Wikipedia:Peer review/List of Hypericum species/archive1

List of Hypericum species

Hello peer reviewers. I'm putting this list up for review after roughly 2 years of working way too much on it. While I'm not 100% finished inputting all the information I'd like, I'm to the point where I need some constructive criticism on the article on what I can improve, so I don't unknowingly dig the article into a hole it can't be pulled out from. My main goal is to get the article to be a featured list, so I would like some input on how I can improve its chances at passing the Featured List Review with flying colors.

I don't want to sound too picky or anything, but there are a few specific things I really need some input on if at all possible:

• How can I improve the lead? I've been told before it needs expansion, and I recently added 2 more paragraphs, but I still feel like it is a little rough around the edges.
• Are the section leads and descriptions adequate? Should I add more or trim them down?
• What should I wikilinks? I have been wikilinking countries but not botanists; is that correct?
• Are the images sized properly? Should I continue to upload low-quality public domain specimen images from the NHS or is it better to just leave no image for some species?
• Are there ways the habitat column could be slimmed down?
• I've only been including 3 synonyms per species. Should I include a full list for every species? Or slim it down to a common name and one synonym?
• I know, there are a lot of references. Are they formatted properly? Should I remove any? Is 5 per species enough? (Also I'd love if you have any more refs for me :))

Thanks so much for your time, it means a lot to have some constructive criticism on this huge and ambitious project of mine. I'm not going to be offended if you don't sugarcoat anything, so lay it on thick!

Your fellow editor, Fritzmann2002 19:20, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

Comments

• I feel like each section header should say Section Foo or Sect. Foo, rather than just Foo.
• It's not quantity but quality of references that matters.
• You have common names and synonyms in the same column. That confused me.
• This is the English Wikipedia. Other languages' common names are inappropriate, and at best should be in the species own articles.
• A few examples of similar attempts exist, the one closest to yours being List of Narcissus species, followed by List of Lactarius species and then List of Pluteus species. Note that none of them have a Synonyms column. Why? Because that information is (or at least should be) in the article on the species. Also, by definition, synonyms are incorrect. You might argue that having the synonyms is useful for people searching for a species, by the synonym, when there is no article on the species. I might argue that you can sneak the synonyms in some other way, to reduce the number of columns. You could put the synonyms in small text after the main name in the Binomial column. Or you could use Template:Efn and list the synonyms in footnotes. Certainly you could drop the authorities from the synonyms.
• Similarly, you could put the original publication short citations into footnotes, or into the references columns. In fact, you could put the entire Authorities column into the References column, or into the Binomial column as small text or as footnotes. (I would prefer small text. You have that format already in the Synonyms column.)
• Remember that you are writing for a lay audience. Abductive (reasoning) 09:45, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Comments by David Fuchs

Forthcoming this week... Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 19:02, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

• I feel like a general comment is that this article immediately gets into the weeds and should probably do the bare minimum at being comprehensible for a random reader. You don't even mention that the article subject is about what plants until we hit the second paragraph. Likewise, I did up to college-level biology and didn't know about sections in botany, so you should actually explain what these classifications are for people who aren't botanists. You don't need to go exhaustively into anything, just try and provide the bare amount of information necessary for basic comprehension without requiring readers to link away.
• You've suppressed the table of contents and default collapsed the list of species, which to me is a poor decision. The lists aren't supplemental information, they are the subject of the page, and should be easily browsable rather than having to click into stuff. Likewise the TOC should be there to facilitate quickly getting to the section you want.
• In regards to wikilinking, I'd say in general it's better to wiki link the botanists versus the countries. Countries are relatively generic and non-specific; clicking one is not going to immediately take you to relevant botany/range information in regards to this list, whereas biologists are less known and more germane to the topic—but in this case, I'd say neither is the best option to reduce overlinking. The most germane element is the species name where they can link to and find out all this information in more detail.
• To echo the above, quantity of references versus quality is always the wrong tradeoff. Ideally, if you can find one good, high-quality source that covers all the information for the given species, just use that one rather than hitting us with duplicates. As a minor styling note, you should make sure stacked references escalate, i.e. format refs like [24][29][33][45][50] instead of [45][33][29][24][50].
• I don't find the graphic temporal range for extinct species helpful or useful, since they're showing the entire range of time and are the same for each section. I'd just axe it.
• If you want to slim the habitat column, I'd just prosify the range. It's kind of ungainly having a mix of differently-sized range images alongside just prose for other ones. It'd shorten the scrolling and keep focus on the images of the shrubs which are IMO more important.

Hope these thoughts help. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 01:50, 21 August 2019 (UTC)