Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Stegosaurus

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[edit] Stegosaurus

This article is a product of Wikipedia:WikiProject Dinosaurs, the same team that assembled Featured Articles Velociraptor, Tyrannosaurus, Psittacosaurus, and Albertosaurus. It is certainly factually accurate: it uses citations from published paleontological papers: from Marsh's original description in the 1800s, to Fastovsky and Weishampel's 2005 plate analysis. It's well referenced: we generally used professional papers for the citations instead of web-sites. The article is neutral: it presents various theories, specifically in relation to the dermal plates, without giving undue weight to discredited ideas.

In the article's last Featured Article candidacy, several objections were raised. These have been addressed:

"The article is too listy"..."more prose would be advisable"

  • The list of species has been converted to prose. The sections that were short have been filled out. One list of four items remains, for clarity.

"The article needs to be expanded, I'm sure there is more information available."

"The popular culture contains a whole lot of trivia"..."The "Popular culture" section is a third of the entire article"

  • There is still a pop culture section. However, this section comprises only 1/10th the length of the rest of the article. Actually, it was never a third of the entire article. All trivia has been removed; what remains are important pop culture references: Gary Larson's Far Side comic, which gave the animal's tail its scientifically recognized name, film appearances in King Kong, Jurassic Park, Godzilla, etc.

"Was stegosaurus really the shape indicated in the scale picture?"

  • Yes it was.

"The sections feel all together too short"

  • Sections that were short were expanded; a few were merged.

"footnotes follow punctuation, please read WP:FN"

  • These have all been corrected. New footnotes added also follow the convention. (Self-nom)Firsfron of Ronchester 00:26, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Support a team of people did alot of tweaking after the last nomination by me failed, and I think the summary above is good. (I couldn't have said it better myself......)Cas Liber 00:46, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. This is an excellent dino article and has all the ingredients to be a fine FA. All the objections made at its first nomination have been properly addressed. ArthurWeasley 00:54, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. WikiProject Dinosaurs members include actual vertebrate paleontologists, PhD students, and amateurs. These individuals have come together to create this article. (for the record, I am a member of WikiProject Dinosaurs) Firsfron of Ronchester 00:55, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. Rlevse 02:07, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Support Nice work. Jay32183 02:35, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Neutral→Support. I'm only voting neutral for now so that my concerns will be heard & acted upon. Okay, firstly, this is a good article. However it needs some pruning. I'd like to see the opening 3 paragraphs combined into 2 paragraphs, as 3, although acceptable, is kinda weird considering that the info can easily be moulded into 2. Next, there are too many 1 or 2 line paragraphs throughout the article. Either combine them with the others of it's kind or expand them a bit. Lastly, The sentence "Juvenile specimens of Stegosaurus have also been found. One sub-adult specimen, discovered in 1994, is 4.6 metres (15 feet) long and 2 metres (7 feet) high, and is estimated to have weighed 2.6 tons while alive." needs a bit of reworking. It's too short to be alone in a paragraph & where have the specimens been found? If these are addressed I'll vote support... Spawn Man 04:27, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
(OK, I've added a bit. Is it long enough yet?)Cas Liber 04:50, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
(Yep - 3rd para slots nicely onto first come to think of it. Consensus?) Cas Liber 04:54, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
    • There is still too many 1 or 2 sentence paragraphs throughout the article. Merge these with other paragraphs or expand them. I feel that 3 sentence paragraphs would suffice. This article about 90% FA quality... :) Spawn Man 01:56, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Could you be more specific about which 10% of the article you feel could be improved upon? Mark t young 02:14, 2 November 2006 (UTC) 02:12, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
    • As stated above, just the short paragraphs around the show.... Spawn Man 00:10, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
        • Changed to support. Article is now practically devoid of 2 liners... Spawn Man 02:25, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Neutral Interesting read well put together I have a couple of concenrs with the descriptions this sentence in particular the bold section The tail appears to have been held well clear off the ground, while the skull of Stegosaurus was positioned relatively low to the ground.[3]. Then combine this with the next/opening sentence of the following paragraph The skull of Stegosaurus was long and narrow and held probably no higher than 1 m (3.3 ft) above the ground suggest using a comma(,) instead of two "and" also while the preceeding sentences is positive and certain as to the head position, this one is vague. Gnangarra 09:02, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
(You're right. It is (was) a bit clunky. This is as a result of 2 paras coming together without a bit of tweaking. I have tweaked it now to make it read more smoothly and remove reduplicated bits.)Cas Liber 11:31, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Support change from neutral to support Gnangarra 12:10, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Support This article has imporved greatly since it was previously submitted for FA status. I personally feel that it is one of the best dinosaur articles of Wikipedia, and that all the contributions made have created an article that is both factually correct and accessable to a non-professional audience, but does not suffer the bain of "dumbing-down". Excellent work. Mark t young 12:05, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Support Tremendous improvement since the last FAC. Very well written aticle. Hello32020 02:39, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Support Great to see one of my favorite dinosaurs featured in such a high quality article :). Gzkn 04:32, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Neutral. Great article. I have only a couple of nitpicking issues, not serious enough to oppose, and easy to fix. Neil916 (Talk) 11:23, 2 November 2006 (UTC) Changed to Support. Neil916 (Talk) 22:34, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Please review the "Units of measurement" section of Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). The article should have its units of measure spelled out (metres rather than m) in the text, but conversions in parentheses should be abbreviated. At times, the article switches between metric and U.S. measurements (tons and grams used in the same sentence in the description section). Make sure all the measurements have conversions for metric-impaired readers like me.
  • Beware of switching back and forth between British English spellings and American English spellings. The majority of the article seems to be British English, so beware of spellings like "centimeter" (in the Plates subsection of the Palaeobiology section). Unfortunately, as an American, it's much easier for me to spot British spellings in articles using American spelling than vice versa, so I can't come up with any other examples.
I believe Mark t young has fixed all of the mixed measurements, added conversions, and fixed the mixed British/American spelling to British English. Like you, I don't spot Americanisms very easily. But it appears to be all fixed now. Firsfron of Ronchester 17:01, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
There were a few more, which I've hunted down myself, and I'll take your word on the spelling issue. Neil916 (Talk) 22:34, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, Neil. I did an automated check on words like "color" and "armor". The only instances found were in the titles of books (which obviously shouldn't be changed) and in the name of the state of Colorado. "Meter" also shows no results. Again, thanks for the fixes. Firsfron of Ronchester 22:41, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Support Very nice article.--Rudjek 20:46, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Support Excellent article. —ExplorerCDT 04:58, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Support, well done! - Mailer Diablo 19:42, 10 November 2006 (UTC)