned - i.e. only carrots for Apiaceae) but I can overlook it as common knowledge.

Ah, they've reorganized their page. It's now Angiosperm/Significance to Humans, which contains the names of the plant families and more. Amended the ref. We could actually remove refs 71 and 72 as they're (nearly) redundant now.

I really appreciate the addition of a conservation section, but I think there's still room for improvement. Ref 78 seems like a good general-purpose source, but it doesn't cite any of its claims, and for something as dramatic as this, I would really like to know what they are referring to when they write "models of future plant distributions indicate that a temperature rise of 2-3°C over the next hundred years could result in half the world’s plant species being threatened with extinction." If you refer to the relevant section of Extinction risk from climate change, there's the 2018 paper by Warren et al., which says that 44% of plant species would have a roughly 20% risk of going extinct at 3.2°C, and then there's the most recent IPCC report, saying that after the same 3.2°C temperature rise, 10% of flowering plants would be ~50% likely to go extinct. The current wording - "Climate change is starting to impact plants, and it is estimated that within a century it could make as many as half of all plant species extinct" - seems outright misleading in the light of this. I also think that it's worth sparing a sentence to note extinction risks from factors besides climate change (even Ref 78 starts with the other anthropogenic risks, and notes they threaten the majority of currently threatened species). Otherwise, it feels self-defeating to note conservation in situ in the next sentence.

InformationToKnowledge (talk) 17:17, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

[78] is a reliable source, and sufficient for its task.
The Conservation section is reliably cited, and summarizes the facts as they pertain to plants. Wikipedia articles are required by the GA criteria to focus on their subject, not wandering into other topics. The details of climate change and anthropogenic risks, touched on in the article, clearly form a separate and major set of subjects, covered in detail by multiple articles. Further, a Good Article is required to state "the main points", and the matters mentioned, including mass extinction, are certainly that.
Multiple anthropogenic factors — habitat loss, introduction of invasive species, logging, and harvesting of wild plants — are already mentioned in the article.

Just butting in here (as one of the editors working in the flowering plant topic, not as any kind of expert) to say: what Chiswick Chap is saying here makes sense to me. - Dank (push to talk) 12:57, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

InformationToKnowledge: All comments addressed. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:16, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Apologies for taking some time to reply. For me, the sticking point was at the end, as while I understand WP:COATRACK concerns, I found that the section and the lead as previously written had veered into WP:Oversimplification. Besides, [78] is undated (we don't know how old is the research they used to come to their conclusions, nor how often do they try to update that page), so it's not a good idea to rely on that reference alone for the entire section, especially in the long run. I thought about the best way to re-voice my concerns, but in the end, I decided it's better to make the edits myself and see if you have any objections to them.

That is certainly unorthodox but I broadly agree with the logic for the edit. I've made a small edit to the text.

Besides that, I only have one more comment to make: "Cultural uses" should probably mention floral emblems in some way.

Added.

Looking forward to passing this article soon! InformationToKnowledge (talk) 17:21, 30 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

InformationToKnowledge - all done to date. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:03, 30 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent! I have no more objections. Enjoy the well-deserved GA status! InformationToKnowledge (talk) 19:28, 30 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks! I've cranked the handle on the bot so it updates the status in all the right places. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:54, 31 July 2023 (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.