Wikipedia:Peer review/Oiceoptoma noveboracense/archive1

Oiceoptoma noveboracense

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A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for March 2009.

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I've listed this article for peer review because the information I found was not as in depth as I had hoped. It looks like the description and life cycle are complete but the other sections may need a little help. Also, if you know of any research that is currently being done that would be a good addition to the research section. Any help with making this article the best it can be would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Shealamartin (talk) 16:41, 23 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Dr pda: I don't have any expertise in entomology, so my comments are either from the perspective of a "general reader" or relate to Wikipedia-specific issues.

You've made a good start on the article, however one thing which immediately stood out was the Conclusion section. Encyclopedia articles, unlike college papers, do not normally have a formal conclusion, as they are not making an argument. (Certain classes of articles, like biographies or historical events, lend themselves to a final section on the impact/legacy/aftermath, which in some sense substitutes for a conclusion, but there is nothing really to conclude from a presentation of facts about a species.) I would recommend deleting this section. The lead (first section) of the article is supposed to summarise the article anyway.

Speaking of the lead, according to the guidance at WP:LEAD, it "should be able to stand alone as a concise overview of the article". In other words, if I stop reading after the lead, have I got all the main points of the article? (And conversely, there shouldn't be anything in the lead which is not in the body of the article). At the moment, the lead doesn't really cover some aspects of description, life cycle and research. In addition the article as a whole does not explain what a carrion beetle is. Apart from the common name of the beetle, the first reference to carrion is the sentence starting The eggs are laid in the carrion, where carrion is introduced with no explanation of how it relates to the beetle. I would recommend perhaps starting the lead as follows:

Oiceoptoma noveboracense is a member of the family Silphidae, or carrion beetles, which feed on decaying organic matter such as dead animals. Its common name is the Margined Carrion Beetle, from the orange-red margins ...

Is the Order that O. noveboracense belongs to significant enough to mention in the lead? The information about the Latin derivation should also appear in the body of the article. I notice some other species articles have a Taxonomy section; this may be an appropriate place to discuss this. Also there appear to be references on the web to O. noveboracensis—which is preferred?

Most of the article is supported with inline citations which is good to see. There are a couple of sentences/paragraphs which have no inline citations; references for these should be added or the text removed. I notice that reference two cites http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/burnt apparently in support of information about the elytra. This needs to be investigated/corrected. A minor point—references should come immediately after punctuation; in a number of places in the article there is an intervening space (i.e. it should be blah.<ref not blah. <ref). Regarding the formatting of references, you may find it useful to use templates such as {{cite journal}} or {{citation}}. This is not mandatory—manually formatted citations are perfectly acceptable, provided you are consistent (see Wikipedia:CITE#How to format citations for more information). One jarring note for me was the "bare urls". You may like to follow the advice at Wikipedia:CITE#Links and ID numbers and add the link to the title part of the citation, so that for example

Madge, R.B. Species page - Oiceoptoma noveboracense. Entomology Collection. 2006. University of Alberta E.H. Strickland Entomological Museum. http://www.entomology.ualberta.ca/searching_species_details.php?s=5937.

becomes

Madge, R.B. Species page - Oiceoptoma noveboracense. Entomology Collection. 2006. University of Alberta E.H. Strickland Entomological Museum.

On the topic of references, you need to make sure that all sources used satisfy the guidelines at Wikipedia:Reliable sources. Basically references need to be published by reputable publishers with a reputation for fact checking, so articles in peer-reviewed journals, books published by major publishing houses etc. One has to be careful with websites. The one from the University of Alberta in the example above is probably OK, but http://bugguide.net isn't because, as its disclaimer says, the content is contributed mostly be amateur naturalists, who are solely responsible for the content. (However the particular bugguide entry,http://bugguide.net/node/view/6775, lists some print sources which you may be able to use instead)

There are some issues with the research section. It starts with the sentence Since Oiceoptoma noveboracense is a carrion beetle, it provides an opportunity for study and research. This is like saying Since the sky is blue, it provides an opportunity for study and research. I would just drop this sentence. The next sentence mentions recent research, but cites a paper from 1983. Does this qualify as "recent" in the field of entomology? The following sentence says Variances can be assumed in different regions of the world. Firstly, the only country which was mentioned in the habitat section is the US; is the beetle found in other countries? If so, this should be mentioned earlier. Secondly, variances can be assumed—unless the reference for this sentence specifically supports this assumption (in which case the sentence should be reworded to make it sounds less like you are the one doing the assuming), then this should also be removed, and only verifiable facts are allowed on Wikipedia, not speculation. There's a similar problem in the next paragraph, which talks about "future research". This is also speculation, and is not supported by references, so should also be removed. (See WP:CRYSTAL.) What is left of the research section (the habitat and the bacteria) have already been mentioned elsewhere in the article, which makes the research section feel a little contrived. If you want to retain it, I would suggest doing a search of the literature to see if you can find more information on what research is currently being carried out.

A few other specific points: There is inconsistency in the usage of the names throughout the article (outside the lead). In some places it is Oiceoptoma noveboracense, in other places it is abbreviated to O. noveboracense. In some places Margined Carrion Beetle with capital letters is used, in others the uncapitalised form, margined carrion beetle, is used. Try to be consistent :) On Wikipedia measurements should be presented in both metric and US/imperial units. This is most easily done using the {{convert}} template. So for the only measurement in this article, you could use {{convert|13|to|15|mm|in|sigfig=1}} which produces 13 to 15 millimetres (0.5 to 0.6 in). Wikipedia also distinguishes between the hyphen - (used in compound words), endash – (used to separate ranges of numbers) and mdash — (used for punctuation). One of the major consequences of this is that page ranges in references should be separated by an endash rather than a hyphen, e.g. 30–51, not 30-51. Most keyboards don't have endash or emdash keys, however there are some symbols just below the text window on Wikipedia when editing a page, the first two of which are an endash and mdash, and you can just click on them to insert them into the text. See WP:DASH for more information. One other thing to be careful of is not using lots of jargon.

I hope you find these comments useful. Dr pda (talk) 04:15, 26 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Quick comment: A model article is useful for ideas and examples to follow. Chrysiridia rhipheus is an insect WP:FA and may be a useful model article Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 16:47, 30 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]