Wikipedia:Peer review/North American River Otter/archive1

North American River Otter[edit]

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A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for November 2008.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I would like for this article to be refined and edited by experienced members of the Wikipedia community. Those with expertise in this area would be very beneficial to the advancement of this article's quality. It is my ultimate goal to promote this article to Featured Article status. This project is a part of Wikipedia:WikiProject AP Biology 2008.

Thank you, --Wikitrevor (talk) 00:44, 12 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Note by DanaBoomer

I have dropped a note on Wikitrevor's page about the fact that this review was closed by an IP. It appears from subsequent edits that WT and the IP may infact be one and the same, so I'm not sure if this is a true closure or simply vandalism that is slightly more technically competent and subtle than usual. Dana boomer (talk) 22:56, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Per the comment on WT's talk page, I have reopened the peer review. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 05:40, 17 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for helping me get back on track Ruhrfisch. Your assistance is greatly appreciated.

Best regards,--Wikitrevor (talk) 22:03, 17 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ruhrfisch comments: You are very welcome. Very briefly, here are some suggestions for improvement.

The lead should be an accessible and inviting overview of the whole article. The article should have a 2 or 3 paragraphs lead. My rule of thumb is to include every header in the lead in some way. Please see WP:LEAD
Article needs more references, for example the whole Taxonomy and Care in captivity sections have no refs. My rule of thumb is that every quote, every statistic, every extraordinary claim and every paragraph needs a ref.
The references need to be standardized and provide more information. For example current refs 4, 5, and 6 are all apparently the same. They can be referenced once using the <ref name = "blah">...</ref> system. Ask on my talk page if this is unclear.
Other refs do not give enough information for an interested party to find the source. FOr example are Toweill and Tabor 1982, Melquist and Dronkert 1987 books or journals? Internet refs need URL, title, author if known, publisher and date accessed. {{cite web}} and other cite templates may be helpful. See WP:CITE and WP:V
Per WP:CITE references come AFTER punctuation, and are usually at the end of a sentence or phrase , so fix all of them - one example is Ectoparasites include ticks[32], sucking lice Latagophthirus rauschi[33], and the flea Oropsylla arctomys[34]. [35]
There are several one or two sentence paragrapsh that need to be combined with others or perhaps expanded to improve the flow of the article.
Would it be possible to vary the captions some - they all seem to be "A river otter in X zoo"

Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). Yours, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:18, 18 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the review Ruhrfisch. Your advice is very valuable and beneficial to me. I'll work on getting those kinks worked out.

Best regards,--Wikitrevor (talk)

Comments by Ceranthor (talk · contribs)
The article needs a general copy edit. I'm starting to go through it, but you might want to contact Ruhrfisch for some mammal/animal copy editors/reviewers. —Ceran ♦ ♦ (speak) 20:23, 27 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]