Talk:Sinosauropteryx/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Narayanese (talk) 22:03, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Initial comments

• Well-written:
  • The lede can be understood if you follow the links, but it's not like you just can casually read it and get an idea of what this dino was. The sentence construction doesn't help: "A small theropod, Sinosauropteryx had", "A handful of specimens have been described,[comma 1] including one belonging to a second,[comma 2, used in another sense] as-yet unnamed species or[more complication] to a related genus.", "Known from the Yixian Formation, Sinosauropteryx [...] Liaoning Province" (too split up), and then a massive sentence on about all its biology. Try to rearrange the lead to improve reading speed.

• Accurate/verifiable
  • Text says countershaded, but the image next to it seems to show something a bit different, or do I misunderstand?

• Non-GA criteria stuff
  • I'd like to check the sourcing for last sentence of the history section, but the link is dead
  • theropod, avialian come to mind as rather technical words for the lead
  • It took quite a 2 links and a bit of scanning for me to figure out what sort of theropod this is, in terms of where its ancestors branched off from the bird-ending line of theropods. Can't the info go here? Second paragraph of classification kind of has it, but not so much.

I'll probably be doing the review rather slowly, but there didn't seem to be anyone quicker grabbing the nominee. Narayanese (talk) 22:03, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Hello, and thank you for reviewing!

• I rewrote the lede (also in response to another suggestion) and focused the classification. The "avialian" stuff is a bit of a pain, so I hope I explained it better.
• The "countershading" is partially in the image (red along the top, white along the belly); the hind legs are a notable exception, but because we've only got color evidence for the feathers, bare skin would be left out, and the artist decided to leave the legs featherless.
• You didn't say anything about it, but after checking up on the dead link and thinking about the section, I reorganized so that the "Controversy" section that had been under "Feathers" went with the controversy paragraph of "History of Discovery". So as not to sequester it at the end, I then moved the History section up. J. Spencer (talk) 03:38, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Comments 2

Lede is good now. Maybe the last sentence is a little lack-luster (could specify what was found inside), but nothing bad.

Two sentences are hard to understand:

• S. prima had 64 vertebrae in its tail, giving it the longest tail relative to body length of any theropod
• Gregory S. Paul, in response to the collagen hypothesis, identified what proponents of the hypothesis consider a body outline outside of the fibres as an artefact of preparation: breakage and brushed-on sealant have been misidentified as the outline of the body

The referencing dissappeared for "Subsequent publications saw some of the same team members disagreeing over the identity of the structures" - which are those publications? Narayanese (talk) 20:49, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

I took a whack at both sentences, but I think I was more successful with the first. Regarding the "subsequent publications", that sentence originally ended with "most researchers have disagreed with the identification of the structures as collagen or other structural fibres" and the whole thing was sourced to Currie and Chen (2001). When working on that area, I decided that the source didn't really do that well for either part of the original sentence, so I made the second half the lead-in to a section that could more fully develop the idea, leaving the first half in the lurch. I'm not convinced that the "subsequent publications" sentence works in this version. J. Spencer (talk) 01:31, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Both sentences were improved. I can understand the second one now (took 2-3 readings though), it says he thinks the feather-lke remains are true but collagen ppl saw other fluff there which he thinks is false. First sentence is less of a logical leap now, but still seems to assume some knowledge about dinos and vertebrae that someone like me that is only barely aware that non-mammals have anatomy doesn't know. Though I guess it's still alright, there's a bit of implicit pointers in the sentence for someone who is content with a surface understanding. I'll remove the unreferenced sentence for now since it would be pretty unfair to that team if it weren't true. Narayanese (talk) 07:25, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

It's unlikely to be anything more between the article and GA, but I'll wait a little, see what you do to that unsourced sentence, and make a final read-through. Narayanese (talk) 07:40, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I inserted two references that constitute different opinions from members of the original four (Martin and Currie); there are interesting stories about the "sausage-making" and human sides of science going on here, but they don't lend themselves to referencing at this time. J. Spencer (talk) 23:59, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Ah shame, could be interesting with a bit of drama 'further reading'. *smiles* Narayanese (talk) 15:56, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Finishing comments

Ran through it again, but it all looks alright.

• Well-written: Standard layout, compensible. Only one once per one or two paragraphs are there difficult enough things (mostly technical terminology, as expected in a non-basic article on science) to slow down reading.
• Verifiable: Yup. The colouration illustration might not be clear where the speculative fill-ins come from, but images need some lee-way.
• Broad. Yes. Some peripheral subjects, like why it had that dentation, aren't in, but easily all the main stuff is.
• Neutral: I looked at a few review-like articles, they described the controversy very similarly. For the rest, the usage of a good fraction of the available literature, including all the top stuff, should result in balance.
• Stable. Yeah.
• Illustrated: No problem there.

I'll interpret non-reversion as you being ok with the edits I made.

It's a fine article. Narayanese (talk) 15:56, 2 April 2011 (UTC)