Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/Iguanodon

Seeing as how discussion of the length of the article (and how to solve the potential problem) started getting long, I have moved the comments here. Please do not take offence; these comments are important, but are perhaps tangental to the main FAC discussion (ie, they are about moving or replacing sections, rather than whether the article is of Featured Quality). Again, please do not be offended. It is my hope we can discuss these issues, leaving the main discussion undisturbed. Firsfron of Ronchester 04:03, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Splitting off the species sections

• Splitting off the species isn't a bad idea; it was done with Psittacosaurus (Species of Psittacosaurus, although that article is more interesting because more Psittacosaurus species are still in use or were based on decent material. J. Spencer 18:10, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

It's fine if someone wants to split off part of the article; the idea was just to present a fully comprehensive article, but budding off the species section is a decent solution, if people think the current article is too long. As for the working/wikilinks, words like pes can easily be explained in a very short parenthetical (foot), but a clade is defined as (a group of organisms consisting of a single common ancestor and all the descendants of that ancestor). Because long parentheticals tend to disrupt the flow of the sentence, making it difficult to understand what is being said, I truly prefer using a wikilink on words which require a lengthier explanation. We did make many copyedits on this article, and a full list of additional copyedits that were suggested to us can be found here. Firsfron of Ronchester 20:58, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

How much of the species section would be a good choice to remove? If we kept the four accepted species, and I. anglicus, I don't think the average reader would miss the rest. J. Spencer 21:37, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't think the article is too long; havn't Tyrannosaurus and some other equally long articles made FA status? The options are either removing all species onto a species of Iguanodon page, removing the dubious bit (whcih woul then be lost as it couldn't stand up on a page by itself) or leaving as is. Cas Liber 03:20, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Cas. The article should stay as is. Creating a new page would only take more data space & deleting the problematic bits you described would only be giving the reader a half read, as that is factual information. In my view, deleting factual information is frowned upon. ;) I say leave as is... Spawn Man 23:47, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Maybe it could be moved down, then? If readers would be more interested in paleobiology, how about moving Paleobiology before Species? J. Spencer 23:56, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't see how this would fix the size problems? Besides, the Paleobiology section refers to stuff about the species, which the reader wouldn't know about as it would be below the paleobiology section. Kinda like putting the middle after the ending don't you think? Spawn Man 00:08, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

I wasn't thinking so much about the space issue (which is academic; a perfect article is as long as it needs to be), but about the dryness of the species section relative to the rest. 99% of the paleobiology refers to I. bernissartensis (and I. atherfieldensis, but that's another can of worms). What I'm saying, really, is if a number of us agreed that the section was problematic, and that moving it would be a good solution, I'd make it work. J. Spencer 00:24, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

I truly hope no one minds that this discussion was moved. B movie is a Featured Article which was 129kb long (twice as long as this one). After it reached FA status, there was some debate about its length, and it was decided to pare the article down to its current 102k length. This is still considerably longer than Iguanodon, which is currently 65.7k . Iggy is also shorter than Dinosaur or List of dinosaurs, so I'm not certain why dust has been raised over this FAC length but not the earlier ones.

Still, if it is necessary for this article to be pared down in order for it to reach FA status, J.'s suggestion of moving the species section to a new article, as was done with Psittacosaurus, is workable, and I would certainly trust J with the task, as he did, after all, do much of the work on the article.

However, if it's just the case of the species material being dry, that is my fault, as I was mainly the one working the species section. If this is the only real problem, perhaps someone could jazz up the material, or we could even actively seek alternate wording from those who have stated that that material is too dry. Firsfron of Ronchester 04:42, 26 February 2007 (UTC)