Talk:Insect/GA1

GA Review

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Unfortunately, I'll have to quickfail this GAN. There are entire swaths of text that are completely unreferenced. Please try to ensure that at the minimum, every paragraph has a source. Sasata (talk) 20:59, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Other suggestions:

• The lead currently isn't a summary of the article... see Wikipedia:Lead_section; make sure everything in the lead is discussed in the article itself: i.e., the etymology of entomology should also be in the article text; all of the specific stats about size and extremes need to be in the main text as well.

• There are several 1- or 2-sentence "paragraphs" that should either be expanded or combined in some way.

• The external links section could use a trim and copyedit

• The references should be reorganized into Footnotes" and "references", and often-used sources listed in the Reference section (thinking specifically of the Gullan, P.J.; P.S. Cranston (2005) reference); see the MOS for more details; would also suggest trimming down the "Further reading" section, and instead incorporating some of those as cited sources.

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Insect/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Well written

• "Estimates of the total number of current species, including those not yet known to science, range from two million to fifty million, with newer studies favouring a lower figure of about six to ten million.[6][7][8] With over a million described species—more than half of all known living organisms[6][9]—with estimates of undescribed species as high as 30 million," is contradictory and needs to be rewritten, perhaps with the sentences merged.
• "The heaviest documented insect was a Giant Weta of 70 g (2½ oz), but other possible candidates include the Goliath beetles Goliathus goliatus, Goliathus regius and Cerambycid beetles such as Titanus giganteus, though no one is certain which is truly the heaviest.[12] The largest insect was, and is still believed to be the ancient dragonfly called Meganeura. [13]" could be rewritten. The lead is otherwise great.
• Rework "The head supports a pair of sensory antennae, a pair of compound eyes, if present, one to three simple eyes, if present, (ocelli) and three sets of variously modified appendages that form the mouthparts."
• "The winged insects and their wingless relatives make up the subclass Pterygota." is a little vague.
• "many of the most successful insect groups" What makes them more successful?
• "However, for any given insect one can name, whether it is considered a pest or not, there will be one to hundreds of species of insects..." should be rewritten.
• Remove the quotations section and move to wikiquote.

Factual accuracy

Many citations are bare references - they need to be properly formatted with a cite template: refs 2,4,5,13,14,20,21,23,32,33, etc.

• "Insects were the earliest organisms to produce sounds and to sense them" needs a reference.
• "The Madagascar hissing cockroach has the ability to press air through the spiracles to make a hissing noise, and the Death's-head Hawkmoth makes a squeaking noise by forcing air out of their pharynx." needs a reference.
• "Insects can also adapt their gait to cope with the loss of one or more limbs." needs ref
• "During this era, some giant dragonfly-like forms reached wingspans of 55 to 70 cm, (22-28 in) making them far larger than any living insect. This gigantism may have been due to higher atmospheric oxygen levels that allowed increased respiratory efficiency relative to today." needs refs

Broadness

I think it's good, but I'm not an entomologist.

NPOV

Good

Stability

Good

Images

All good

Overall it is a very good article, though it is not perfect. Please make the suggested changes and I will review the article again. Reywas92^Talk 01:11, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Unless things have changed recently, I thought cite web was only a requirement for FA, not GA. GA merely requires the refs to all have the same format, which is also missing from the current look of the article. Needless to say, either way the references require some work to all have the same format. I also added a couple lines to the flight section, which were recently incorporated into the prevailing winds article, which by coincidence is also currently under GA review. Thegreatdr (talk) 21:29, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Regardless, it still should be done when I want to make it a FA, and I would prefer the cite template also. Anyway, I still completed the Well Written except for the "many of the most successful insect groups" it states the reason already. Thanks Reywas92^Talk for starting the review, I hope it will be completed soon, and thanks Thegreatdr (talk) for adding comments, any more comments or help from you or any one else are welcomed. Bugboy52.4 (talk) 00:16, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I rewrote the "heaviest insect" paragraph. Does this clarify it? a little insignificant 19:31, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that should cover it, can you help with the cite refs though? Bugboy52.4 (talk) 19:58, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Sure thing. I'll get on that tomorrow. a little insignificant 02:22, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I wasn't sure if I should tell my progress here or on the Insect talk page. But, anyway, I covered most of the Well Written section, except for "many of the most successful insect groups" What makes them more successful?, I wasn't sure how to expand on this.

For the the Factual Accuracy, I will get to when I come back from service in about 3 hours, but can you explain what a bare references is, and maybe show me how to use the cite template on one of the bare references, thanks. Bugboy52.4 (talk) 12:45, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Do you need to make a review of the images? And I started to change the bare to cite refs. Also, can you make sure that the first section is done? Bugboy52.4 (talk) 22:44, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I'll try to work on checking the images soon. A bare reference only has the link to the site and does not have title, author, etc. Reywas92^Talk 22:48, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Re formatting of refs:

• refTools takes away a lot of the sweat. It's avaiable in the "editing" tab of your "preferences" page. I use it all the time.
• Refs to books must have page numbers. If you cite a book repeatedly, you may not want to repeat the author(s), title, publisher, date, ISBN, colour of your grandmother's cat's eyes, etc. every time. Master of Orion II shows the approach I'm currently using for the game's manual. Drop me a message if you need other info.
• Any ref that contains a URL must have accessdate=yyy-mm-dd - the "Web" option of refTools defaults this to-day, but the others don't, for some reason. --Philcha (talk) 16:20, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

• Okay, I'm done the last of the refs. a little insignificant 17:24, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry I haven't gotten back to you. Your improvements look good, but I have some more comments. First, you need to finish formatting some refs. They must also include the author and publisher if possible, not just the title and access date; use the refTools gadget in your preferences. These are for current numbers 2, 9, 24, 25, 36, 37, 49, 50, 52, 54, 58, 59, 60 and 66; some have author formatted the wrong way or are absent, just redo them with refTools. 19 and 20 should be combined with a refname, as should 66 and 68. We do not cite Britannica here (23), so find another source. I hope to see this at WP:FAC someday, but it would still need a lot of improvement for that. Most all the article should be fully referenced. You've got enough for GA, but an article of this length could always use more refs. In addition, be sure to use scientific journals; there seems to be many of them here, but most of the websites for this topic should be avoided. Also, as this is a general article, it should focus more on general characteristics of insects, not specific things. I suggest getting a crew from Wikipedia:WikiProject Arthropods together on this article. Reywas92^Talk 20:31, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Reference 56 is an old version of the wikipedia article for that topic, mirrored on another website. Therefore, it cannot be used as it violates MoS, since wikipedia articles cannot be referenced within other wikipedia articles as a reliable source. I had made attempts to fill out ref information for 58-60, but now that I've uncovered this, the main GA reviewer (and GA submitter) need to step up and make sure there are no more incidents of this type within this article. If there are, quick failing could be an option. Thegreatdr (talk) 14:55, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

No, Bugboy, you're not being a pain; this is what it takes to make articles better. You have added publishers, but did not take my advice on removing Britannica and merging the repeat refs. I am also seeing more possibly unreliable sources. #37 is Geocities, which makes makes it unreliable. I'm also wearly of 4, 5/13, 23, 37, and 64. For a scientific article, there should be almost only reliable scientific references. This article is close to GA status, but it's still not quite there, so I regretfully must fail the article. I'm sure that with a little collaboration you can get this article to be fully referenced and in-depth and achieve GA or even FA, but it's not there yet. Reywas92^Talk 19:48, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I've merged a couple pair of refs that repeated. It doesn't solve the problem particularly, but does help out. Thegreatdr (talk) 22:44, 20 May 2009 (UTC)