Talk:Gene/GA2

2015 GA Review (April)

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Reviewer: Cerebellum (talk · contribs) 01:25, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Hello! I will be reviewing this article. --Cerebellum (talk) 01:25, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose, no copyvios, spelling and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

   In the "Translation" section you used the word "ligates," which I do not know. Is there a more common word you could use there? Also, the first sentence of the "Gene targeting and implications" section left me confused. You say that gene targeting provides "mouse models for studying the roles of individual genes," but the sentence seems abrupt and I'm not really sure why we are talking about mice all of a sudden or what mouse models are. Maybe start off with a broad intro sentence to transition from the previous section on genes in evolution, and explain why we are now talking about mice whereas the rest of the article seemed to be about genes in all forms of life. As far as layout goes, I recommend putting the two sections on the concept of a gene ("Changing concept" and "evolutionary concept of a gene") in sequence, right now they are split up by the gene targeting paragraph.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (reference section): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

   I think the 2012 review was too harsh on this but some of the same criticism applies. Per WP:SCG you don't need a ref for every paragraph if the information all comes from a basic textbook, but it's not clear to me where some information comes from. For example, the section on Mendelian inheritance has no references. I assume most of the information in later sections can be found in Molecular Biology of the Cell, but is that the case for Mendelian inheritance as well? Please add at least one reference to that section. Also, you always need to cite direct quotations, so please provide a reference for the Williams definition of a gene in the "Evolutionary concept of a gene" section.

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

   Great use of diagrams!

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

   Good article, but I'm putting it on hold for now so you can make some tweaks. Cerebellum (talk) 17:15, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for your work on this article this week, in particular BlueMoonset for identifying the copyright issue, Opabinia regalis for correcting it, and Evolution and evolvability for fixes throughout. Unfortunately some of the issues from the review, in particular regarding sourcing, have not been fixed. Because of that I have to fail the article for now, but please let me know if you renominate it and I'll take another look. --Cerebellum (talk) 03:26, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Comment

I thought I'd take a look after recent exchanges about the nomination on the GAN talk page, which ended by noting that the nomination was under review. It's an impressive article, but at the moment does not meet some of the criteria

It seems to me that the article has a classic violation of WP:LEAD, a GA criterion: Apart from trivial basic facts, significant information should not appear in the lead if it is not covered in the remainder of the article. The lead's third paragraph is solely about a topic, "big genes", that is only mentioned there; I could not find the phrase "big genes" anywhere in the body.

I'm completely at sea as to the sourcing, since this is a very long article where so much of the material is not sourced; I don't see how any assumption can be made about what came from the textbook (which is only cited twice) and what didn't. (Also, textbooks are big: these citations should be to a page or page range, not to an immense tome where it's impractical to find the information being referenced.) I think that every subsection should be sourced, not merely every section, and more than a source for a parenthetical comment at that (as in "Genetic code", which is the only citation in the entire section). Genes are complicated and involve technical explanations, as is plain in this article; there needs to be concomitant sourcing. As it says, Complex, current, or controversial subjects may require many citations in the lead; this is even more true of the article body of a very complex scientific topic. BlueMoonset (talk) 23:46, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

I just ran Earwig's Copyvio Detector on the article, and found significant copyvio in the article, enough to stop this nomination in its tracks until a thorough check and cleanup job has been completed. For example, a great deal of the "Gene targeting and implications" section is taken from the FN24 (www.biolsci.org) source; the second paragraph is copied almost verbatim in its entirety, as you can see in this report, and much of the first paragraph is very like FN25. BlueMoonset (talk) 03:23, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Cleaned up the gene-targeting section (which was also rather undue). I had planned/promised to work on the text of this article awhile back but just haven't had the time. Images look fantastic though! Opabinia regalis (talk) 19:41, 15 April 2015 (UTC)