User:Pszczolak/sandbox

Blanco Fracture Zone

Can be found here

Citations

I used a government website for some general information, and a scientific paper for more information on the magnetic anomaly

You did a really good job cleaning up the magentic strips section and adding to citations. You could expand "it aligns itself with the current position of the north magnetic pole of the Earth" to say "magnetite minerals align themselves with the local orientation of the Earths magnetic field" William Wilcock (talk) 00:59, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Critique Articles

Plate Tectonics

This article seemed well written and cohesive, but there were some issues with it. 

The lead of the article is long, cohesive and well sourced, it was either written by one person or rewritten at a later date - there isn’t much evidence of piecemeal additions to it. The same can’t be entirely said of the rest of the articles. Some of the sections are notably more well referenced than others. 

The sections that are asking for citations, like the Driving forces related to Earth rotation (cite) and the Driving forces related to mantle dynamics (cite), are well cited: they have at least one reference per paragraph, and the ones I’ve checked are either academic journals, or referencing “expert” websites. Where the citations fall apart are on the long sections that detail what I think would be considered common knowledge, there are no citations for the first part of the Key Principles section, parts of the “Types” section, or the Floating continents, paleomagnetism, and seismicity zones section. Although these are filled in with information I believe to be correct from my past classes on the subject, there are not a lot of specific references for them. In particular, the history (development of the theory) section has quite a few points where it has no source, and is making definite claims. For example, who are Harold Jeffreys and Charles Schuchert, and is there any reason to believe that they disagreed with this theory other than that some editor said so?

The content of the article really only lets down in a few spots. There were a few sections that seemed dropped in hastily, such as the Plate reconstruction section or the Other planets section. These were light on content (although not necessarily on references), and seemed notably more condensed than the rest of the article. In particular, the other planets section seems unnecessary. The whole article is about the development and application of the theory on Earth, even if that is not what it is formally called. Discussion on other planets should be moved elsewhere or dropped entirely. 

Finally, in the “Driving Forces” section, the author(s) say that the theories are a matter of debate, but offer no clues as to what the debate is, or even a source where someone could find more out about the debate. There is further information in the Talk page, but that isn't reflected in the article itself.

The article was a good source of information though, in particular I learned more about the composition of the underlying mantle than I had previously. The lateral changes in density were not something that I had come across before. Additionally, the section of plate reconstruction, although brief, was very interesting, the techniques to develop our understand the plates are kind of fascinating. 

Convergent Margin

This article is in noticeably worse condition than the first one. There are very few sources (one specifically) and there are not many citations throughout the article.

The Lead is on the short side but still in decent condition. It is fairly cohesive, and appears to be written by a single voice. It ends weirdly, with a anecdote, but the main problem with it is the lack of sources. There are in fact no citations or any sources mentioned until the middle of the next section. This issue prevails throughout the article. There is only one source, and while it is a decently comprehensive, it could use improvement. The source hasn't been updated since 2001, and appears to be someone's teaching website. It's surprising that it has lasted this long, and the chances of it going away are not insignificant. Moving to peer reviewed and permanent sources should be a priority.

The first section (Descriptions) also has a bit of an identity crisis. It starts with a description of the mechanics of converging plates, but by the end it is describing the physical features. Splitting this section into at least two would improve the readability and give it a more unified voice. Adding another section about the surface physical characteristics would allow the description section to stay focused on the mechanisms of convergence. Sources need improvement, there were specific facts stated with no references.

The next section is confusing as well, it's title is similar to the main article, and it appears to be a restatement of the rest of the piece. Maybe having this section focus on subduction (and reference subduction's wikipedia page) would help.

The Examples section needs improvement as well, it seems like kind of an afterthought. Adding figures (a map) to it would go a long way to improving it, the lack of figures was noticeable throughout the article. The only figure is in the Lead, and could have been added to its own section later on.

The tone and structure of the writing throughout the piece is solid, although unsourced. It seemed academic, and no strong biases were apparent, just a restatement of facts. That in itself could be an issue if there is any debate around the subject being covered, but in this case I feel that it works pretty well.

There are no conversations on the Talk page (the only comment was added by one of us), so there really aren't any ongoing suggestions to improve the article.

It currently is only a start class article with a mid priority, so I wouldn't expect help coming from the main WikiProject groups any time soon. Given that this is a fairly central topic of Earth Sciences, I feel that it should be bumped up in priority. It is a fairly popular page, so improving it would be helpful to the project at large.

Instructor Comments

These are really thorough reviews. I agree with that the Plate tectonics article is rather uneven in places. I also agree that the Convergent boundary in not a bad article (certainly much better than the Divergent Boundary article which other students looked at) aside from the lack of citations. William Wilcock (talk) 06:21, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Fooling Around

ãǍĞ Pszczolak (talk) 16:23, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

something Pszczolak (talk)

two tildes ~~

five tildes 17:06, 29 March 2017 (UTC)