Talk:Ecology/GA3

GA Review

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Reviewer: Pyrotec (talk) 20:51, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

I will review. Pyrotec (talk) 20:51, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry for the delay. Other things, well mostly Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/GAN backlog elimination drives/March 2011 took preference. Pyrotec (talk) 19:15, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

The review Talk:Ecology/GA1 seems to have been quite comprehensive, but not a lot seems to taken taken place after that and Talk:Ecology/GA2 seems to have died in mid stream. Pyrotec (talk) 19:18, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree with your observations. How do they affect your review? --Ettrig (talk) 08:47, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

I have worked on most of the comments in GA2. Please go ahead with the review. I will implement some of your suggestions and ask in Wikipedia:WikiProject Ecology that more people take part. This is presumably of utmost interest for that project. --Ettrig (talk) 06:38, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Carrying out a review on a long/comprehensive article such as involves a considerable commitment; and I'd rather devote that effort to a candidate GA-article that has some likelihood of any corrective actions being carried out. Your statement above that the comments in /GA2 have been addressed and that there is an interested wikiproject provide a strong indication that it is worthwhile reviewing this nomination. I've not been active on wikipedia for the last five days: so that gap" is due to my absence. I tend to do two GAN reviews at once, as switching between reviews provides a "break" (and the other review is also five days late). Thanks for addressing the /GA2 comments, they were not mine, but it is good to known that they have been addressed. Pyrotec (talk) 19:10, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

I think it is reasonable that you want to prioritize review work on articles where follow up on comments can be expected. I suggest you do a partial review and let the response to that affect how much more you do. --Ettrig (talk) 19:40, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm going to do it in detail section by section, but the WP:lead will be considered last; with a quick over-view first. This is my 379th/380th WP:GAN review (I'm doing two at once); and this is how I do them. I hope to have the quick-review done by tonight, but the section by section review is more likely to start tomorrow morning. Pyrotec (talk) 20:04, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

I haven't edited for a while, but I noticed the comments here when I looked at my watchlist. GA2 kind of withered out when the nominator failed to respond and I was drawn away from WP due to real life work. If you're going to pick up the review here, I would be happy to help out (when I'm online) with addressing comments and/or reviewing. Focus (talk) 22:11, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Great. Thanks. Pyrotec (talk) 08:08, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Initial comments

By now I've had a quick read of the article (several times) and I think that it is at or about GA-level, i.e. it is well referenced and well-illustrated, and it appears that it might comply with WP:WIAGA.

I'm now going to go through the article section by section, but leaving the WP:Lead until last, and just highlight any "problems". So if I have little or nothing to say here about a particular section/subsection then that implies that I regard it as being OK. This stage of the review is likely to take several days and I'm not going to be doing much on this article on Saturday.

It helps me if any questions/comments/objections/responses, etc, that are specific to one of my comments is made immediately below my comment rather than "lumped" together elsewhere, as that makes it easier to track progress. Pyrotec (talk) 08:08, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

• Levels of organization and study -
  • Scale and complexity -

• Y Pyrotec (talk) 07:38, 15 April 2011 (UTC) - The first paragraph states "the life-span of a tree, for example, can encompass different successional stages" and then there is a follow on comment "The ecological process is extended even further through time as trees die, decay and provide habitat as nurse logs or coarse woody debris.", which is fair enough (I've not added any wikilinks). Having "teased" the reader with different successional stages (piped to Seral community), I would have expected the trees' successional stages to have been named (but perhaps not elaborated upon any further).

• The successional stages are phases in the development of the ecosystem. I find the whole passage very difficult to read. The main point seems to be that ecological phenomena occur on very different scales, both in terms of time scales and in terms of size of "objects". Right now I don't know what to do. --Ettrig (talk) 11:44, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

• Possibly "tree" is the wrong word. If the sentence were changed to e.g., "the life-span of a tree forest, for example, can encompass different successional stages", that would match the diagram next to it. It's an unreferenced sentence (but I could provide one) so I'm not sure what it was "intended" say. Pyrotec (talk) 14:51, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

• Fixed. Possibly with too much violence. --Ettrig (talk) 07:45, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

• Y Pyrotec (talk) 08:09, 15 April 2011 (UTC) - I'm not a tree expert: top-down growth seems to be linked to "site specific variables, such as soil type, moisture content, slope of the land, and forest canopy closure" and there is mention in the next sentence of bottom-up influence from aphids. Perhaps these need clarification - I would have assumed moisture and soil was bottom-up and forest canopy closure was top-down - I could be wrong, which is why I'm seeking clarification.

• No, the meaning of top-down intended here is surely more akin to from abstract and general to concrete and specific. In this case from bigger to smaller. The context is an effort to show phenomena on different scales and the interplay among them. I feel this use of top-down is peculiar. I suggest we remove top-down and bottom-up from this passage. But I am not a professional biologist, neither a native English speaker. --Ettrig (talk) 21:08, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks. Removing top-down and bottom-up from this passage would appear to solve this "confusion". 07:32, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

• Fixed. --Ettrig (talk) 07:45, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

...stopping for now. Will be continued later. Pyrotec (talk) 10:33, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

• • Remainder of Levels of organization and study -

• These subsections look OK.

• Relation to evolution -
  • Behavioral ecology -

• In general, looks OK.

...stopping for now. Will be continued later. Pyrotec (talk) 08:28, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

• I'm not sure whether this is a result of vandalism, but the first paragraph states: "This could include investigations of motile sperm of plants, ...."

• This statement is fine in the context. Many plant species produce sperm that are motile and therefore can be seen as expressing behaviour. For many readers it may seem paradoxical that plants behave. This makes it valuable to include the statement. If you are interested, there is a little bit more on this in gametangium and antheridium. --Ettrig (talk) 07:17, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks. I've learnt something new. Pyrotec (talk) 09:24, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

• • Social ecology, Coevolution, Biogeography & Molecular ecology -

• These subsections look OK. Pyrotec (talk) 19:10, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

• Relation to the environment -
  • Metabolism and the early atmosphere,

• Y Pyrotec (talk) 08:42, 27 April 2011 (UTC) - There is something wrong with the equations in: "Anoxygenic photosynthesis converting hydrogen sulfide into other sulfur compounds or water (2H₂S + CO₂ → hv → CH₂O → H₂O → + 2S or 2H₂ + CO₂ + hv → CH₂O + H₂O), as occurs in deep sea hydrothermal vents today, reduced hydrogen concentrations and increased atmospheric methane.", it's an imbalanced equation. The first part could be 2H₂S + CO₂ + hv → CH₂O + H₂O + 2S. The final part seems unrelated to the text, i.e.: 2H₂ + CO₂ + hv → CH₂O + H₂O.

• I think you are right, so fixed the first and removed the second.--Ettrig (talk) 21:37, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

• History -

• This section generally looks OK. Pyrotec (talk) 10:41, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
• Y Pyrotec (talk) 08:42, 27 April 2011 (UTC) - There is however a broken web link for the Stauffer, R. C. (1957). "Haeckel, Darwin and ecology." paper which is referenced twice in this section.

• Yes, it was broken. Couldn't find this article on the web. I just removed the weblink. Hope that is OK. --Ettrig (talk) 21:37, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

• Human ecology -
  •  Not done Pyrotec (talk) 08:42, 27 April 2011 (UTC) - The first unnamed subsection is empty and consists of merely a link to
    Main article: Human ecology
    Some text should be provided.

• • As you say, there isn't really a first unnamed subsection. There is no real text between the section heading and the first of the four sub-sub-sections. Only the Main template instance. I cannot find that this detail of text organization is prohibited. It is used in Wikipedia:Manual of Style, but not mentioned, I think. (It is also used in sections History and Levels of Organization and Study in this article.) --Ettrig (talk) 21:37, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

• The title of the the section is Human ecology and there are subsections titles Ecosystem services, Sixth mass extinction, Ecological footprint and Ecological economics. The Human ecology article is not particularly illuminating and the subsection titles that are used in Ecology#Human ecology do not appear in the Human ecology article so there is little to indicate that these subsections are concerned with Human Ecology. There appears to be little about Human ecology in these subsections other than the link to {{Main}}|Human ecology, the first sentence in Ecosystem services, i.e. "The ecosystems of planet Earth are coupled to human environments.", a quotation in Sixth mass extinction, i.e. "Human activities are associated directly or indirectly with nearly every aspect of the current extinction spasm." and in Ecological economics, a sentence: "Human societies are increasingly being placed under stress ...". Since there is no introductory text, it is not all that clear that these subtopics have anything to do with the study of Human ecology. They don't appear to be mentioned in the WP:Lead, either.
• In contrast, whilst there is an initial {{main}} in History, the subsection titles are Early beginnings and After the turn of 20th century and these are recognisably history-related topics; similarly, in Levels of organization and study the subsection titles appear to be be related to "organisation". Pyrotec (talk) 08:42, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

• OK, I understand. This will take some time. --Ettrig (talk) 10:20, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

• Possibly one paragraph may be sufficient, it depends what is put in it. If it helps, the following taken from Human ecology: could perhaps be copyedited (shortened) to form the first sentence:

"Ecology as a discipline was technically born when Ernst Haeckel used the word "oekologie" in 1866 to describe the study of an organism’s relationship to its environment.[1] Ecology was revolutionary at this time because it encouraged interdisciplinarity within the sciences—it created a bridge between the physical sciences and the biological sciences in order to study systems of both biotic and abiotic factors. Human ecology is composed of concepts from ecology like interconnectivity, community behavior, and spatial organization. From the beginning, human ecology was present in geography and sociology,[2] but also in biological ecology and zoology. However, it was the social scientists who applied ecological ideas to humans in a rigorous way.[3]"

However, at this point all I'm really saying is that something is needed as an introduction to Human ecology, I can't impose my own views (and I'm not) on the exact form of the "introduction". The article is very nearly GA, so I'm happy to give some time for this to be addressed. Pyrotec (talk) 10:47, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Supprisingly, since this is the lead topic of Wikipedia:WikiProject Ecology, no one was sufficiently interested to make the changes. I've there made a change so that I can close this review. Pyrotec (talk) 08:28, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

• WP:Lead -

• This section generally looks OK.

At this point, I've completed my Initial comments and are just three minor "problems" to be addressed: an unbalanced equation, and empty subsection and a broken web link. I'm therefore putting the review On Hold; and GA-status will be awarded once these minor points have been satisfactorily concluded. I'm sorry for the delay in getting to this point. Pyrotec (talk) 11:45, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Comment

• It says "2 mg O₂.l⁻¹". I think it'd be plainer for more readers if the oxygen reference is outside milligrams per litre rather than inside.

Hope that helps Lightmouse (talk) 05:32, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

• Having checked before and after changes, it was not a reference. It was clearly 2 mg O₂.l⁻¹. That is not 2 mg O₂.l (Ref 1). Pyrotec (talk) 18:08, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Overall summary

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose quality:

   B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. References to sources:

   B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:

   C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   B. Focused:

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, etc:

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:

   B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

I'm awarding this article GA-status. Pyrotec (talk) 08:29, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for doing the last needed change, and sorry for my delay. --Ettrig (talk) 10:37, 5 May 2011 (UTC)