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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 promoted by Ian Rose 10:02, 30 July 2013 (UTC) [1].[reply]

Social history of viruses

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Social history of viruses (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Graham Colm (talk) 11:27, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have been working on this article for over two years. I have moved quite a bit of material to Viral evolution and History of virology because my original version was too broad in scope. When not busy with other things here, my aim is to improve our coverage of viruses and virology. Viruses have had, and continue to have, a significant impact on human history; mainly as a cause of diseases but also because of the important role they play in ecology and evolution. I have made a conscious effort to make the content accessible to the lay reader – so please do not be put off by the subject! I have benefited from an extensive GA review, peer review and post-peer review, and my warmest thanks to those who contributed so much of their valuable time. Graham Colm (talk) 11:27, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support on prose; I am not competent to judge the content of the article, but I have peer-reviewed it twice, specifically to ensure that the prose was accessible to a non-specialist readership. I am satisfied that it is; as a non-specialist myself I have to say I found the article thoroughly informative and absorbing, an excellent means of acquiring an understanding, from a layperson's perspective, of this most important topic. I am sure there are further minor quibbles to be made around the prose, but at this point I will limit myself to two:

  • Lead, third sentence: I would rather see "Having been hunter-gatherers..." than "Previously hunter-gatherers..."
  • Last sentence of lead: perhaps stick to one tense, thus: "They drive evolution by transferring genes across species, play important roles in ecosystems, and are essential to life." Brianboulton (talk) 19:41, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
To have succeeded in conveying the importance of these – to all intents and purposes – invisible little things, is worth more than the star. I have incorporated your suggestions and thank you once again for your reviews and comments, which have been indispensable. Graham Colm (talk) 21:05, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Source review. Nitpicks for now, full review later. Sasata (talk) 07:11, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • check for consistency with display of page range; e.g. 50–9 v. 153–154
  • some journal names are abbreviated, some aren't; some of the abbreviated titles use fullstops, some don't
  • subtitle after colon capitalized (#10) or not (#21)?
  • book titles are not consistently title or sentence case (same with journal article titles, for that matter – see ref#85)
  • page number for ref#23?
  • Gotffried 1977 is missing the issue #
  • comma missing ref #30
  • ref#43 "pp. xv" ->"p. xv"?
  • check for consistency author name display, e.g. "Thomas Penn" v. "Elmer, P" v. "Reiter P" v. "Collier, LH (Leslie Harold)"
  • publisher locations aren't given consistently
  • check formatting of refs#153, 155
  • I noticed there's sometimes a space before colons (even when not present in the source title)
I can't find an example. Graham Colm (talk) 20:28, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • refs#221, 248–accessdate not required
  • double periods in ref#239
I can't see them. Graham Colm (talk) 20:21, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • PLOS Biology or PLos Biology?
Thanks for the meticulous check. I think I have fixed these apart from where I have indicated. (It might be my eyesight mind). Graham Colm (talk) 20:28, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • sorry to be a pain, but I still see inconsistencies (please check throughout, these are examples only):
  • page ranges: "50–59" v "12–9"
  • author format: "Topley, W. W. C.; Wilson, GS;" v. "Zuckerman, AJ; Howard, CR" v. "Maccallum FO." v. "Collier, LH (Leslie Harold)"
  • I'm not sure what's been done since I last looked (removed the citation templates perhaps?), but now the year of publication for journal articles (without parentheses, after the title) is in a different format than for books (in parentheses, after the authors)
  • check for stray spaces after punctuation (e.g. "Chichester ; New York", "Biologicals : Journal of the ..."
  • some journal names are still abbreviated (Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond., B, Biol. Sci..; Virol. J..) – also note that this is where some double periods are arising (cite journal automatically adds a fullstop after the journal title)
  • see ref #175: journal title is not italicized
  • "p. 19–20" ->pp.
  • still inconsistent capitalization following the colon in article subtitles (e.g. "Avian influenza: our current understanding" v. "Citrus tristeza virus: A pathogen that changed"
  • ref #79, "Brunton, 39–45" needs "p."
  • ref #232, as a chapter from a book, should include the book editors, publisher, and publisher location. "Advances in Virus research" should only be given once (use the "series" parameter, if you're using the cite journal template)
  • Latin binomial needs italicization in ref#236
Still checking..... Graham Colm (talk) 08:42, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think I have fixed these issues. Graham Colm (talk) 10:11, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Are you using full page ranges (e.g. 40–41) or not (e.g. 21–5)?
Fixed. Sorry I missed this one. Graham Colm (talk) 18:48, 27 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have now read through the text thoroughly, and offer my full review below. I found the article very well written and highly accessible, although I think it could make better use of links. Sasata (talk) 08:55, 27 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • might any of these links be useful in the lead: infection, viruses of plants, Spanish Conquests, indigenous peoples, pandemic of 1918–19, polio vaccine, pathogenic
  • link Herpes virus
  • why is "million years ago" linked (is this not self-explanatory?)
  • "morbilli" should be italicized, not encased in quotes; also check ""lyssa" or "lytta" meaning madness" (madness should be in quotes to be consistent with earlier examples)
  • link swine influenza earlier
  • please consider if any of these links might be beneficial to the reader (I can see leaving out many of the geographical links, but several locations (countries/cities) are already linked so it would be good to be consistent throughout): Hispaniola, Columbus, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Barbados, Philadelphia, Newgate Prison, Gloucester, Vaccination Act, conscientious objector, ancient Greek, protein, 2009 influenza pandemic, cervical cancer, eradicate poliomyelitis, amoebae, Botswana, Ethiopia, disease surveillance, strain, host, public health, New York City, Nigeria, Chad, Pakistan, Afghanistan, HIV-1, incubation period, anti-retroviral, virulence/virulent, Panama Canal, Ghana, Middle Ages, donated blood, hypodermic needle, Needle exchange programme, intravenous drug users, foot and mouth diseases in the UK, Thailand, paddy field, Urals, Somalia, Tanzania, Kenya, emerging disease, Côte d'Ivoire, sugarbeet, leafhopper, Beet curly top virus, Rice hoja blanca virus, mealybug, Cacao swollen-shoot virus, Kansas, wheat curl mite (redlinks are ok), Papaya ringspot virus, vector, Rice yellow mottle virus (=rice yellow sobemovirus?), Toxoptera citricidus, São Paulo, coevolved, Cape Province, Culex modestus, Kent, paramyxovirus, Nipah virus, Mastomys natalensis, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, human genome, genes, photosynthesis; in some instances I noticed that a term was linked only on its second or third occurrence, so this should be checked too
  • Aztec should be linked in the earlier of the two captions; might it be possible to combine these two similar captions, perhaps by using a double image with caption placed in-between, e.g. "Sixteenth-century Aztec drawings of victims of smallpox (above) and measles (below)"
I tried this without success. Graham Colm (talk) 11:41, 27 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I used a multiple image template to do this, but revert if you don't like it. Sasata (talk) 17:16, 27 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I like it - thank you. Graham Colm (talk) 17:40, 27 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "during 1781–82 which was" comma before which
  • "She followed him there" would "accompanied" be more accurate?
No, she went a short time later. Graham Colm (talk)
  • hydrophobia should be linked (in this case, wiktionary-linked) earlier
The only Wikipedia link is to Rabies. Graham Colm (talk)
  • "Successes came quickly, by 1970 smallpox was no longer endemic" comma should perhaps be a semicolon
  • "it is not the strain of cowpox that Edward Jenner had used"
  • "Before the September 11 attacks on America in 2001, it was planned to destroy" who planned this?
  • SARS should be spelled out on the 1st occurrence
  • "reported the deaths of five young gay men" probably better to use "homosexual" to avoid ambiguity
I don't think the term is ambiguous anymore - at least in the UK. Graham Colm (talk)
  • "far east" is capitalized according to our article on the subject
  • link vertebrates earlier
  • "arthropod borne virus" should be hyphenated, no?
  • "There are more than 500 species of arboviruses, but in the 1930s only three were known to cause disease in humans: yellow fever, dengue fever and Pappataci fever." before the colon it sounds like the three causative viruses will be listed, not the three resultant diseases
  • "… West Nile virus arrived in New York in 1999." city or state? (there's another instance of this later in subsection "West Nile virus")
  • "where over 40,000 cases were reported and around 150 deaths." -> "where over 40,000 cases and around 150 deaths were reported."
  • "and further trees were lost" further->additional
  • "more than 6 million citrus trees" -> six
  • United Kingdom and United States are inconsistently abbreviated throughout the article
  • "The mosquito (Culex modestus) that can carry the virus breeds on the marshes of north Kent. This species was not previously thought to be present in the United Kingdom …" Unclear as to whether "This species" refers to the mosquito or the virus
  • "Later more than 265 cases of encephalitis," later is redundant
  • "About ten percent of all current photosynthesis uses genes that have been transferred to plants by viruses." This sentence sounds odd to me … first of all, photosynthesis doesn't use genes (directly), but rather gene products (i.e., proteins); second, why "current" photosynthesis–is this different than ancient photosynthesis? Perhaps the sentence should indicate that the responsible genes were transferred from cyanobacteria?
Thanks for these thorough reviews. I have incorporated all you advice apart from the four points above. I hope I haven't missed anything, or messed-up. It was very kind of you to be so patient and thorough - I am very grateful. Graham Colm (talk) 11:41, 27 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You're quite welcome. To speed things up, I made some final tweaks myself. I believe the article meets all of the FA criteria and am happy to support its promotion. Sasata (talk) 21:26, 27 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Should it be "species-specific"?
As humans became more dependent on domesticated animals, any outbreaks of disease among their livestock – in animals these are called epizootics – could have devastating consequences - this sentence should be reworked if possible but I am not sure how do do this without losing meaning. I was tempted to leave ust "called epizootics" as the link and the fairly obvious understanding that it isn't a name for ust livestock should be sufficient...I think?
Humans have lived with herpes virus infections since humans first came into being. - can we somehow remove one human from the sentence.... fold into the next sentence, maybe remove and replace with " Herpes virus infections first infected the ancestors of modern humans over 80 million years ago." (the implication they are still current is in the next bit
which contemporary observers described as something new - "something" just strikes me as a bit too general..."a new malady"?
He decided to test the "theory" - dequote
Thanks. I have adopted these suggestions. Graham Colm (talk) 19:24, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
And many thanks for taking the time to read the article and your support. Graham Colm (talk) 21:02, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • What a fascinating topic. I'll try to revisit to read it properly. The lead pic lacks the grand sweep of the text in the lead. Is there no pic that could embody the big picture (or the early picture) more satisfyingly? Tony (talk) 15:06, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'll give this some thought and see what I can find. Graham Colm (talk) 21:35, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

  • Whitefly image caption should end in period
Added :-) Graham Colm (talk) 22:03, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Compare the captions for the two Aztec drawings - why the difference?
I have been looking at those for over two years! Fixed. Graham Colm (talk) 22:03, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Possible to provide page numbers for images scanned from books?
Added. Graham Colm (talk) 22:03, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Everything with a life+70 tag (or with PD-Art and no parameters filled in) needs an additional tag indicating US licensing, per "You must also include a United States public domain tag to indicate why this work is in the public domain in the United States"
Added, I think. Have I got these right? Graham Colm (talk) 22:03, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Looks good! Nikkimaria (talk) 03:14, 12 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • File:Edward_Jenner2.jpg: second source link is dead
Dead one gone.Graham Colm (talk) 22:03, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No sorry. Would a machine translation do? Graham Colm (talk) 22:03, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Added this using Google Translate:
"Description: Whitefly,Source: own work'Photographer: gaucho: Copyright Status: GNU FDL Free Documentation License" Graham Colm (talk) 22:48, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comments – minor ones.

  • "Compulsory vaccination was not well received and, following protests, the Anti Vaccination League and the Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League...", 'Anti-Vaccination' is hyphenated, is it not?
  • Author should be given for Ref(s) 123 and 152. For the latter ref, the title is wrong -- it should be 'Polio works in Nigeria are shot dead'
  • Ref 149 should be pp.
  • Why is the publish date and title not given for Ref 151? Lemonade51 (talk) 02:08, 16 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for spotting these errors – much appreciated. I have made the necessary edits. Graham Colm (talk) 05:52, 16 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support – My understanding of viruses is not quite scholar, but I found the article to be well written and very informative -- not least the section on smallpox. I've made a minor edit with the news sources, so that they use the cite news template – this should keep the reference format consistent, prevent any Bare URLs and make it easy for the bots to archive links, if they become dead. Just one more thing – "Persian physician Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (865–925) (known as "Rhazes") first identified it...", avoid adjacent sets of brackets, per WP:MOS. Lemonade51 (talk) 02:00, 22 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your help and support, which is much appreciated. I have reformatted those brackets. Graham Colm (talk) 08:26, 22 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Hi Graham, I've been reading through this for the last couple of days. I can't judge the science, but from the point of view of a general reader, I enjoyed reading it and learned a lot from it. A few suggestions:
  1. It would be helpful if the first section could be a very brief, summary-style explanation of what a virus is. As it is, the general reader might be going into the article without really knowing what it's about. If some or all of the "Friendly virus" section had been at the top, that would have helped. For example, you end the lead with an exciting sentence – "They drive evolution by transferring genes across species, play important roles in ecosystems and are essential to life" – but it's not until the end that we learn what it means.
  2. I like the main/see-also links at the top of sections, but you stopped doing it from the Influenza section until SARS.
  3. I would call the Epizootics section "Nonhuman animals," or "Nonhuman-animal viruses," with main/see-also links to Veterinary virology and Epizootics at the top, and the Agriculture section "Plants," or "Plant viruses," with a main/see-also link to Plant virus.
  4. It might be worth explaining somewhere that eradication doesn't mean destruction, for example by linking to Eradication of infectious diseases.

SlimVirgin (talk) 21:31, 17 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, these are are useful suggestions, which I will incorporate soon. I think a link to Introduction to viruses might help the general reader too. Thank you for reading the article and your review. Graham Colm (talk) 22:02, 17 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Cryptic C62.

  • Avoid one- and two-sentence paragraphs. I see examples in the lead and throughout the article. These should be expanded, merged, or deleted.
I have merged some paragraphs to avoid this where possible. Graham Colm (talk)
  • I see several instances of "a year" being used instead of "per year". The former sounds natural in spoken language, but the latter is far more precise and natural in spoken written language.
I only spotted a couple, which I have changed. This might be an WP:ENGVAR issue, but I rarely hear "per year" used in spoken language. Graham Colm (talk)
I mistyped. The second "spoken" should have said "written". That way the sentence would, you know... make sense. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 01:37, 25 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Despite having no idea that viruses existed, Louis Pasteur and Edward Jenner were the first to develop vaccines" I strongly dislike this phrasing, as it suggests that they developed the vaccines by accident.
I have deleted introductory phrase. Graham Colm (talk)
  • "Smallpox virus was one of the biggest killers of the 20th century" Avoid imprecise colloquial language.
I have changed this to "Smallpox virus was a major cause death in the 20th century, killing about 300 million people." Graham Colm (talk)
  • "Measles is highly contagious." If you're going to give a one-sentence introduction to the virus, there is a lot of information that can be reasonably squeezed into the sentence besides how contagious it is. What are the symptoms? What systems of the body does it attack? Where did it emerge?
I have deleted this sentence. The origins of measles virus is discussed in the "In antiquity" section and the pathogenicity of the infection, which is complex, is beyond the scope of this article. Graham Colm (talk) 20:25, 24 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Why is the content in Non-human animal viruses not presented in chronological order?
It is except where the subject changes from rinderpest to foot-and-mouth. Graham Colm (talk)
  • "SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome)" This is not the acronym convention we use. MOS:ACRO suggests "Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)" instead. I have not seen any other instances of this in the article.
I have changed this accordingly. Graham Colm (talk) 20:25, 24 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Regarding the section Friendly viruses. Is the name "friendly viruses" actually used in scientific literature? If so, why does it not appear in the section itself? If not, why is it used as the section title?
The term is used in the literature. (See "Varela M, Spencer TE, Palmarini M, Arnaud F (October 2009). "Friendly viruses: the special relationship between endogenous retroviruses and their host". Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 1178: 157–72. doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.05002.x. PMID 19845636."). I have included it in the body of the section. Graham Colm (talk)
It isn't particularly helpful to include it only in the last paragraph of the section. Perhaps I should clarify my concern: A reader sees a section titled Friendly virus, and thinks "Oh, what's that?". The reader reads through the section, but is never given a definition of the term. The reader cries and vomits and oozes pus all over his keyboard. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 17:23, 27 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The concept is new (but not recent) and there is no accepted definition that I can source. Graham Colm (talk) 17:56, 27 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "... has led modern virologists to consider them in a new light." Avoid imprecise colloquial language.
Changed to "The discovery of the abundance of viruses and their overwhelming presence in many ecosystems has led modern virologists to reconsider their role in the biosphere." Graham Colm (talk)
  • "Viruses are everywhere." Is this necessary? We're building an encyclopedia, not a children's book.
I have deleted this introductory sentence. Graham Colm (talk) 17:49, 27 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Why is In antiquity not presented in chronological order? The tomato yellow leaf curl paragraph can be placed before the first measles paragraph to preserve chronologicality.
Because all the rest of the section is about human infections and I don't want to break the flow. Graham Colm (talk)
  • "As a physician, he was a skilled observer and kept meticulous records." I find this sentence a bit mysterious. Why are we attempting to portray Sydenham as a super cool dude when the observation in the previous sentence is blatantly wrong? By including this description, we give authority not only to Sydenham but also to his toxic vapour theory.
Changed to "His theory was wrong but he was a skilled observer and kept meticulous records." Graham Colm (talk) 17:56, 27 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Meep. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 17:36, 24 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for these useful comments. Much appreciated. PS. What does "Meep." mean? Graham Colm (talk) 20:25, 24 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"Meep" is just a meaningless filler word. I don't like the look of a signature sitting on its own line all by itself, so I add "Meep" in front of it to make it more pleasing to the eye. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 17:23, 27 July 2013 (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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