Talk:Nemegtomaia/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Ashorocetus (talk · contribs) 22:07, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Review in progress. Ashorocetus (talk | contribs) 22:07, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, considering the subject, you seem the perfect fit for the job! Note that I'm working on a life restoration for the description section[1], perhaps you have some input for it? FunkMonk (talk) 08:45, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

I see the article is getting its copyedit now, so the wording of things might be changed a bit when it's done. FunkMonk (talk) 15:57, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Done now. FunkMonk (talk) 01:17, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Sorry for the long wait, I've been quite busy the past few days. Anyway, the article looks pretty good on the whole, but there are some small issues:

• "Stress from thermal factors (heated ground) is perhaps most severe during reproduction in desert environments, when adults stay in the nest for large parts of the day, and eggs and nestlings may be damaged as well." - I had to read this sentence a couple times before I could figure out what it means. I would suggest rephrasing it for better clarity.

I tried some new wording, how does it look? The paper uses the term thermal stress, but this seems to have several meanings, so I changed it to heat stress, which I think may be what's meant. FunkMonk (talk) 19:09, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Perfect. Ashorocetus (talk | contribs) 21:12, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

• "The diet of oviraptorids has been interpreted in various ways since..." - A reader might accidentally interpret the "since" here to mean " because", which is not correct.

Changed and shortened to "The diet of oviraptorids has been interpreted in various ways since the time Oviraptor was erroneously thought to have been a predator of eggs." That scenario was already explained at length under history, so i thought it would be ok to snip parts. FunkMonk (talk) 15:21, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Looks good. Ashorocetus (talk | contribs) 21:12, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

• Many times you use technical terms and then have a brief, non-technical explanation in parentheses. This is a good technique to make it readable, but it seems like there are several places where inclusion of the technical term is not necessary (for example, kinetic, molluscivore, remiges, durophagy etc.). These seem more distracting than informative to me.

Hmm, in many of these cases, the technical terms are the only terms that are ever used in the literature, so I think they need to be there (as in most similar articles, pretty much all biology FA articles use glossed technical terms), and the articles about these subjects are also located at the technical names. Compare with for example the FAs Gomphus clavatus, Ficus rubiginosa, or Giant mouse lemur. If it educates the reader and teaches them new terms, I think it's for the better, and we shouldn't really underestimate the readers to start with. Someone who gets distracted by technical terms would hardly be inclined to read down to that part of the article anyway, and we do have Simple Wikipedia for articles written in simpler language. FunkMonk (talk) 19:09, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

I suppose you're right, but stylistically it's off-putting to me to use so many of these technical glosses. For most words, I definitely agree it's necessary, but for ones where you just use it once in the article and it's not central to the topic, I find it a little distracting. That being said, I suppose that's just my stylistic preference and I will not block the nomination for it.Ashorocetus (talk | contribs) 21:12, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

• In the description section, you list a lot of measurements without saying which specimen you are describing.

I thought this was unnecessary, since the only good skull belongs to the holotype, and the nesting specimen was stated to be the same size as the holotype, and measurements are only taken from these two (the third one is smaller). So since the two measured specimens are the same size, I thought it was ok to list their measurements in succession, since the Fanti paper "completes" measurements by extrapolating from the two specimens. But maybe you think it should be more specific? FunkMonk (talk) 10:05, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

I see your point. In that case, you should probably just mention somewhere that the two specimens are the same size. Ashorocetus (talk | contribs) 14:43, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Under description too? It is also mentioned in the history section. FunkMonk (talk) 15:21, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Haha, oops. I didn't notice you already mentioned it. Yeah, I'd say it's fine then. Ashorocetus (talk | contribs) 21:12, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

• The last paragraph of the lead is a little unorganized. I would recommend splitting it into two paragraphs: one devoted to the ecology of Nemegtomaia and one talking about the nesting specimen. Ashorocetus (talk | contribs) 04:09, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

I can see what you mean, though intro paragraphs don't necessarily have to be ordered by subject, the important part is being concise. WP:LEADLENGTH states that a 30,000 characters article (this one is about 29,000) should only be two or three paragraphs long, and I'm not too fond of very short paragraphs in any case... FunkMonk (talk) 11:44, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

I understand, but as is the third paragraph is difficult to follow. Maybe move the information about diet and habitat to the description paragraph? I'm just concerned because you flip between talking specifically about the nesting specimen and talking about Nemegtomaia more generally at least once in that paragraph and it's not always clear when you are talking about what. Ashorocetus (talk | contribs) 14:43, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

I usually try to group info about behaviour and ecology in the same paragraph. I changed some of it to make it clear when the text tells something about Nemegtomaia as a whole, is it clearer? FunkMonk (talk) 15:21, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Yep, much better! I wasn't sure exactly what you were trying to do, but I see it now. Ashorocetus (talk | contribs) 21:12, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Putting the review on hold for 7 days. By the way, I'm flattered you think I'm perfect for this review; I hope my comments suffice! :) Ashorocetus (talk | contribs) 04:13, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Heheh, you're the eggs-pert around here, sorry for the extremely bad pun! Will fix these soon. FunkMonk (talk) 09:09, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Looks like all my points have been addressed; review is passed. Ashorocetus (talk | contribs) 21:14, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! Now I just need to finish that drawing, then it'll be the first ever oviraptorid at FAC... FunkMonk (talk) 21:55, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

The article is looking really good, FM. I've been picking at it a little, but it doesn't seem to need much work so far. However, I think the skull image should be in the "Description" section where the skull is discussed in detail, rather than in "Evolution", where the skull image isn't that helpful, and which already contains an image of the head. Firsfron of Ronchester 15:30, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

It was there originally, but I moved it down to make room for a restoration that I'll add to description in a few minutes... But note various skull features are discussed in the evolution section, so it does have some relevance there. FunkMonk (talk) 15:48, 21 January 2017 (UTC)