Wikipedia:Featured article review/Evolution/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was removed 20:23, 7 February 2007.

[edit] Evolution

[edit] Review commentary

Messages left at Raul654 and Evolutionary biology. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:47, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Evolution offers a "take your pick" menu of deficiencies in WP:WIAFA. It was nominated by Raul654 (talk · contribs) several years ago, but has no main author (which is apparent in the Table of Contents). It has an External link farm, and a See also farm (see WP:EL and WP:NOT). Many of the references/footnotes are not correctly formatted. The article size is 104KB overall, with 60KB of prose, suggesting the need for better use of summary style. The article has broad swatches of uncited text. It has external jumps to terms that should be wikified (example, Another mechanism causing gene duplication is intergenic recombination, particularly 'exon shuffling', ... ) It needs a complete re-evaluation, reorganization, and rewrite. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:45, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

My opinion, which I have mentioned several times before, is that the article could stand some improving. Here are my suggestions, most of which are not new:
  • remove the history of evolutionary thought sections and leave at most a paragraph with a link to the longer main articles on this
  • remove the objections to evolution section and replace it with a short summary paragraph with a link to another article describing this (which might for time being be the controversy article, but eventually could be a separate article on this; I am working on a draft that might either go into the controversy article or be a separate article summarizing the objections). The evolution article should be on the science and little else. Other articles can address the history or the controversy with creationism/ID/creation science etc.
  • the links could be moved to a separate article listing and organizing links on the topic, and then only a few links included in the article itself
  • the introductory paragraphs, or at least introductory sentences, of all sections should be accessible to the average reader.
  • After many attempts I am glad to see the lead is becoming accessible and less technical
  • I am glad that there is an accessible introduction to evoltion, which I lobbied for
  • excessive bits on the philosophy of science in various places should be removed (removing the objections section would probably get rid of most of them)--Filll 17:12, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I might also mention that in the past, efforts to improve it were met with severe resistance. I am glad to see that it seems to be moving ahead now, finally. Iam not sure what happened to the authors that fought so desperately to avoid any changes.--Filll 17:15, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Regarding your idea to create a separate article with links, pls see WP:EL and WP:NOT - that seems to be the equivalent of creating a webpage, which is not encyclopedic. Just get rid of them - isn't there a DMOZ category which summarizes them? I'll go look. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:38, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I have seen articles which provide links, with annotations to them. They are very useful. They also divide the links in categories. For a reader who wants to know where to go and what to look for this, this can be invaluable. Why not something here? I know it might violate some rule or other if not done properly. But it would be helpful in several was, and others have done it.--Filll 17:41, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Other articles may also be in violation of WP:EL and WP:NOT. It's not our job; this is an encyclopedia.

There you go - one place that does it for you. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:45, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

No offense, but that really is not as useful as what I have seen here in Wikipedia. Organized by subject. Uniform articles. Annotated links. etc.--Filll 18:05, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
No offense taken - but being a web directory is *still* Not Our Job, and External links should be used sparingly. This will eventually be a Remove vote from me if ELs aren't cleaned up. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:49, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
  • The most egregious problem with this article is found right at the top - For a non-technical introduction to the topic, please see Introduction to evolution. It has been decided in the past that even technical articles should be - at least partially - accessible to layman. (And, to be frank - evolution is not nearly as technical as the math articles that inspired the previous discussion.) Raul654 17:47, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Writing as the person that lobbied for the introductory article and also helped to write it, I think I must respond. Yes the main article or at least the introductory paragraphs of each section and the lead should be accessible. The existence of an introduction to evolution article does not get one off the hook. However the argument has been made repeatedly that the editors can not be as technically precise as they want and use the jargon they want if it has to be dumbed down for the public. So it is not unreasonable to have a suite of articles, like the Simple Wikipedia Simple:evolution article, and the Introduction to evolution article and the evolution article, to address all levels as much as possible. After all, Encyclopedia Britannica has at least 6 different levels in their products.
    • Also, it is true that evolution is not as complicated as quantum mechanics or special relativity. But people still have problems even with stupid old evolution, obviously. And we have had people write to us to thank us for writing the introduction article so they could get up to speed. After they understand the terms a bit, they feel more comfortable about tackling the main articles.--Filll 18:02, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
      • the argument has been made repeatedly that the editors can not be as technically precise as they want and use the jargon they want if it has to be dumbed down for the public - for (at least) the introduction, that is exactly what they are required to do by the FA criteria. For the rest of the article, it's perfectly acceptable to use a technical term, and link to the article on it. Raul654 18:08, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Of course, there is no problem with them being technical in the body of the article as long as they make the lead accessible and the introductory paragraphs or sentences. Which is what I have been fighting for with only minimal success for months and months.--Filll 18:11, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

A major problem is a group of editors who keep reverting the lead to versions from months ago, allowing only attempts to simplify it that fit in with that original structure, and often reverting even that. The best I've managed to push through is a major structural change in the order of the article, and certain cleanings-up of the introduction.

For instance, this is a version from October: [1] As of time of writing, the opening reads: [2] However, here's a version from 26 December: [3]

This was a version come up with over a month by numerous editors, it has been reverted to an old, WP:LEAD violating version. Frankly, losing FA and having to edit it to get it back may be the only way to make real progress on the lead. Vanished user talk 19:03, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I had not noticed what happened to the new lead. It makes me sick. It was gorgeous. I have had similar problems with editors who are in love with what existed 5 months ago, or 1 year ago or 3 years ago. I had an awful time trying to battle them and withdrew for the moment when I did not seem to have any support. I think the only way forward is as Adam suggests: Slam them and slam them hard. Take away FA status. Downgrade the status even further as you see fit. And maybe even have some sort of voting/comment session on the status and future direction needed for the article. These editors need to be confronted with the truth of 20 or 30 or 50 or 100 other editors telling them they are damaging the article, which I believe would be done. I will not battle these characters alone. For example, just because an editor started the article almost 6 years ago, does not give this editor any rights to keep it the same way it was years ago (recalling a very nasty fight I had a few weeks ago). The article is, as pointed out above repeatedly, a mess. So they need their faces rubbed in it and they need to know that their efforts at slowly progress are definitely unappreciated. A new consensus needs to emerge.--Filll 19:37, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I've reverted it back to the last version I could find - if there was a better, later one, use that. Also shrunk History of evolutionary thought - still needs some work, but in one shot gets the article into length requirements, as far as I can tell. Frankly, though, I do think it might be beneficial, and remove some of the stagnation, to put the article through the wringer of public comment again, by which I mean no offense to all the other - and there are quite a lot - good editors out there. The whole thing could use a simplification in language, and if losing FA helps get past certain overly-conservative elements, it's probably more beneficial in the long run than not. I don't think the article is that bad - it needs a lot of copyediting and glossing of terms more than a complete rewrite. Perhaps we can take bits from Introduction to evolution for this purpose. Vanished user talk 19:48, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

And I've reverted youir reversion of the into Adam. It was reading very well before you reverted and you gave no reasons for your changes in talk. Candy 21:34, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
This is exactly why I am reluctant to do much to try to help with the current horrific mess of the article. People are not really convinced if it needs to be improved, or how it should be done.--Filll 21:53, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps it might be sensible to have an "FA Review On Hold" status - whereby a month or so is given for the article to be worked into shape before FAR is reopened. It might not be regularly useful, but it would be a good, less disruptive way to encourage people to help fix an FA that had fallen somewhat below FA quality. Vanished user talk 20:10, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
We are always willing to extend time in review, as long as progress is evident and ongoing; it may be premature to request an extension since today is the article's first day in review. There is much work to be done to clean up, shorten and bring the article to FA standards; if some editors are determined to resist all efforts, extra time may not be useful. A month is enough time to rework the article, if all editors will work together. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:20, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree. If all editors work together. I will believe it when I see it. Not only do editors have to waste a lot of time combatting creationists, but then they fight amongst themselves. Some want it more technical. Some less. Some longer than it even is right now. Some shorter. Some would see no problem with it being two or three times as long as it is at present I bet. The battles can be so pitched it is ludicrous. So...I just make suggestions over and over and watch them be ignored.--Filll 00:45, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Having had my restoration and expansion (to define mutation as well) of the introduction reverted, I'm kind of inclined to agree that this is an uphill battle. Vanished user talk 04:34, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

One can do a tremendous amount of work, try to build consensus, wait for weeks, hammer out text. And then ask if it can be installed. Have everyone agree. Install it, and get it immediately reverted. And the editor who reverts it refuses to even give a reason why. And if you push them, have them attack you and threaten you with administrative consquences. I hate the idea of an edit war. But people who have been here a long time know lots of people and know all the rules and they can be impossible to buck to improve the article. I saw random replicator who is a biology teacher try several times. She/He did a great job on the introduction article with me, and tried very hard on the evolution article several times to fix a paragraph or two. Only to have them blown away, after working on them for weeks and building consensus. Something is badly badly broken here. And I do not know what to do. --Filll 04:47, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict with Filll) Having looked over the talk page, and considering the resistance to needed improvements in the first day, it doesn't look promising; but, it's only been a day, and you've got a month. Just a note (based on talk page comments); yes, some topics need to be longer than others, but 60KB of prose is over the line. Articles with 40KB of prose are considered long - that would be a goal for a *long* article, which still means cutting a third of this article. (You can read how to calculate readable prose at WP:LENGTH - the fact that See also and External links also need to be pruned is separate from readable prose.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:53, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
  • 25 problems to resolve, for starters:
  1. The third paragraph of the lead section goes into too much detail about the circumstances surrounding The Origin of Species. That level of detail might be appropriate in the "History" section, but no more than a few words should be devoted to it in the lead section.
  2. The armadillo image has an excessively long caption, bloated by trivia. It is also poorly-placed; having two lengthy vertical blocks of text and image at the top of the article makes the page look clumsy and cluttered. The armadillo thing should probably be either shortened and transplanted to another part of the article, or removed altogether.
  3. Section titles should not be capitalized. "Basic Processes" and "Mechanisms of Evolution" are thus incorrect.
  4. It is incorrect to italicize "e.g." and "i.e.". (There is also some excessive and inconsistent use of the latter.)
  5. It is incorrect to italicize quoted text.
  6. Some languages crosses the line from being simple and user-friendly to being overcasual. Academic, encyclopedic tone should be maintained, and we should avoid treating our readers like infants with phrases like "phenotypic variation (e.g., what makes you appear different from your neighbor)".
  7. Although the article does a good job of explaining most terms, some new terms are still unexplained, and a surprising number are unlinked, like gene, genotype, genetic variation, and many more.
  8. There is an overuse of parentheses in this article. These can be replaced by em-dashes, commas, etc. in some cases, to avoid making the text seem fragmented.
  9. Avoid external links in the article text, like the Tetrahymena link.
  10. There are various minor grammatical errors that are not significant enough to mention here; a thorough copyedit should fix them.
  11. "Selection and adaptation" seems to be a little too long and a little too listy, relative to the other, more compact sections. Cutting down on all the subtypes listed could probably cut this section's length almost in half; that level of detail is more appropriate for the daughter articles anyway. This section also needs references, badly—especially for its paragraph on evolutionary teleology.
  12. Bolding should not be use to emphasize a random word in a prose paragraph.
  13. There are several redlinks: J.L. (from a formating error in the references), sampling variance, Hill-Robertson effect, Colin Norman.
  14. There is some inconsistency in reference style in sections like "Cooperation".
  15. There is poor illustrative balance in the "Evidence of evolution" section. All three images deal with aquatic animals, suggesting to uninformed readers that there isn't any evidence for evolution from other species; this impression should obviously not be implied, so at least one of the images should be removed, and other images should be added. The "nasal drift" image seems like the least useful one at the moment; although it's very pretty, the sequencing and similarity is least obvious.
  16. Considering how drastically the rest of this article has been shortened, you may want to consider shortening the "Evidence of evolution" section too, to avoid imbalance. This can be easily done by cutting down on examples and trivial details.
  17. "History of the modern synthesis of evolutionary thought" should clearly be a subsection of "Study of evolution", and should be shortened to a simpler title, like "History of evolutionary thought".
  18. The "History" section is currently far too short. Important information that was removed should be re-added to make it at least 50% bigger ("Academic disciplines", below, is a good example of a nice-sized section). To give an idea of how much compression is appropriate, 3-5 fair-sized paragraphs (about 4 sentences in length each) should be the goal. Anything much shorter or longer than that is not appropriate.
  19. The "Misunderstandings" section is too short, and some very important information (e.g. about the fact-theory distinction) has recently been removed from the article, making it much less informationally valuable to readers. Of course, whether a "Misunderstandings" section (or its new daughter article) is appropriate here at all should be discussed; there is little precedent for such a move, and it seems to fly in the face of academic and NPOV conventions, as well as to be a very useless categorizational method--a misunderstanding about the nature of mutations, for example, would be very useful if put under "Mutations", but useless if put under the generic heading of "Misunderstandings". Ideally, thus, a "Misunderstandings" section should simply be split up into sections dealing with the specific topics involved in each misunderstanding. From an NPOV perspective, it is particularly troubling to see statements to the effect that the creationist movement was caused by misunderstandings of evolution; it is perfectly fair to say that creationists regularly misunderstand evolution, but to make inferences and judgments from that is not NPOV; at the very least, such statements should be replaced with attributed ones, so it is not Wikipedia itself that is making them.
  20. This article needs to have a "social effects" section. The effects of the study of evolutionary biology on society and culture over the last few hundred years is immense, and highly noteworthy. This would be a more appropriate and useful place to (briefly) discuss creationism than a POVed "misunderstandings" section, obviously.
  21. The "See Also" section is too large. Ideally, there should be no "See Also" section at all for a time-level article like this; any highly important articles should be mentioned in the article text and/or series templates, and any less important ones should not be mentioned in this article, but rather in daughter articles. Some of the articles listed here are not even real articles, like Animal evolution.
  22. Why is there an empty "Notes" section?
  23. A number of the references are broken or inconsistent. It will take an in-depth review and copyedit to make them all consistent.
  24. The external links should be cut down a little. 10-15 is ideal for an FA; there are currently 20. One good method to shorten the list without removing important information is to simply use some of the links in the "References" section; this gives them the added value of having relevance to specific parts of the article, as opposed to just being "add-ons".
  25. Is there any particular reason that Evolution, rather than Modern evolutionary synthesis, is under Category:Theories?
-Silence 19:58, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the excellent review, Silence. I disagree on the notion of there being an ideal number of External links for any article; 10 - 15 may be high, depending on the topic - the fewer the better. Each one needs to have a reason for being there, per WP:EL and WP:NOT. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:31, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
You may disagree, and I may disagree as well, but I've seen dozens of articles fail their FAs for having any more than 15 links (Jesus, for example, used to have around 20, and got failed partly because of having too many), so clearly a large number of Wikipedians see anything over 15 as unreasonable. And I can see their point; we should be reliant on external links as little as possible, and the ones we do rely on should, as much as possible, be ones we specifically cite within the text. Anything much beyond that is at best a necessary evil. I do agree that there should be some "wiggle room" for different articles, but I'm unconvinced that this article needs that wiggle room, so just to be safe I'd recommend cutting down the external linkage a little bit. I do agree, certainly, that we should analyze them on a case-by-case basis. -Silence 02:37, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
I think we're saying the same thing - there are way too many - I just find 10-15 far too many in most cases, as well (depending on the article). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:10, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
These all sound pretty reasonable. The only think I would like to plead for is to farm out any culled material to other articles. I am more partial to short articles, with other more specific articles on special topics linked to the main ones.--Filll 22:49, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
I certainly agree. I think too much information has been lost already, in sections like "History". We have countless daughter articles to store this stuff on. Also, FAs are judged partly on the quality of their daughter articles (that's one of the reasons Charles Darwin's had trouble getting to FA, for example), so there are immediate practical reasons for improving them. -Silence 02:37, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Please read the comment on your userpage Silence. The History section contained tautology (that it much of it was already in the existing article). Candy 02:43, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
I fixed a lot of the problems I listed above myself. There are now 15 left of the original 25 in the list. However, new problems come up all the time; I noticed a "fact" template in the text, for example. A lot of work still to go on this article! -Silence 20:59, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
I think Silence is doing a great job and we are lucky to have him on the case.--Filll 21:14, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
The article is now a more manageable 40KB prose - still long, but doable - and the TOC is now reasonable, but the references will need a lot of cleanup once the text is settled. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 07:01, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Status? Much improvement, but still a long list - can involved editors give us an update? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:58, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
I am only indirectly involved, but Silence has made very impressive progress on evolution and many of the related articles and subarticles, with the assistance of some others. I believe that this is a HUGE task, so it would not be surprising if there were still a ways to go on this task.--Filll 01:17, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
Unfortunately, I lack the biological expertise to fix some of this article's largest problems: the opaqueness of some of the more technical sections, lacking even an attempt to provide readers with context in many cases, rnders large portions of this article essentially useless as a general reference tool. What we need is some more work on clarifying concepts by people who are both very familiar with the processes and mechanisms involved, and able to explain them in sufficiently clear, engaging language. We need a Dawkins! :( -Silence 06:25, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concerns are format and sufficiency of refs (1c), length and focus (4).

Comment: Not clear from above that people were happy with this, so moving it down. Marskell 07:35, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

  • Keep Minor problems do exist, but they are not fatal to FA status. Overall, this is an excellent article.UberCryxic 23:19, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Remove Insufficient citations.LuciferMorgan 01:24, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Status? Can we have some feedback from editors working on the article? I see that Silence's list isn't all attended to yet, prose size is a manageable (albeit longish) 40 KB, See also is better (can't any of those be worked into the text?), References need work on formatting (example, what is - Created from PDB 1D65 - and - enmicro.pdf - and - ^ [4] - these are not correctly formatted refs), inconsistent ref style and use of PMIDs and ISBNs, missing publishers (Evolutionary Theory by Peter Gogarten, Ph.D. ). There are external jumps, and entire sections remain unreferenced. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:33, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Remove strangely, it seems that work stopped, no feedback. External jumps, incorrectly formatted refs, external link farm, entire sections unreferenced, Silence's list above - no change, no feedback. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:41, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment I am not sure what has happened to Silence and his efforts. He seems to have paused in his efforts. I am not sure of his plans in this regard.--Filll 03:18, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep Encouraging editors to contribute to a Featured Article, as with any article, is a cornerstone of Wikipedia. Yet not keeping a FA in check after such contributions does not necessarily justify removing its FA status. A lack of a main editor could be for a number of reasons. Many of the complaints above- including length- have been rectified, and the article looks very good. Minor polishing is needed for the article now. --MPD T / C 05:58, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Remove unless dramatic improvements ensue. I can only do so much; the incredibly confusing mess of various parts of the "processes" and "mechanisms" sections will require a substantial rewrite by knowledgeable folk in order to be of any use to readers; there's nothing wrong with using complex concepts and important technical terms, but the article's frequent failure to keep its readership in mind and coherently explain these things, as well as poor writing quality in a number of paragraphs and inconsistency in references, makes the current article unfit to be an FA. Hopefully, if efforts aren't rallied beforehand, they will become more focused as a result of the demanding pressures of the FAC and peer-review process. -Silence 06:25, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I'll give it a quick copyedit to help out if you guys need it. — Deckiller 09:28, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm thinking a ce is not all that's needed here. Barring some extraordinary intervention, I'm going to remove this later. Marskell 14:46, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Much too far from ready to benefit from a ce, Deckiller. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:50, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Closing notes. Some notes to be clear on closing as remove with the keep comments:
  • Given that Silence was one of the people looked to to save this, I take his remove as relatively decisive.
  • Large uncited sections are not good, particularly on a current, often controversial, and complex subject.
  • FAR is the place to fix minor problems and enough minor problems are a major problem.
  • Another FAC won't hurt this article at all, and I'm sure editors can get it back there. Marskell 20:21, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.