Talk:Polymerase chain reaction/GA Review 1

Reviewing the 00:23, October 21, 2007 version of the Polymerase chain reaction article.

The article does not currently meet the Good Article criteria, and will not be listed at this time. The primary issues with the article are with prose & organization, as well as a serious lack of reference citations. There are also numerous manual of style inconsistencies.

GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS):

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:

• The content of the lead section is actually pretty good. It provides a good, concise summary of the article without going into too much detail. The prose itself could use a little polishing. The first sentence is kind of awkwardly written, and the use of the [1] citation right in the middle of the sentence kind of breaks it up a little, making it kind of weird to read. There's also quite a few commas and parentheses as well, which makes for a clumsy opening. The Mullis Nobel Prize sentence has no source, either.

• Overall, the prose could use a good working over and copyedit. There's a lot of unnecessarily bolded words, and the article could be written in a slightly less technical tone, easier for the average layman to read.

• The section headers need some work. They are somewhat long and awkwardly written. The term 'PCR' should not be used in section or subsection headers, since it is an abbreviation, or variant, of the article title. For example, 'Uses of PCR' can be rewritten as 'Applications'.

• I would try to minimize the use of 2nd and 3rd level subsection headers where possible, sticking mainly to the primary section headers. It seems like the 'principles and procedure' header can be rewritten as just 'Procedure', since it mainly discusses the procedures of carrying out PCR. The 'procedure' 2nd level header can be eliminated. I would also strike mention of the word, 'principles' from the headers, as the section really discusses the components and procedures of PCR.

• Try to keep the wording in image captions to a minimum. The caption in figure 3 is very long, and the reader can be easily lost. It would be better to put most of this description in the text, referring to the figure as necessary, rather than trying to squeeze it all in there. Also, when referring to figures, don't abbreviate the word "figure" ... simply write (see figure 3) instead of (see fig. 3).

• The 'uses of PCR' section has only a single reference citation. This is inadequate. I would expect at least one reference each for the major applications mentioned here. Also, this section can be a little confusing with the 2nd level headers and the multiple 3rd level headers of different size. The images used in the section also break up the text making if very difficult to read and interpret, and see how the images relate to the text.

• The history section is also insufficiently referenced. It's in an awkward position as well; usually, history sections are placed first in the order of sections, although in many science articles, they are the very last section, in order to place more emphasis on the actual scientific methods used and provide some info of the development at the method at the very end. It seems kind of out of place in the middle.

• A better reference needs to be found for the statement, "Mullis credits the psychedelic drug LSD for his invention of the technique." It's currently linked to the google video of a documentary from god knows where, and it's 47 minutes long, so in order to verify this you have to watch the whole thing?!?! Plus, the video could be biased; I have no idea who Bill Eagles is. A text reference would be better for this.

• Reference citations should have consistent formatting and look-and-feel. They're basically all over the place, and some are in external links only. References (whether available online or offline) should have the full author, title, publisher, date of publication, and date of retrieval (if it's a URL), so that the reference can be verified, or accessed for further information on the topic. A link alone is next to useless, especially if it disappears from the web (404 not found), as it has no information on where it came from and who put it there. See WP:CITE for more information on this.

• It might make sense to move the 'Variations on the basic PCR technique' section closer to the 'applications' section (immediately after), since these two sections are somewhat related. The section is also insufficiently referenced.

These are the main issues with this article in relation to the GA criteria. The article can be renominated at WP:GAN once all of the criteria are met. Cheers! Dr. Cash 06:40, 23 October 2007 (UTC)