Talk:Polymerase chain reaction/GAR Review

Good Article Review

I am sending this article to Good Article Review. I do not believe it meets the standards of Good Articles (namely, the lack of references). Anyone working on the article, please contribute to the discussion at GA/R, and hopefully, they can patch up the problems with the article. Thanks, Nishkid64 (talk) 22:10, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think you're right. I'm still getting into wikipedia, but I've heavily edited this article, as has Malljaja. I was confused by this "good article thing when I first came to the article, and eventually I removed whole chunks I felt made the article crappy and confusing to the average reader. It's better now, but more can be done; it was awful then. Madeleine 23:56, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Can you show me what parts you removed? I mean, Wikipedia wasn't designed for the "average reader", and I doubt most people who visit Wikipedia would be able to understand many of the biology-related articles, such as this one. Nishkid64 (talk) 00:28, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a summary of the major edits I did:

(a) Moved history down, and some rewriting.

(b) Moved primer section out. The stuff was basically a copy of what is already in the primer article itself. You might say I should retain a primer section, but I would respond with the questions: "why not a nucleotide section? or a magnesium section? or a polymerase section?" The section distracted the reader from immediately learning about PCR's mechanism. If a set of sections is desired to describe PCR components I think it needs to happen after the "procedure".

(c) Moved PCR optimization stuff out of the article. Created a short paragraph and link to a main article on optimization. This stuff is for people who actually use it in lab and I was subsequently contacted by Jasu who suggested this content was more suitable for open wetware rather than wikipedia. (I think he thought I created the article from scratch, but I was just throwing it out of the main article.)

I kind of resent the implication that I might have been inappropriately dumbing down this article. I know we can assume some level of background knowledge in the average reader, but I think we can also assume that the average reader is coming to this article to learn how PCR works, and maybe some of its uses and variations -- and not get distracted with a meandering bit of history or reams of optimization trivia. Madeleine 02:21, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

PS - "average reader", when I said it, referred to the average reader of this page. Not the average wikipedia reader. Madeleine 03:32, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think we should avoid trying to dumb down this article, or any science article. Oversimplifying tends to make the article look poor in quality, and such writing would be better suited for Simple Wikipedia. Anyway, I just have one question. Would you agree to moving the history of the discovery to the top of the article in a new section called "Discovery". It would be more appropriate to have the history of the discovery first, and then later, the actual process. This is just my opinion, so feel free to comment. Nishkid64 (talk) 20:55, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree with your suggestion. While a sentence or two of history in the intro is entirely appropriate to give the reader a bit of perspective, I feel that more than that risks distracting the reader with historical trivia unrelated to the topic itself. Moving the entire history section to the beginning is even worse, as it can bloat to an arbitrary size with details and information. Except for a summary, I firmly feel that the history of the topic should go after the explanation of the topic itself.

Please stop implying I'm in favor of "dumbing down" science articles! Maybe my wording was unclear, but I feel "dumbing down" is inappropriate. Did you look carefully at my edits? There's a difference between "dumbing something down" and "focusing something by moving away tangential and redundant information". There has been no information lost -- despite the questionable appropriateness of the PCR optimization article I created.

Hell, I added a whole buttload of history to Genetics, no one says anything nice about it and now I get you implying I like to dumb things down. Not feeling very encouraged here. Madeleine 21:58, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am sorry you got that impression from my comments. When I wrote that, I referred "we" to Wikipedia in general. I have seen some editors in the past who have tried to make articles more user-friendly by removing complex material from articles that might make the article unsatisfactory. I was referring to Wikipedia as a whole, not you. Anyhow, I looked at your edits before, and I thought they were perfectly fine. I think you've done phenomenal work in your editing of these biology-related articles, Madprime. Please understand that I was not trying to pin you for "dumbing down" articles on Wikipedia. My interpretation of your statement was taken in the wrong sense, and that's why it was inappropriately used. Nishkid64 (talk) 00:09, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A new short paragraph on PCR optimization looks very strange. It starts from ... PCR can fail ... causing amplification ... In reality, PCR failure is most likely due to the inactivation of DNA polymerase. There is no amplification with the dead enzyme. A piece on thorough cleaning of the work surface comes from the ancient textbooks. Spurious amplification has nothing to do with the work surface. PCR optimization is a regular procedure for newcomers and experienced folks. It is more important than many other sections on this page. It is a key step when a person has to make a decision. All the rest is done automatically. Primer section is also useful for understanding how PCR works and what to keep in mind during data analysis. Those who do not practice PCR themselves will get an idea on what to expect from PCR and to what extent they can trust the data. Open wetware may be good for protocols, while the main article shall provide the info for learning. It would be better to put ALL removed sections back into the main article and let PCR users to share their real life experience.

66.44.104.79 10:05, 12 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I suspected this was a troll, so I waited a bit to respond. Regarding experience, I do PCR fairly often, and I've never had the polymerase "dead", those things are pretty stable and my failures are due to forgetting to add a reagent, or a wrong reagent, spurious amplification of other weird DNA, trying to amplify a long product that needs a polymerase with more proofreading/processivity, or using a bad template. As for the "ancient textbooks" thing, Molecular Cloning, 3rd ed (2000) has a section in chapter 8, pages 8.16-8.17, on contamination in PCR and clean / separate workspace. Most generally, regarding the inclusion of optimization material in the first place, Wikipedia is not an instruction manual. Madeleine 16:06, 14 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Delisted GA

The GA status of this article has been delisted per WP:GA/R by a vote of 5-0 for failure to meet GA criteria. The review can be seen here. Once issues are addressed and the article is brought up to standards, it can be renominated. Thank you for your work so far, and good luck with future edits. Regards, LaraLove ^T/_C 04:55, 19 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]