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Brown Bear

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This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because it's gotten major improvement since the last candidacy and I mean A LOT. I've recently fixed it up and it's looking good. It has it's facts on the subject, cleared of spelling errors, needed information added, and well written. A page this well written has to be feautred. Now, there's the section on bears in culture, but I personally don't see anything wrong with it, basically, it doesn't look like it needs more expansion (not to say it shouldn't have it). This page will be like others, it would get nominated as a feature article and people would continue to change it to make it as clean as possible.

Thanks, Elephant200 (talk) 07:35, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I remember seeing this article a while ago but now it looks much better. Still, it still needs some significant work before it has a good chance to pass a FAC. Specifics:
  • intro is too short; doubling it would be about right
  • the table is pretty ugly/clunky; try separating the image into a different column
  • naming and etymology is unexpectadly short; what about the scientific name "ursus actors"? or the name in other languges?
  • significant segments of the text are unreferenced; as a rule of thumb, each paragraph should have at least a reference; plus, some table entries lack any refs
  • description column in the table appears to be very inconsistent: five entries has nothing, while several others only have half a sentence
  • the seagulls image is really poor as it shows a "black" bear
  • the distribution section is not very clear and severely underreferenced: "brown bears were once native to Asia, the..." should be moved at the begining of the first; listing of populations goes from "Russia with 120k", "in Scandinavia" then "Romaina (4k-5k)"; try to find a more consistent way to list the populations. You should probably use a table to put all the coutries with documented populations of over 500. In Russia there are 120k, but in the entire Europe there are 14k? How many of the 120 are in Europe? I suggest this format for the section: paragraph #1 general distribution trends; #2 N America; #3 Russia; #4 Europe without Russia; #5 Central Asia, and Middle-East
  • legal status section is completely unreferenced
  • consider browsing through [1] for more relevant/better images.
  • feel free to take cougar as inspiration as it is a FA with relatively similar discussion points.

Good job until now, and I hope this helps. Nergaal (talk) 10:21, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

From Philcha

Right now, the article is far short of GA. Some editors can done from zero to FA review, but most use GA review as a stepping stone, and I recommend that you do this. The rules for GA reviews are stated at Good Article criteria. I usually do reviews in the order: coverage; structure; detailed walk-through of sections (refs, prose, other details); images (after the text content is stable); some tools that are the easiest way to cover some technical points; lead last, as it must be a strict summary of the main text. Feel free to respond to my comments under each one, and please sign each response, so that it's clear who said what.

When an issue is resolved, I'll mark it with  Done. If I think an issue remains unresolved after responses / changes by the editor(s), I'll mark it  Not done. Occasionally I decide one of my comments is off-target, and strike it out --

In this PR I'll be aiming for "GA review lite" - covering the same types of issues, but with a selection of examples in each type, so you will have to search for the rest. --Philcha (talk) 10:08, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Coverage

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Green tickY Looks to have all the sections I'd expect, and I'll look at coverage within sections at I get to them. --Philcha (talk)

Structure

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  • I usually place "Description" before "Taxonomy", so that non-specialist readers get a word picture and some of the key terms, and these will be useful in "Taxonomy". How do you think this would work here. --Philcha (talk) 10:44, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Physical description

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  • Nothing about the skeleton? Proportions? How robust? How do its mechanist work? --Philcha (talk) 16:26, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • The para about fluctuation in body size is better at the top, as this is an important factor in the other dimensions. --Philcha (talk) 14:00, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The dimensions of brown bears fluctuate very greatly according to sex, age, individual, geographic location, and season. The body length of large males from the Russian Far East and the Southwestern Alaskan Coast reach 2.45 to 2.55 metres (8 ft 0.46 in to 8 ft 4.4 in), and reach a shoulder height of 1.20 to 1.35 metres (3 ft 11 in to 4 ft 5.1 in)." --Philcha (talk) 16:26, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Females weigh no more than 75% of the mass attained by males and sometimes less" - "no more" implies "sometimes less" --Philcha (talk) 16:26, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • That means the first sentence of para "Brown bears are massively built and heavy bodied animals. They have a large hump-like mass of muscle on their shoulders" is redundant and should be removed. --Philcha (talk) 14:00, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "... provide brown bears with a great digging ability" looks as some being to sound impressive. Clear and consise is best, e.g. "... make brown bears powerful diggers." --Philcha (talk) 14:00, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Brown bears have very large and curved claws, those present on the forelimbs being longer than those on the hind limbs" can be simplified even more dramatically, e.g. "Their very large and curved claws are longer on the forelimbs than on the hind limbs". --Philcha (talk) 14:00, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The claws are blunt, while those of a black bear are sharp" needs a citation. If the citation from the previous sentence also supports "The claws are blunt ...", move the citation to the end of "The claws are blunt ...".
  • If "The claws are blunt ..." gets a citation, you can combine the sentences, e.g. "Brown bear claws are longer, straighter and blunt, while those of American black bears are shorter, straighter and sharp" - and then move it before the more detailed description of browns' claws - this will give readers a word picture before they work through the details. --Philcha (talk) 14:00, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "They may reach 5 to 6 centimetres (2.0 to 2.4 in) and sometimes 7 to 10 centimetres (2.8 to 3.9 in) along the curve" is unclear. Do you mean typical is 5 to 6 centimetres and very large is 7 to 10 centimetres? If not, I'm confused. --Philcha (talk) 14:00, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "They are never less than 6 centimetres (2.4 in) in length" is also confusing, considering that the previous sentence says "They may reach 5 to 6 centimetres (2.0 to 2.4 in)" --Philcha (talk) 14:00, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Nothing about the sockets, and whether the length include or excludes the sockets. --Philcha (talk) 16:26, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • In "They are generally dark with a light tip (hence, the name "grizzly"), ..." the etymology surpises me. Grizzly_Bear#Name has the one I heard often, and has a good citation. One of them has to be wrong. --Philcha (talk) 14:00, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • What does "concave" mean is "Adults have massive, heavily built concave skulls which are large in proportion to the body." E.g. do you mean that the steep forehead form a concavity at the joint between forehead and rear of snout? --Philcha (talk) 16:26, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The projections of the skull are well developed when compared to those of Asian black bears: the latter have sagittal crests not exceeding more than 19-20% of the total length of the skull, while the former have sagittal crests comprising up to 40-41% of the skull's length" could be clarified, e.g. "The sagittal crests of brown bears are up to 40-41% of the skull's length, while those of Asian black bears do not exceeding 19-20% of the total skull length." --Philcha (talk) 16:26, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The second upper molar is smaller than the others, and is usually absent in adults. It is usually lost at an early age, leaving no trace of the alveolus in the jaw" could be simplified. --16:26, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
  • Wikilink alveolus. I'd also add "(socket)". --Philcha (talk) 16:26, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Taxonomy and evolution

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  • W-link to Ursus etruscus. --Philcha (talk) 09:33, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • The formatting of citation to "A REVIEW OF BEAR EVOLUTION" by McLennan & Reiner is a mess: --Philcha (talk) 09:33, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Some words combined, other split. Copy PFDs can be a pain sometimes, and you just have to check every word.
    • Use lower or title case, not upper. This is another pain, but fortunately can be help by tools - if you have a word processor that may have a "change case" tool; if not, you can get a free text editor that has a "change case" tool, such as ConTEXT. --Philcha (talk) 09:33, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • The date / year of publication is need for any citation - it may be so long that it's obsolete.
    • I see that more of the citations are formatted by citation templates, which are for consistency. Please check all other citations for consistent formatting. The "Hints" section of this review recommends a tool that make it easy to create citations (I used it in every article).
  • "possibility of two separate brown bear migrations" is vague - ? "... migrations into North America"? --Philcha (talk) 13:09, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Apparently you expect readers will recognise China, Europe, North Africa, but not British Isles - hmmm, did you note my variety of English? . I think reader will need w-links for Pleistocene, Kodiak bears, Kamchatka (is that's from the Risk game?), Ontario, Ohio, Kentucky and Labrador (for readers outside N Amercia). --Philcha (talk) 13:09, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Arctodus simus is often named as "giant short-faced bear" --Philcha (talk) 12:48, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Subspecies

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  • The text in this section is a mess - but you can blame the government (Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Designating the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem Population of Grizzly Bears as a Distinct Population Segment; Removing the Yellowstone Distinct Population Segment of Grizzly Bears From the Federal List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife) :-) I'm sure the scientists who wrote the original paragraphs on the taxonomy knew what they were doing, but the final form of the paper is a policy document ("to establish a distinct population segment (DPS) of the grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis) for the greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and surrounding area. We also propose to remove the Yellowstone DPS from the List of Threatened and Endangered Wildlife") that's being re-drafted a few times, and what the scientists wrote has been distorted in translation. Moral: go back to the original scientific papers. --Philcha (talk) 15:35, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Clades and subspecies are totally different ways of classification things. Subspecies are a level of the Linnaean taxonomy and are means to be exclusive, so that an individual is a member of only one Subspecies. A clade is "a group composed of a single ancestor and all its descendants", and clades can be be nested any numbers levels, i.e. there can be clades in clades in clades in clades in clades in ... A subspecies can be part of a high-level clade and partly of a lower-level clade one - and clades and subspecies are totally different that a subspecies can be in parts of clades and the same clades can also include parts of other subspecies. For example, the Fish and Wildlife Service document says Rausch (1963) recognised "2 subspecies in North America, U. a. middendorfi on the islands of the Kodiak archipelago and U. a. horribilis in the rest of North America", but says of brown bears "Clade II from Admiralty, Baronoff, and Chichagof islands in Alaska; Clade III from eastern Europe, Asia, and western Alaska; Clade IV from southern Canada and the lower 48 United States; and Clade V from eastern Alaska and northern Canada" - e.g. Clade IV and V occur on North America excl Alaska, Clade III is all other the place inluding Alaska, but Clade II is also part of Rausch' "U. a. middendorfi on the islands of the Kodiak archipelago". For this article I think you should omit clades, otherwise you'll get thorougly confused. --Philcha (talk) 15:35, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "recent DNA analysis" is a discipline called "molecular phylogeny", which is the [cladistics]] to biochemistry rather than morphology. These days molecular phylogeny mostly about DNA (the first analysis were comparisons of proteins), but there are different types of DNA - e.g. the the Fish and Wildlife Service document mentions mitochondrial DNA, but many analysis use rDNA - and somtimes they get different results. Another reason for omitting clades until you know more. --Philcha (talk) 15:35, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've never read about phylogeography, and wouldn't write about it without some study. --Philcha (talk) 15:35, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • So I think that for now you should stick with "... have proposed as many as 90 sub-species. As of 2005, 16 subspecies have been recognised." --Philcha (talk) 15:35, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hybrids

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(rest of the main text)

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You need to check the rest of the article for the types of issues I've raised after:

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(to be done when any issues in the main text have been resolved) link checker

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(to be done when any issues in the main text have been resolved)

Use of images

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(to be done when any issues in the main text have been resolved)

Lead

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(to be done when any issues in the main text have been resolved)

Hints

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  • Note to reviewer Philcha: a very thorough review, but your use of level-2 and level-3 headers was very disruptive to the WP:PR page structure. I've converted them all to level-4 which is OK. Please note for future use. Brianboulton (talk) 00:06, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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