Talk:Robert Ridgway/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Sasata (talk · contribs) 05:03, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

I will review this article. Should have some comments up within a few days. Sasata (talk) 05:03, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

• "a title which he held until his death." -> "a title that he held until his death." or "a title he held until his death."
• possibly useful links: describe, technical illustrator, natural history, engravers, Commissioner of Patents, master's degree, bird sanctuary, Forest and Stream, spectrum, swatch, monotypic
• I’m confused as to what the following means: "This interest to explore nature, including shooting and drawing from life," Shooting with a weapon? With a camera?
• "found its way" is idiomatic and should be avoided
• "50 thousand" ->fifty thousand
• "and provided material and publications to collectors like José Castulo Zeledón" change "like" to "including" or "such as"
• "He was articulate and literate" subject of "he" slightly ambiguous (previous sentence refers to someone else)
• "However, the trip did not yield much in the way of publications" -> "However, the trip did not yield many publications"
• "eight acres", "eighteen acres" -> should give metric conversion for non-US readers
• not a big deal, but I did notice throughout the article a tendency to overuse the semicolon.
• "it may be said that he had the best comprehension of bird coloration" sounds weaselly … who was it who said this?
• "he wrote a two-volume work on the Ornithology of Illinois" -> "he wrote a two-volume work, the Ornithology of Illinois"
• perhaps combine the stubby ending paragraphs in the first subsection of "Works"? (there’s some other short paragraphs elsewhere that might also benefit from this)
• "standardize the names of colors to be used by ornithologists to describe birds."
• "Ridgway wrote the description of Bicknell's thrush as a subspecies of gray-cheeked thrush, naming it for Eugene Bicknell, who collected the first specimens." Why single out this particular example from the many taxa he described?
• "The bird, a breeder of New England and southern Canada, has since been recognized as a distinct species." source?
• "The latter two are members of the so-called Darwin's finch group of tanagers, significant for their impact on Charles Darwin's reasoning about evolution and the emergence of new species." source?
• "which is given "an exceptional body" missing word
• "Robert Ridgway Award for Publications in Field Ornithology" I think the entire award title should be linked
• the zoologist, rather than botanist, author abbreviation template should be used
• there’s a "chapter ignored" parameter error in ref #43
• accessdates are not required for links to printed publications

(moved from user talk):

I have two questions about your reviewer's comments on Robert Ridgway: (1) "there’s a "chapter ignored" parameter error in ref #43" -- I don't see the error message, and I don't see any cite that uses a chapter= parameter, so I'm not sure what needs to be fixed. I think we are talking about this cite, which I admit is a little odd: \{\{cite conference|booktitle=Proceedings of the High School Conference of November 23, 24 and 25, 1922|date=March 1923|publisher=University of Illinois|location=Urbana, Illinois|pages=112–117|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=wjMZAQAAIAAJ&dq=robert%20ridgway%20at%20home&pg=RA1-PA112#v=onepage&q=robert%20ridgway%20at%20home&f=false%7Cfirst=Ella R.|last=Dean|title=Robert Ridgway at Home|editor=High School Visitor's Office, ed|accessdate=4 March 2013\}\}

• The "chapter ignored" error message seems to have disappeared since I last looked, so no worries. Sasata (talk) 18:08, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

(2) "accessdates are not required for links to printed publications" -- are we saying that accessdate= parameters should be removed for such cites, or that they're optional, i.e., not strictly necessary? Dgorsline (talk) 01:09, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

• They're not necessary, as accessdates are used mainly for web pages that might change, and the date is needed for those who might need to confirm what was said on a particular date using internet archive or other similar services. This doesn't apply to printed publications. Sasata (talk) 18:08, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm satisfied with the changes made in response to my suggestions above, and am confident that the article meets all of the GA criteria. Thanks for your efforts, now promoting the article. Sasata (talk) 18:08, 22 February 2015 (UTC)