User talk:Be.cereus/Regenerative agriculture
T. Maloney - Peer Review
[edit]Hello Nikky! It was so great getting to take a look at what you have been working towards. Here are the strengths and improvements I identified on the global and local level on your first draft of your addition to the nutrient cycling section of the regenerative agriculture article:
Global Strengths:
1) Within your draft, I feel that you did a great job of calling back to terms that you reference in previous paragraphs to describe them further if needed. One example of this you did that I liked was when you cited reduced tilling as a way to promote nutrient cycling, and then in the next section you explain that this is because tillage can reduce soil organic matter. You have a good sense of when to go into detail and when it is not as necessary.
2) I appreciate how descriptive you are with each of your subheadings. I feel that they are all accurate of the information that is within the section below them. I think they could be shorter if your goal is to rewrite the entire environmental impacts section, but if you are only adding to the nutrient cycling subsection I understand why you used such descriptive subsection titles.
Local Strengths:
1) The tone of your writing is very professional and your sentences are structured concisely and get straight to the point. This is exactly the way Wikipedia strides to share information, so great job implementing their writing style into your draft.
2) I am not the most familiar with regenerative agriculture besides the basics learned in ecology courses, but I found it very interesting and important that you included information on regenerative livestock management. When I think of regenerative agriculture I mainly think about how this can be applied to plant crops, but incorporating animal livestock into this article is enlightening.
Global Improvements:
1) I like that you used the first paragraph of your article to define the concepts of nitrogen cycling and agroecosystems, but I feel that it is a little disjointed from the rest of your article and could be even more condensed into just 2 sentences potentially. Since you are adding to the article on regenerative agriculture and it already defines and explains the concepts such as agroecosystem before your section in the article, I feel that you do not need to include that in your section since it’s already stated earlier in the article. Many of your sentences could be condensed into compound sentences instead of multiple small sentences to condense your paragraphs as well.
2) I am also unsure if your aim for your article is to rewrite the entire environmental impacts section of the regenerative agriculture wikipedia article or if you are just planning on adding to the nutrient cycling subsection within the environmental impacts heading. I would recommend clarifying which objective, or neither of those, that you are planning on addressing with your article so that it is more clear to the reader what your addition to the regenerative agriculture article is about.
Local Improvements:
1) You have used words like important or major many times in your article, so I would recommend using other synonyms such as imperative or vital instead. I use an online thesaurus to find synonyms. But, I even more so believe that you don’t have to use adjectives like important in this style of writing because it feels like you are trying to convince the reader that the information you are telling them is important. Have confidence in yourself! Everything that gets to be added to this page is important! I would say to reflect on the information you used the word important to describe and determine if you really think it is important and if so, keep it and just delete the word important! If not, think if you need to look more into that information or if you should delete it all together.
2) For your citations, I have found that there is a function when editing your article that allows you to upload and automatically cite sources according to Wikipedia’s style. This can be found at the top of your article when in the editing mode as a button called “Cite” with apostrophes like that after it.
- I would also utilize the feature that allows you to link to other wikipedia articles to words that you use such as soil organic material
- I would just go ahead link the wikipedia article for soil organic matter to the word soil organic material that way you can spend less time
Let me know if you would like any clarification on these recommendations and WONDERFUL job! Directedbyayoedebiri (talk) 15:08, 5 October 2024 (UTC)
Peer review-AceBiology
[edit]Global
Overall, I think this is very easy to understand. I can appreciate the lack of jargon, and the information nearly flows in a natural way. My main critiques are these:
- I wonder if it would make more sense to talk about the soil microbiome before you go into the different types of farming. You do mention how conventional farming can hurt the microbiome, so maybe talk about the microbiome before that so people go into that section knowing what the microbiome does.
- You talk in the beginning about how nitrogen goes through the system in various forms. While you do explain it very well later on, maybe it would be best to give a little detail when you mention it at the beginning.
Local
Sentence structure is pretty solid. The use of more simple words that the common person would know leaves this to be a source of information that they can read without much problem. I only have a few critiques:
- You talk about how ammonium is converted into nitrate by nitrifying bacteria. Is there perhaps a better word to use than "nitrifying"? I kind of understand the process, but the word "nitrifying" is helping understand exactly what is happening. I'm sure it's a word very commonly used but there may be a way to make it a better read for the general public.
- This is a little nitpicky, but are the Farming and the Microbiome paragraph headings supposed to be different sizes? It seems a little out of place considering that it does not seem like talking about nutrient cycling should fall under the general idea of the two different types of farming.
Overall, this article is pretty good. It generally a very easy read, and this is coming from someone who has not heard about this topic in years. I don't believe any information is missing, so it reads like a complete article. Very nice work! AceBiology (talk) 15:35, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
T Maloney - Peer Review 2
[edit]Hi Nikky, I am excited to get to see where this article keeps going! Here are some of the changes I enjoyed that you made and further improvements that could be made for your next draft:
Global:
1) You have condensed a lot of your work and I noticed as soon as I opened your new draft! Your previous draft was a little on the longer side, and if you are adding to a pre-existing article, I feel that a shorter addition is appropriate to an already extensive Wikipedia page, such as the regenerative agriculture one that you are adding to.
- I feel that you may have lost some of your own details and explanations because of this though. Linking the corresponding Wikipedia articles allows for those other articles to explain topics that you feel their articles could explain better than you. Yet, I feel that this article has now really lost your own voice and it feels that the other Wikipedia articles are providing more of the information than you.
2) I like that you rearranged your subsections so that the soil microbe section came before the farming practices section. It is like you are moving from below ground to above ground and I feel that this works really well for the overall flow of your article.
Local:
1) I appreciate that you have linked a lot of your vocabulary words to their corresponding Wikipedia page. yet, I feel that they may be a few too many words that you have chosen to link.
- Also, there is a couple incidences (such as with the term "plant growth") where you use the term more than once in the article, and have it linked every time it is used. I feel that it is sufficient enough to only link the word to its corresponding article the first time it is used in your article. Then, any time that you use the term again later in your article, you do no need to re-link it because you have already done so previously.
2) I feel that terms that are not further extrapolated on and only brought up once, such as the nutrients like ammonium, nitrate, and phosphorus, do not need to be linked to their corresponding Wikipedia articles either.
- If a term or phrase is already linked in a different section of the Wikipedia article that you are adding to , you do not need to link it in yours either. Each word only needs to be linked once per entire use in the article.
Directedbyayoedebiri (talk) 15:44, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
Peer Review 2 (AceBiology)
[edit]Global
Great job. I love how much information is included so the reader can keep up, as well as how many links you have in the article so that people can go look at those for more in detail description of different concepts. Only a few tiny critiques:
- How do plants balance between ammonium and nitrate if both are essential to plant growth?
- There are multiple times where you link back the same term multiple times. I do believe only doing it once will be enough.
Local
Very solid structure. It is very easy to follow, and there are no glaringly obvious mistakes. A couple minor critiques:
- Soil microbiome consisting of bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms play an essential role in nutrient cycling by decomposing organic matter and releasing essential nutrients for plant growth Kind of an awkward beginning. Maybe fix it with "Soil microbiomes, which consist of........".
- Conventional farming disrupts nutrient cycling by using practices like tillage, which breaks down soil structure, reduces soil organic matter (SOM), and negatively impacts overall soil health. It seems like the overall soil health should be mentioned first, as the other two seem to be parts of overall soil health.