Talk:Essential gene/GA1

GA Review
The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.''

Reviewer: Jens Lallensack (talk · contribs) 21:25, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

– Interesting and important topic. The first thing I noticed is that the article needs some work to comply with the WP:MOS (good article criterion 1b). The issue is that the article does not follow the standard structure and layout of Wikipedia articles, which makes it harder for people to read and understand, and use the content. Instead, the article has elements of scholary articles.

A few points here:
 * References in the lead should be avoided. All information in the lead should be given in the body as well. In this case, I suggest to create an Background section providing the reader with the necessary basics, and give some basic information.
 * we need to avoid bold and underlined text.
 * Bacteria: genome-wide studies – not a good title, since Wikipedia articles are supposed to be comprehensive. This title suggests that there are studies that are not genome-wide, so I would expect another section on these. If such a section is not warranted, I would just use "Bacteria" as section title.
 * Two main strategies have been employed to identify essential genes on a genome-wide basis – This is not specific to bacteria, so it should not be within the section "Bacteria", but could be explained in the introductory section I suggested above.
 * Large table captions as for "Table 1" are not the standard in Wikipedia. The background is better given in the main text, and the table column titles should ideally be self-explaining (at least in the context of the text). Avoid referring to tables and figures from the text, as they cannot be displayed correctly on all devices, and we also have to stay accessible for blind people who use screen readers.
 * Is table 1 an exhaustive list of studies? Is it a selection?
 * Sections Quantitative gene essentiality analysis, "Synthetic lethality" and "Essential protein domains" are very short to warrant their own section. Also, this seems to be very basic information that is better explained at the beginning of the article?
 * Same with "Conditionally essential genes" – I would discuss this before going into details about Bacteria, Eucaryota and viruses.
 * avoid "et al.", which is too technical for a general encyclopedia, better use "and colleagues".
 * Check for excessive spaces before references and dots. Two instances in this example: microarrays [2] or through transposon sequencing .
 * For some of the given information the source is not clear. To be verifiable, each paragraph needs at least one reference at its end. Section "Quantitative gene essentiality analysis" is completely without source.
 * For section "Prediction", please consider Manual of Style/Lists.

Good article criteria 1b and 2 (Verifiable with no original research) are not yet fulfilled, and significant work is needed here. I therefore think it is best to fail the article for now, and suggest a wp:peer review. If you have any questions/need help with fixing these issues, I am happy to assist. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 21:25, 21 February 2020 (UTC)