Wikipedia:Peer review/Laterite/archive1

Laterite

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I've listed this article for peer review because I completely rewrote an existing article. Is my coverage of this considered complete? I used examples from a variety of sources around the world…

Thanks for your efforts on this PR., Bettymnz4 (talk) 21:48, 29 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ruhrfisch comments: Interesting article and clear that a lot of work has gone into it, but it needs some work to more closely follow the Manual of Style. Here are some suggestions for improvement.

The current lead is not a good summary of the article and should be expanded. The lead should be an accessible and inviting overview of the whole article. Nothing important should be in the lead only - since it is a summary, it should all be repeated in the body of the article itself.
My rule of thumb is to include every header in the lead in some way. Please see WP:LEAD, which has more on this

I expanded the Lead. When I went back to look at it, I was surprised I left it so short. Thanks for pointing that out to me. Do you feel it is okay now, or does the Lead need further tweaking?

It seems clear from the article that there are many kinds of laterite soil and the article itself uses "laterites" - since this is the case, should the lead really be singular "Laterite is a soil type..."?

fixed

The disambiguation finder in the toolbox finds one dab link that needs to be fixed.

Was it 'percolating'? I'm sure it worked when I first used it. I removed the hyperlink. How is the dablink tool used? I did find it, but only saw a loooooong list.

It is to Manganese oxide - see the tollbox at upper right, click on "disambig links" there. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 19:40, 7 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There are several manganese oxides and more than one of them are involved; that is why I hyperlinked to that page. Sorry to be dense - but i don't see a tool box at the upper right of any pages. On my screen there is a toolbox to the left of the article, Special Pages leads to which leads to Disambiguous listings. Whoops, I saved this page so I could double check the wording that I left a blank for and saw the box. Thanks

The captions tend to be long and overly detailed - please see WP:CAPTION

fixed

A few places need refs, for example Most of the visible areas at Angkor Wat are of sandstone blocks, with laterite used for the outer wall and for hidden structural parts that have survived for over 1000 years.

This sentence was a hold over from the original article. I had spent some time looking for a source for that information, but wasn't successful at the time. Today I spent more time looking and found that information, plus some other interesting information to strengthen that section. Thank you for asking me to research further.

There are several short (one or two sentence) paragraphs that break up the flow of the article - these should be combined with others or perhaps expanded

fixed

WP:MOSIMAGE says to avoid sandwiching text between two images, but there are two places where this is a problem on my monitor

fixed. I was trying to avoid having all images on one side or the other. Having the images of like objects (landscapes of ores) on one side does look better.

WHen I think of "free alumin[i]um", I think of the metal, but that is almost certainly not the case in Laterite contains aluminium largely in a free state, which resembles the composition of bauxite.[1]:65

VSmith fixed the spelling of aluminum to aluminium (apparently the consensus from a while back was to use that spelling in scientific articles). I couldn't find this sentence in the article; I looked at every instance for [1]. Someone else (?) must have fixed it.

I think it would be very helpful to give some chemcial formulas for things like bauxite, etc mentioned in the article.

I again had to research further, and discovered that there is not one chemical formula for bauxite. I did find additional information to add to and in one case to replace information I had; that section is also strengthened!!

Three areas, but four places listed in The three main areas in the world with the largest nickel laterite resources are New Caledonia, with 21%; Australia, with 20%; the Phillipines, with 17%; and Indonesia, with 12%.[5]:4

Hmmmm, I had seen that as I was polishing the article and thought I had changed that. Thanks for pointing it out. It IS changed now.

The header "Non-metallic" confuses me. There are still metals present in the laterites, so why is this phrase used?

As I was beginning my research for this article it seemed that ores were the only use for laterites; I had to search for other uses. So I divided the section into Non-metallic and Ores. I deleted the Non-metallic and moved those four uses up one section. I like this better than what I had.

The MOS says even if the title is all capital letters like GROUNDWATER RESOURCES OF SRI LANKA, for WIkipedia it should be rewitten in title case

I vaguely remember reading that. I had copy-and-pasted the title into the reference template and was too lazy to retype it. It is fixed now.

Briefly identify people quoted in the article (like Tardy)

done

A model article is useful for ideas and examples to follow - I am not sure what would be the closest model, but there are several WP:FAs in Wikipedia:Featured_articles#Geology.2C_geophysics_and_meteorology that might be worth looking at

I don't see any articles that are about a soil or rock type. The vast majority of these articles are about storms.

There are some on Geology and volcanoes - not an exact match, but closer than storms. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 19:38, 7 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). I do not watch peer reviews, so if you have questions or comments, please contact me on my talk page. Yours, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:48, 4 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your thoughtful comments on the PR for this article which I rewrote.

Your help was of tremendous help. I really appreciate the time and effort you put into your comments. I have looked at articles in PR and GA; so far I have only done proofing-type editing. I did weigh in for FA on the Galveston article. Did you see he achieved that goal? I have authored a few articles on the geology of the North Shore of Lake Superior (some are still on my user page), and I go into the WikiProject pages to revamp stub or start articles.

Again, thank you soooooo much for your help. If you have time, I'd appreciate it if you'd check the Laterite article out again – new-and-improved (!!) with its changes. Bettymnz4 (talk) 06:58, 7 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You are very welcome - I took the liberty of copying this from my talk page so my comments and your replies would all be in the same place and linked from the article's talk page. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 19:38, 7 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

More comments

Angkorian construction in the lead is a bit obscure (though wikilinked) and does not specifically mention laterites - try to make sure to provide context to the reader - WP:PCR. Perhaps something like "After 1000 CE construction at Angkor Wat and other Cambodian sites changed to rectangular temple enclosures made of laterite, brick and stone." would be clearer

I "stole" your wording; thank you.

Avoid vague time phrases like "In the past few years" as these can become out of date quickly - Since 2008 (or whatever) works better

I added a more specific time period.

Definition and Physical description are two short sections - could they be combined?

done

Did laterization / weathering stop 1.5 m,illion years ago, or does it still continue? A period of active laterization extended from about the mid-Tertiary to the mid-Quaternary periods (35 to 1.5 million years ago).[5]:3 Weathering in tropical climates continues to this day.[5]:3

I found a reference which talks about global cooling and that's why the rate of laterization slowed down

Iron is usually an ion or part of a compound (oxides, for example), but not in and of itself a molecule - see Upon exposure to air it gradually hardens as the moisture between the flat clay particles evaporates and the larger iron molecules lock into a rigid lattice structure[10] and become resistant to atmospheric conditions.[3]:1

I added salts

Make sure things make sense and agree with each other - in Road building, these two sentences do not agree In the past 20 years Kenya and Malawi have constructed trial sections of bituminous-surfaced low-volume roads using laterite in place of stone as a base course.[17] ... In 1984 US$40,000 per 1 km (0.62 mi) was saved in Malawi by using laterite in this way.[17] (1984 was 26 years ago)

I went back to the source and added year ranges.

I like the images, but the article feels crowded to me

I deleted the photo of the man standing in front of laterite. Do you feel I should remove any more images?

Hope this helps, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 20:03, 7 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Vsmith has quietly been correcting my typos, misspellings, lack of linking, etc. Between the two of you, I'll have a GA yet!!! (That's my next step.) Again, I appreciate the tremendous amount of time you've devoted to this article. I began contributing to WP in early February 2010 and have sure learned alot!!! That's a credit to all of you helpful folks.Bettymnz4 (talk) 00:58, 8 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]