Talk:Waukesha Biota/GA1

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 16:42, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Comments

• The first sentence of the lead says "refers to a Konservat-Lagerstätte". The term is too technical for a first sentence, which should be simple and inviting for the novice reader, however techie things get lower down. Further, the Waukesha Biota does not "refer to" anything; it is a thing, and must be described as such, i.e. "The Waukesha Biota ... is the assemblage of finely-preserved animals ... " or something equally cuddly and approachable. The rest of the lead, too, should try not to be too complicated (come on now, who's heard of "(Telychian to Sheinwoodian)"?); the densely technical stuff belongs in the body, not the lead.

• The second half of the lead ("This biota is one... life on Earth.") suddenly switches from look-how-technical-I-can-be to now-listen-in-everybody-this-is-important classroom teacher-style: it seems to be selling the site rather than just describing it. The style "our understanding..." must not be used on Wikipedia. The whole text needs to be rewritten plainly, simply, and non-repetitively.

• It's unclear where much of the "History and significance" paragraph comes from. One sentence and ref [5] name Gould, but no page numbers are provided, and it's unclear if the ref is meant to cover the first three sentences anyway. Those sentences are oddly chatty in tone, contrasting with the rest of the article. I suggest that all the material from "Prior to ... others were Silurian." be rewritten and re-cited.

• Ref [8] just points to the University of Wisconsin Geological Museum home page. The link needs to point to a Waukesha-specific page, and to give the page's title and date (as well as naming the museum).

• "Taphonomy" (section header) must not be linked; please state briefly what taphonomy is, with bluelink, in the section text, and then explain why the Waukesha taphonomy is distinctive.

• "Thylacares brandonensis is the name given to one of" - no, the article is not about names, but about fossils. You could just cut "the name given to".

• Similarly, "Acheronauta derives from" confuses the fossil (a species) with its name (a word). Here you actually need to say something like "Acheronauta is so named for the harsh environment that helped preserve the Waukesha fossils: its name derives from ..." to make sense of things.

• "Interestingly" is editorial and not allowed. "could be another possible" is tautologous, if it could then of course it's possible, so use one or the other but ... not both.

• On the three 'See also' items, suggest you remove the "found" and "located" words as adding nothing. And "British isles" should be "British Isles".

• The refs sometimes represent their authors as "Doe, Adam B. C.", sometimes "Doe, A.B.C.", sometimes "Doe, A. B. C." and sometimes "Adam B. C. Doe". I suggest you standardize on the first of these as the most readable and informative for the reader.

• "soft bodied" (soft, and having a body) should be "soft-bodied" (having a soft body).

Images

• The lead image is too large, suggest you reduce the "|imagesize = 250px" parameter somewhat.

• The Thylacocephalans and Parioscorpio venator images come out as (really) rather large because of the "packed" mode, which is basically uncontrollable. I suggest you use instead "class=center mode=nolines widths=220" (say) which gives a predictable result.

• The probable leech image is too large, suggest you add |upright=0.55 to bring it into line with the area of other images. This should also reduce the sandwiching with the Chordate image that follows it.

• Captions that are not complete sentences must not end with a ".", so please remove punctuation from all of those (e.g. "A fossil of Venustulus from the Waukesha Biota.").

Discussion

@Chiswick Chap Ok, I've edited the page based on your requests. The only one I have not fixed yet is the refs and authors. If you could say which refs have this problem, that would help me fix them. Fossiladder13 (talk) 19:43, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Fossiladder13: Many thanks. The answer depends on your choice. If you look through the list of refs at the bottom of the article, you will immediately see where the authors are inconsistently formatted. Please choose a ref style, e.g. "Doe, Adam B." (i.e. Surname, Forename I.[nitial]) and change the refs which are not in that chosen style to be in that style. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:50, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

It's much improved: more readable, clearer, and better focused on the biology. I've taken the liberty to copy-edit a little, and to trim some materials that properly belong in species articles rather than here. I hope you are pleased with the result, and congratulations on the GA. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:22, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.