Talk:Miniopterus griveaudi

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Miniopterus griveaudi/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Ealdgyth - Talk 22:36, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

I'll be reviewing this article shortly. Ealdgyth - Talk 22:36, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS):

   just a couple of rough spots

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

Specific concerns

• Lead:
  • "First described in 1959 from Grande Comore as a..." do you mean "on" instead of "from"?
    • Well, Harrison was probably in England when he produced the description. I don't see the problem with "from", to be honest.
• Taxonomy:
  • "Nicole Weyeneth and colleagues found that examined specimens" ... is the examined really necessary? I'm pretty sure that they can't find out anything from unexamined specimens...
    • I've readded it; the point is that there were only two groups in the specimens they examined, but later studies showed that there are in fact a few more. Ucucha 06:21, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
• Description:
  • "There are some metrical differences among the island populations..." ...what's a metrical difference?
    • Measurements. Reworded.
  • This sentence just struck me as very clunky... perhaps reword? "In caves, individuals either group in large groups of more than 50 bats that are not reproductively active or in smaller groups of at most five bats which do show signs of breeding activity."
    • Better now? Ucucha 06:21, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

I've put the article on hold for seven days to allow folks to address the issues I've brought up. Feel free to contact me on my talk page, or here with any concerns, and let me know one of those places when the issues have been addressed. If I may suggest that you strike out, check mark, or otherwise mark the items I've detailed, that will make it possible for me to see what's been addressed, and you can keep track of what's been done and what still needs to be worked on. Ealdgyth - Talk 22:54, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

I've fixed the "Taxonomy" wording issue, but I'm having trouble deciding how to fix the "clunky" sentence about their herding and breeding habits. I'm not sure about the Grande Comore sentence in the first structure; I think it would depend on where the specimen was first described. Finally, I think "metrical" is supposed to refer to the tendency species in certain regions have to be smaller or larger than those in others, but I don't know how to fix that yet, either. Wilhelmina Will (talk) 03:05, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the review and for the help; I've responded to all concerns above. Ucucha 06:21, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Looks good! Ealdgyth - Talk 14:21, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Infobox citations

I've added parentheses around the author in the binomial (in accord, AFAIK, with usual rules in zoology, cf. ICZN Art. 51.3). However, I'm a bit stumped by the colon found after the two other non-basionym combinations. Are those a typical mean of indicating that what follow sis a bibliographic citation and not an author one? Seems to me that using the normal author citation per ICZN (as is, far as I know, the practice across Wikipedia) with the combining author citation in a footnote would be more appropriate. Circéus (talk) 00:19, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Parentheses are used only when the genus assignment has changed, as article 51.3 states.

The colon convention is used fairly regularly in mammalogy; in the Mammalian Species series, for example. Ucucha 00:24, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Also note that article 51.3.2 explicitly states that we shouldn't use parentheses when the rank is changed within the species group, as happened here. Ucucha 00:26, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

My bad then. My familiarity with citation practices in zoology (which, to be honest, I find baffling except for one element) is terrible. Circéus (talk) 00:43, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

It's a pity botanical and zoological nomenclature have evolved independently. I suppose it's even more difficult in protists that are claimed by both Codes.

I decided not to add citations to Peterson et al. (1995) and Harrison (1959), because I hadn't seen the originals. (I do have a PDF of Juste and Ibáñez [1992].) I will check them the next time I am in the library. Ucucha 01:04, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

(undent) I know you disagreed with it at FAC, and I wasn't there to insist on it (if I had I would have actively fought for it as I am now), but in my mind omitting citation to papers explicitly mentioned in the article is at best impolite and at worst nowhere near a fix for "not cit[ing] things [you] haven't seen": you're just citing the conclusions second-hand! I've been taught to consider that just as big a no-no. Circéus (talk) 01:10, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

But Wikipedia, unlike scientific papers, explicitly favors citations from secondary sources. In any case, I (still) hope to remedy it soon by actually seeing the papers. Ucucha 01:17, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

How Did This Article Make FA?

There are no images, I see a couple of redlinks, the references are almost all unavailable online, and the prose is choppy, and nearly incomprehensible to anyone without a collage education. I'm not trying to be antagonistic here, but this doesn't even meet my B class criteria, much less FA. Ronk01 talk 18:53, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

The presence of images is not an FA requirement; neither is the presence of red links; there are no possible online sources; if there are problems with the prose, please be specific, and I'll be happy to fix them. Ucucha 19:02, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

I was one of the editors who reviewed at FA, so just dropping in to confirm what Ucucha says re images, redlinks and referencing. There is always a balance between accessibility and precision in articles about individual species and for technical topics generally, but i think this article was revised during the FA process to address some of those issues. If you have specific suggestions, please do make them though - it is always an area in which the balance can be reconsidered. hamiltonstone (talk) 22:39, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

"Media. It has images that follow the image use policy and other media where appropriate, with succinct captions, and acceptable copyright status. Non-free images or media must satisfy the criteria for inclusion of non-free content and be labeled accordingly." (Direct Quote from WP:FA Criteria) If there are images, that would be a major improvement, I can look for some reliable online sources. Those are really my two major problems, the redlinks don't bother me so much as the lack of online references. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ronk01 (talk • contribs)

The article is based on the peer-reviewed papers that redefined this species last year; you can't get much more reliable than that (and the FA criteria require use of high-quality reliable sources).

As for the images, I hope to add a distribution map soon. The FA criterion has usually been interpreted as meaning that images should follow the image use policy; unfortunately, images of this animal aren't easy to come by. Ucucha 00:52, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, The image policy is of course written with the assumption that USABLE IMAGES EXIST. The image use policy probably doesn't allow use of images from the cited articles. Circéus (talk) 01:35, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

That's a good question, depending on the publication status of the articles used, as far as I know, rationale may be established, as if there are truly no free images, that is an eminently justifiable rationale. Regarding journal articles: Are they primary sources? As you know, those are not acceptable without context from secondary sources. In the medical articles I write, I can't use most of what I read in medical journals because most articles are primary sources which require interpretation, something we can't do here on WP. Peer reviewed or not primary sources are not accpetable as standalone references,unless there are no reliable secondary sources whatsoever. Ronk01 talk 04:39, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

There are indeed no secondary sources (not surprising given that this species was really only discovered last year. (In any case, I don't think the distinction between primary and secondary sources and the preference for secondary sources is as useful here as it is in medical articles.) Ucucha 11:35, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Is there any place these articles could be found online? I know medical journals like JAMA and The Lancet often have some content online, like an abstract. That would help tremendously. Creation of a fair use rationale for an image would help too. Ronk01 talk 19:43, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

The links for the articles are doi links, which do go to abstracts, though not very helpful ones for this one species. —innotata 16:50, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Actually, the full text of one of the main sources (Goodman et al., 2009b) is open access. Didn't you see the links?

As for a fair use image, that is unlikely to be allowed: see Wikipedia talk:Non-free content/Archive 44#Nonfree images of animals. (Ronk01, I'm sorry for not responding earlier; I somehow missed your post on my watchlist.) Ucucha 19:50, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Must have missed that article. In regards to images, if the argument could be made that there was no way a free image could be obtained or created. Since there are no Wikipedians in Madagascar with training to identify the species, and as the only images thus far have come from research teams, it would be arguablethat such an image would not be replaceable withing a significant period of time, if at all. Ronk01 talk 01:08, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

But it is the only Miniopterus on Grande Comore, where it would be more easily identified. I am sympathetic to your view, but I'm not sure whether fair use policy allows it. Ucucha 01:10, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

I suppose the only thing to do would be to find out if there are any Wikipedians on the island, or who have access to it. Otherwise we could try to get the authors to release an image under Creative Commons.