Wikipedia:Peer review/Immune system/archive2

Immune system

This page undergone an extensive rewrite since it's last peer review, mostly by myself, and I could really use some feedback on issues such as layout, flow, understandability, length, ect...

Thanks so much to anyone willing to read this article--DO11.10 21:45, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

• The lead of this article is too long, or may contain too many paragraphs. Please follow guidelines at WP:LEAD; be aware that the lead should adequately summarize the article.
• When writing standard abbreviations, the abbreviations should not have a 's' to demark plurality (change kms to km and lbs to lb).
• The lists, especially under "Surface Barriers and Mucosal Immunity", make the article harder to read; please convert these to prose (paragraph form).
• Per WP:MOS#Headings, headings generally do not start with the word "The". For example, ==The Biography== would be changed to ==Biography==.
• As per WP:MOS, please do not link words in headings.
• Per WP:MOS#Headings, headings generally should not repeat the title of the article. For example, if the article was Ferdinand Magellan, instead of using the heading ==Magellan's journey==, use ==Journey==.
• Please alphabetize the interlanguage links.
• Per WP:WIAFA, this article's table of contents (ToC) maybe too long- consider shrinking it down by merging short sections or using a proper system of daughter pages as per WP:SS.
• Watch for redundancies that make the article too wordy instead of being crisp and concise. (You may wish to try Tony1's redundancy exercises.)
  • While additive terms like “also”, “in addition”, “additionally”, “moreover”, and “furthermore” may sometimes be useful, overusing them when they aren't necessary can instead detract from the brilliancy of the article. This article has 22 additive terms, a bit too much.
  • Vague terms of size often are unnecessary and redundant - “some”, “a variety/number/majority of”, “several”, “a few”, “many”, “any”, and “all”. For example, “All pigs are pink, so we thought of a number of ways to turn them green.”
• As done in WP:FOOTNOTE, footnotes usually are located right after a punctuation mark (as recommended by the CMS, but not mandatory), such that there is no space inbetween. For example, the sun is larger than the moon [2]. is usually written as the sun is larger than the moon.[2]
• For an article about a very important system, I think more different references can be placed into the article; this is the first time I've seen notes for a single reference reach up to bb.

You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions for further ideas. (Ignore the <ref> tags above, this was generated mostly by JavaScript) Thanks, AZ _t 00:15, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the time to read the article, and for your insightful comments. Your suggestions will definitely improve this article. It just goes to show that one's mind rarely surprises itself. Thanks again--DO11.10 21:09, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Of course, the major limitation of this article is its massive length. There are already a lot of subarticles, but you could make the TOC a bit more manageable by not having quite so many subsections - four layers deep is just too many. The subsections of "phagocytes", for example, could all be merged up into a few paragraphs in a single section; just because something has a main article doesn't mean it needs its own header and main template. Also, I'd strongly suggest creating intermediate-level articles on adaptive and innate immunity, which would shorten this article and make it more readable.

Other than the length, the content is good, though it could use some organization. The early sections are very listy and need prosifying (this will lengthen them, which strengthens the argument for splitting the article). There's also a couple of images that could be improved - for example, the image of a dendritic cell is too cartoony; a more detailed drawing or an image of a real cell would be more illustrative.

The references also need work. The extensive reliance on textbooks isn't so bad (though all those little notes to Immunobiology might better be formatted as citations of pages/chapters in a notes section, with the text listed in a separate reference section). But referencing other Wikipedia articles is generally bad; importing the relevant references makes them easier for a reader to track down. There are also a few uncited statements floating around; "B-cells may be named for the bursa of Fabricius, an organ unique to birds, where the cells were first found to develop" stood out. Opabinia regalis 01:22, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

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• Hello, DO11.10. I comment you on taking on such a broad subject. A good deal has been mentioned on formatting, so I'll focus a bit on content. Here are some suggestions:
  1. Innate immune system : There isn't much more than the briefest mention of the complement system. A thorough article on the immune system isn't complete without at least a small section describing it. Plus, the desciption of the innate immune system focuses almost entirely on its cellular aspects, giving an incomplete picture to the process (did you know, for exmaple, that there is mounting evidence that SLE is caused by a deficiency in c1q?)
  2. Autoimmunity and Hypersensitivity are two entirely different things. To lump them together in one section is not something I advise.

There is alot more work to be done, and I'll be happy to help when I get the chance. Unfortunately I sort of have my hands full at the moment. Hope these help; expect more in the near furture. – ClockworkSoul 05:36, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

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Wow, so many great suggestions! Thank you both for your very helpful ideas. I have been reading up on WP:SS for a while, I as guessing that this would be the best way to split out Innate and acquired, do you agree?

It is funny that you mention the Bursa part... there was apparently a (somewhat) nasty discussion about that before I began editing this article, which is why I hesitantly left it in.

Great idea about the refs, although I also own Janeway 6th edition and Kuby, which basically has much of the same content, and I could include those as references also, I just really like the idea of pointing to online textbooks.

I actually did have a section about the complement system in the article, but I felt that a)it was difficult to find the right "place" in the innate system and b) that the article was getting too long, which I can see, other agree with. It appears that I will need to split the article. I think that then I can really give the complement system and hypersensitivity/allergy the attention they deserve.

How do you find the original piece on the complement system? Any suggestions, however small, would be appreciated. The complement system is is really not my forte.

Complement System

Main article: Complement system

The complement system is a biochemical cascade of the immune system that helps clear pathogens or mark them for destruction by other cells. The cascade is composed of many small plasma proteins, synthesized in the liver, primarily by hepatocytes, which work together to:

• trigger the recruitment of inflammatory cells.
• "tag" pathogens for destruction by other cells by opsonizing, or coating, the surface of the pathogen.
• disrupt the plasma membrane of an infected cell, resulting in cytolysis, and causing the death of the pathogen.

I agree that we need to make the complement system a more substantial part of this article. It really is one of the most effective and important mechanisms of the immunological response. I will try and sift through my 3rd year immunology notes for some useful information. -- JE.at.UWO^U|_T 20:27, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Elements of the complement cascade can be found in many species evolutionarily older than earlier than mammals including plants, birds, fish and some species of invertebrates.

Thanks again for the great comments--DO11.10 19:47, 23 October 2006 (UTC)