Talk:Indirect land use change impacts of biofuels/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Shirik (Questions or Comments?) 01:39, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Well written

(a) the prose is clear and the spelling and grammar are correct

There were some grammar issues, but these were very rare and I corrected them myself. I would advise another thorough copyedit before an attempt at WP:FAN just in case I missed anything. Aside from that, well written.

(b) it complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, jargon, words to avoid, fiction, and list incorporation

The only concern I have is that the lede section is, in my mind, a bit too long. Recall that this section is intended to be an overview of the article. Admittedly, a long article should have a relatively long lede section, but I think that 5 fairly large paragraphs is a bit overdoing it. If this could be trimmed to 4 and some of the detailed deferred to the article content, this would be good. However, this concern is insufficient for me to pass this section. This is just advice to be acted upon in the future (such as before an FAN).

Factually written and verifiable

(a) it provides references to all sources of information in the section(s) dedicated to the attribution of these sources according to the guide to layout

Well referenced

(b) it provides in-line citations from reliable sources for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons—science-based articles should follow the scientific citation guidelines

Details and quotations are appropriately cited

(c) it contains no original research

Despite the high potential for WP:OR here, I can find no evidence of it. Everything is well referenced by a reliable source

Broad in its coverage

(a) it addresses the main aspects of the topic

Very broad in its coverage. A reader coming to this article will be able to get a good overview of the issue.

(b) it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).

Detailed, but to the point.

Neutral

it represents viewpoints fairly and without bias.

Well balanced article on a controversial topic.

Stable

it does not change significantly from day-to-day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.

No ongoing content dispute

Illustrated, if possible

(a) images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content

One of the images was inappropriately tagged. However, I was unconvinced of the necessity of this image, so I removed it (and added it to my list of things to follow up on). The others are free and appropriately tagged.

(b) images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions

Images are relevant and have captions, but we may have too many (this is something to consider for future improvements)

General comments

This is a very well written article. With some work, it is easily a contender for featured article. It could use another pair of eyes for a copyedit. While the article was good in grammar/spelling, I did catch a few mistakes (that I cleaned up myself because they were minor). Another thorough review would be helpful. I'm only concerned about the images (and only slightly). I recognize that finding images directly related to this topic is difficult because it's not a tangible topic, however, the number of images in the lede, for example, may be overshooting the mark. This is something to consider for future work, but will not hold up this article from GA. Well done.

Overall

Overall pass. A well written article.

Needs some work

Obviously a lot of work has gone into this article and there is much useful info being presented. But I agree with the GA reviewer that this article needs copyediting (have added a ce tag) and the lead needs to be trimmed. I also think that at 97kb the article is too long and that there are many long sentences which need to be broken up and re-written for clarity. For example, the meaning of these sentences eludes me:

A paper published in February 2008 in Sciencexpress by a team led by Searchinger from Princeton University concluded that once considered indirect land use changes effects in the life cycle assessment of biofuels used to substitute gasoline, instead of savings both corn and cellulosic ethanol increased carbon emissions as compared to gasoline by 93 and 50 percent respectively.

A second paper published in the same issue of Sciencexpress, by a team led by Fargione from The Nature Conservancy, found that a carbon debt is created when natural lands are cleared and being converted to biofuel production and to crop production when agricultural land is diverted to biofuel production, therefore this carbon debt applies to both direct and indirect land use changes.

-- Johnfos (talk) 04:33, 21 November 2010 (UTC)