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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by Karanacs 18:52, 20 September 2011 [1].

Ecology

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Ecology (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Thompsma (talk) 06:27, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because it meets all the WP:WIAFA. The article is comprehensive and well sourced. Only minor edits have been made recently. The article was trimmed by moving text to other sub-articles, including human ecology, food web, and history of ecology. Looking forward to the feedback. Thanks.Thompsma (talk) 06:27, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - a major topic to tackle, but unfortunately I disagree that it meets the FA criteria. Here are some specific concerns:

  • The lead is too long, per WP:LEAD, and contains too many citations - 'Fixed. Removed citations and reduced the text down to four paragraphs. There is a list in the lead - which is unique. This was discussed in the GAR last year and we decided it was okay for ecology. This subject is so broad that this kind of approach seemed appropriate.'Thompsma (talk) 16:47, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Way too many See also links - some are already or could be integrated into article text, while others could be removed altogether - 'Hmmm...what to do about this? I'm not sure I agree. This is ecology and it is a VERY diverse science. The see also links are placed at the lead of each sub-section and this was one of the only ways to appropriately break the article down. Given the nature of this topic - I wonder if this might be justified? Isn't this just a matter of style preference? Do you have an alternate suggestion?'Thompsma (talk) 16:47, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the clarification. Reduced.Thompsma (talk) 19:45, 3 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • File:Vegetation.png needs more information on the source, as there are several "blank world maps" on Commons - 'I have removed it for now. I'm doing a search for a new image. Any suggestions?Thompsma (talk) 16:47, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I added new images to the panel that are all sourced and modified the text to accommodate the changes.Thompsma (talk) 19:59, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Source links for File:Mosaic_fire_burn.jpg and File:Lodgepole_pine_cone_after_fire.jpg appear to be broken
Could you please elaborate? When I click on the images they appear to be in order. Both seem to be sourced into the public domain and the links work when I click.Thompsma (talk) 19:59, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This link times out, and this one returns a 404 error. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:14, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Removed the broken links.Thompsma (talk) 19:55, 3 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • WP:ENGVAR: be consistent in whether you use British or American spellings
I'll do my best to track down any inconsistencies.Thompsma (talk) 19:59, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Some citations use harvlinks, but there is no bibliographic section for them to link to, and thus they are incomplete
Question: When I put in the original citations I used a consistent template, yet I've noticed that some bots and other editors come in and change them with harvlinks. What is going on here? I'm very thorough when I cite material - I do my best to track down the doi (if one is available), to add a pdf link to the article if one is available, and to include complete information in all the fields. Should I add "ref = harv" to each citation??Thompsma (talk) 19:59, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No, not unless you're using shortened citations. Consider current footnote 239 (Clements 1905): where is the full bibliographic info for this citation? Nikkimaria (talk) 19:14, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed the Clements citation and will start working on fixing other citations, reducing the number.Thompsma (talk) 20:08, 3 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • See here for internal and here for external problematic links
Worked through lots of these and updated the links. Still needs a bit of work.Thompsma (talk) 20:08, 3 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Organization needs work: the table of contents is quite large, the article include some one-paragraph subsections, and the current order of sections seems odd - for example, why is History so late?
History position is simply a matter of style. Other articles position history late in articles.Thompsma (talk) 20:08, 3 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I caved and put it at the top. It could be a good thing to give the article a bit of a "shake-up" in organization.Thompsma (talk) 20:13, 3 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Some problems with captions - for example, the use of figure numbers or bolded terms
  • Read through carefully, or have someone else do so, to look for typographical or grammatical errors - for example, "This the Gaia hypothesis"
  • Some issues with adherence to the manual of style - "%" should be spelled out in article text, blockquotes should not be used for quotes of less than four lines, etc
  • Some facts lack citations, for example "Newer technologies opened a wave of genetic analysis into organisms once difficult to study from an ecological or evolutionary standpoint"
  • Book sources need specific page numbers for each citation
  • There are some inconsistencies in citation formatting that need to be addressed. For example, be consistent in whether or not you provide publisher locations for books
  • FN 69: template appears broken
  • FN 124: formatting. In general, don't mix templated and untemplated citations, as this causes formatting inconsistencies
  • Incomplete citations, for example FN 163, should be completed. Don't include bare URLs as citations, as you do for FN 174
  • Formatting used for Further reading should match that used for citations, and Further reading entries should include full bibliographic information but no harvlinks parameter
  • External links should be consistently formatted and could stand to be culled. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:37, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the feedback Nikkimaria - I will take a look at the concerns you list here. I was hoping that these kinds of issues could be raised and addressed during the review process? I read through the WP:WIAFA and didn't see any major barriers that wouldn't qualify this article for a review, but this is my first time aiming for a featured article status. I've worked on other featured articles and feel that ecology is of comparable or superior quality (c.f., evolution, which is in terrible shape and should not be featured). There are some notable errors as you have correctly pointed out, but I don't think that they are insurmountable nor would the problems you have listed here take very long to fix. Most are minor formatting errors that can be rapidly repaired. The lead looks long, but it is actually just broken into chunks and has fewer words than History of evolutionary thought, which has 470 words compared to 455 in ecology - but I agree that it can be tightened up and citations removed. The organization of the article is a very difficult task when you begin to comprehend and appreciate the scope of ecology and this has been a work in progress and discussion for a number of years. Given the nature of this topic I would expect a bit of an open mind and understanding that such an article requires a unique approach to tackle the kind of organization design that this article would need. I would hope that this is the kind of issue that could be addressed in an external review process. I see no problem with the history of ecology section being placed at the end of the article. For example, RNA interference (another featured article) has its history and discovery section placed toward the end - this is a matter of preference and style, not a point for rejection. Your point about facts lacking citations is fishing for criticism beyond the norm of the article and the example you have supplied qualifies as common knowledge that does not require a citation; I went ahead and changed the format of that part to cite Avise's book on Molecular Markers, which is where that information came from. The rest of the article is very well cited and I think you would be hard pressed to find strong examples of un-sourced material. I'll put a note in the discussion page for editors to watch the citation formatting and to see if we can get some consistency in that regard. I've noticed that the formatting is being regularly changed despite the time and effort I originally spent to remain consistent according to citation templates. I will spend the next week tweaking the mistakes you have identified here and hopefully can have a review process approved to get this article up to par. Thanks again!Thompsma (talk) 22:26, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment All credit for tackling this immense topic, but I agree that you need to give it a thorough ce. A quick glance at the reference sections showed that most External links were not formatted correctly, and in the refs there were errors such as binomials in Roman, not italic, initials with and without full stops. Evolution was passed six years ago, when standards were very different, so that doesn't really help you. If you can sort the issues identified by Nikkimaria, I'll do a proper review, but I'd like to see some thorough checking and fixing done first Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:18, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Jimfbleak - I'll definitely take you up on your offer. I'm reading through on the proper citation methods. I understand that standards have changed since evolution was approved and I have started the process to put that article up for another review and suspect that it will lose its FA status. I'm very appreciative of your offer to help here and I will go through the list that Nikkimaria has provided above to see if I can get approval. Thanks!!Thompsma (talk) 19:20, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thompsma, bold font is typically reserved at FAC for Supports and Opposes-- it's not necessary to emphasize your responses, and doing so only makes the FAC harder to read. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:21, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]


The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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