Talk:William Beebe/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Sasata (talk) 23:57, 11 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I will be reviewing this article. Should have comments up within a few days. Sasata (talk) 23:57, 11 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, thanks for offering to review it. Go ahead and post your comments whenever you’re ready, but I should mention that I’m going to be pretty busy this week, so I might not have the opportunity to respond until the weekend. --Captain Occam (talk) 14:28, 13 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments: This is a very well-written, well-sourced, and interesting article; I quite enjoyed it. Is this headed to FAC? I have a few minor quibbles and suggestions:

I am hoping to get this article up to FA status eventually, but it should be a GA first. I've followed most of your suggestions, but there was one that I disagreed with (about John Tee-Van), and there was also one (converting units to metric) that I wasn't sure how to do properly. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:40, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

could we include the year of publication for A Monograph of the Pheasants in the lead? I get the feeling that the second paragraph needs a date reference somewhere and this would be a convenient place to put it

Done. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:35, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

suggested wikilinks (feel free to disagree): honorary doctorate, pen name, wildlife conservation, monograph, Galápagos Island, New York Times, tropical ecology, depression, steam yacht, Arcturus (steamship) (if it's the same one used by Beebe), jaguars, tapirs, sloths

Two of these (honorary doctorate and steam yacht) were already linked. I've added links for all of the others except Arcturus (steamship), because I'm pretty sure that's not the same ship used by Beebe. That article is about a ship which was in service in Northern Europe, while the ship used by Beebe was used to explore the Galápagos Islands. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:49, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

some low-value links that could probably be removed: China, Japan, United States, London, television, tennis, cinema (there's probably a few more too)

I got rid of those. Let me know if there are any others you think I should remove. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:58, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"With Roosevelt's help, he secured a post training American pilots on Long Island." Training them in what? The next paragraph suggests that he was a pilot, but this hasn't been mentioned previously.

I added some detail to clarify this. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:04, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

should that double hyphen in the Jungle Peace quote be a dash?

Fixed. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:06, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

newly-created, -opened, and -established do not require hyphens per wp:HYPHEN

Fixed. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:10, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"… was the last letter that Roosevelt ~~ever~~ wrote before his death."

Fixed. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:12, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

250-foot; 25-acre; eight-mile square, two miles; 3,028 feet; 100 miles west -> add convert to metric

I changed a few of these using the ft to m and mi to km templates. I'm uncertain how to do this for the rest of them, though. I'm not aware of a template for converting square miles to square kilometers, or converting acres to whatever is the metric equivalent of acres; is it necessary to convert all of those manually? Also, the ft to m template always uses the word "feet", but when the article is describing "a 250-foot steam yacht", using the word "feet" wouldn't be proper grammar. This is the first time I've done unit conversions in an article here, so I'd appreciate some help/advice on how to do it properly. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:50, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Try {{convert|10|sqmi|km2}} to give the output 10 square miles (26 km²). To give a unit in an adjectival form, use the parameter |adj=on, e.g. "a 250-foot (76 m) steam yacht". Sasata (talk) 02:28, 19 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I've changed all of those things now. Please let me know if there's a better metric unit than square kilometers for converting acres into. --Captain Occam (talk) 04:24, 19 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Tee-van" is mentioned in the "Haiti and Bermuda" subsection, but the details of who he is isn't given until later.

I don't think it's a problem the way this currently is. The first time that the article mentions John Tee-Van is in the seventh paragraph of the "Galápagos expedition" section, where it says that he's Beebe's assistant. So if someone is reading this article from beginning to end, they will already know that Tee-Van is Beebe's assistant before they get to the "Haiti and Bermuda" section. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:23, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough. Sasata (talk) 02:28, 19 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

image captions that are not complete sentences do not require a fullstop (per WP:Caption)

Fixed, I think. If I understand this guideline correctly, the only caption which should end in a period (I call it that because I live in the U.S.) is the one for the Covarrubias ilustration, because that's the only caption which uses complete sentences. Is that correct? --Captain Occam (talk) 20:02, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Correct. Sasata (talk) 02:28, 19 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

there's some inconsistency with sentence case/title case for book titles in the references

I think I've fixed the problems with this now. Something I should mention is that some amount of inconsistency is just inherent to the sources themselves. For example, if you look at the three paleontology papers being cited that discuss Microraptor gui, all of them have only the first word in the title capitalized [1] [2] [3], so it isn't a mistake that the references section does this also. Similarly, if you look at the information about Beebe's books at Archive.org, the word "company" is capitalized in "Harcourt, Brace and Company" but not in "Henry Holt and company". Your guess is as good as mine what the reason for that is, but I think it's best to handle capitalization the same way that the sources themselves handle it. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:22, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Incidentally, I changed the reference for Rudder's book (The Old House and the Dream) to use capitals for multiple words in its title in order to be consistent with the other books, but this is a case that I'm really not sure about, because it contradicts the way the source itself does it. If you look at the book's cover here, you can see that the book itself does not capitalize any word of its title other than the first one. When Wikipedia is citing this book, do you think it's appropriate for articles here to handle capitalization in the book's title differently from how the book itself does? --Captain Occam (talk) 20:30, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, it's preferable to have the display of source titling consistent within the article. Strictly following the usage of the sources inevitably leads to a mixture of capitalization styles. Remember, the references are there to help the reader verify the information for themselves; it will make no difference whatsoever in their search (be it internet-based or going to a physical library) if we give them the title in sentence case or title case, so it makes sense to have a consistent presentation here. In the taxa articles I write, I often use early 20th-century journal articles that have the titles in ALL-CAPITALS, without the species names italicized; these get changed to be consistent with whatever capitalization format I'm using in the article. Sasata (talk) 02:28, 19 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I changed the citations for Beebe's books to have the word "company" capitalized in the publisher information for all three of them, and I'd already changed the title of Rudder's book to be capitalized in the same way as the other books. Is the references section acceptable the way I have it now? Something to keep in mind is that I think it's fairly typical for peer-reviewed papers to only have the first word of the title capitalized, so the fact that this is done for the paleontology papers being cited but not for the books is just reflective of the fact that these are different types of sources. --Captain Occam (talk) 04:01, 19 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That's fine. In FACs that I've written, I use title case for book titles, but sentence case for journal article (or chapters within books) for the same reason. Sasata (talk) 16:42, 19 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Retrieval dates aren't needed for convenience links to print-based sources, like PDFs, archive.org, or Google Books links

Fixed. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:34, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Everything looks great: the article complies with the MoS, prose is excellent, coverage is broad, and the images all check out. I spot-checked a few of the citations for verification, with no issues. I'd be interested in seeing a list of species he authored, but the article is already a good length, so that information is probably more appropriate for a separate list article. The article clearly meets or exceeds the GA criteria, so I will promote it now. Cheers, Sasata (talk) 16:42, 19 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I might at some point create a separate William Beebe bibliography article listing his books and best-known papers, although that would probably end up being kind of derivative of Berra’s 1977 book about Beebe, which is basically the same thing. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:57, 19 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]