Template:Did you know nominations/Coal formation

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: rejected by Orlady (talk) 16:28, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Coal formation

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... that coal formation is mostly speculation, with at least 6 theories attempting to explain it?

Reviewed: Russian submarine K-114 Tula

Created/expanded by Σ (talk). Self nom at 04:49, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Age => , Length => , Policy compliance => , Plagiarism => , Hook => , Image =>

~~I'd prefer it if the refs for "In situ theory" are moved to the end of the paragraphs, and that File:Zeche Billigkeit 5.jpg is added~~. --Sp33dyphil ©^hat_ontributions 07:33, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

If I put the refs for "In situ theory" at the end of the paragraph, then readers might think that it only supports Over the course of many years, temperature increased, and the peat was slowly converted into coal. Placing it at the end of In the in situ theory,^[2] I assumed that the reference would be interpreted as supporting the whole paragraph. →Σ τ c. 08:17, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

But since the paragraph's sentences link up with each other through conjunctions, the read will think that the ref is for the whole para. --Sp33dyphil ©^hat_ontributions 08:37, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Article has serious issues, starting with the first sentence ("The formation of coal took place approximately 300 million years ago, during the Carboniferous Period"). In fact, there's a lot of coal formed in other geologic periods -- for example, see this page (on that page "Carboniferous" corresponds to the Mississippian and Pennsylvanian Periods). Overall, the sourcing is inappropriate for an article about a scientific topic, with heavy reliance on 19th century publications. The newer publications are about coal balls, not coal in general. --Orlady (talk) 23:14, 28 January 2012 (UTC)