Talk:History of Saint Helena

Untitled
"Two Japanese ambassadors to Rome landed at the island in 1581." I must say that nearly knocked my socks off. --Smack 04:37, 8 May 2004 (UTC)


 * Why? Obviously it's not the Roman Empire :) I'm sure it means they visited the Pope. Adam Bishop 04:42, 8 May 2004 (UTC)

Under construction
For explanation, see Talk:Saint Helena. 86.161.40.145 (talk) 22:02, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Alfred Russel Wallace and Saint Helena ebony
In "Island Life", Alfred Russel Wallace (see the article) talked about deforestation, the impact of invasive species and about the impact of European colonization on Saint Helena. He refers to the early 18th century ebony (the wood) disappearing.

In this history article I shall wikilink the Saint Helena ebony plant as Trochetiopsis ebenus.--User:Brenont (talk) 07:51, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

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Outline
Using the sources I listed above in the bibliography section I added, I’m going to expand this article through listing the impact of Saint Helena on Ecology and including it’s ecological past.

Saint Helena has been a very integral part of man's exploration of the Earth and development of sciences, especially the ecological sciences. When the island was first discovered, it was the most isolated and pristine pieces of land every encountered by humans. This, along with it's relative small size, allowed ecologists to study the affects of man and time with limited variables. Richard Grove, Author of Green Imperialism, along with other essays, explains how imperialist deforestation of Saint Helena made apparent for the first time the devastating affects humans can have on the world around them. Saint Helena's natural beauty has also be referenced in fictional literature, such as the man in the moone by Francis Godwin.

There are also numerous analytical studies performed on the island of Saint Helena due to it's ideal size and isolation. Some of the articles expressing the findings of the experiments include Q. C. B. Cronk's article on Endemic Flora and a collaborative article about the success of passeriform bird introductions. These articles also provide a good overview of the history of the island and causes for the natural ecosystem.

Peer Review
The lead-in section of this article is definitely understandable but does not necessarily summarize the main points of the rest of the article. I really liked the second sentence that starts with "Claiming to be Britain's second oldest colony..." since I thought that gave a good synopsis of why the island might be important. However, I thought that it could have at least briefly touched on the major topics that the rest of the article gets into, for example expanding upon the importance of shipping and how the island was used for that. If nothing else, the lead-in section could be expanded by at least another paragraph or two to include some of the key points. In regard to the structure, I felt that some of the positives were the headings and subheadings, as these divided up the article very well and they will make it easy to follow while reading the article and searching for information. There were some external links which could also be followed for more information, and I really didn't see the need for additional appendices or footnotes. I think the weakest part of the article's structure is when it comes to images and diagrams, as there are only two very small pictures for an entire article that is mostly large blocks of text. This could easily make the article too dense and difficult to follow, so I think working in more pictures and/or diagrams would be a definite must. The article is arranged chronologically, so that does aid in making it easy to follow.

As a whole, I thought the article was balanced very well. There was no single section that received too much coverage, and the sections that were a lot longer than others were justified as they also were sections that covered the longer spans of time as well (e.g. section with 150 year span of history was longer than section with 30 year span of history). Thus, these sections deservedly received more coverage than others. As an extension of coverage, the article coverage was for the most part neutral and unbiased. It seems hard to include any type of negative elements into an article about the history of an island, and as a whole the article does a great job with staying neutral. Finally, this article has plenty of footnotes, many from books and government sources. This is definitely a positive for this element. One drawback was that there seemed to be some sources cited from newspaper articles and a few other questionable sources that may contain some bias in their writings, and there didn't seem to be many journal articles cited, so maybe more emphasis could be placed on finding scholarly journal article sources and less on newspaper articles or websites. As a whole, the article is well put together and with a little more work can be a very strong contribution to the Wikipedia community. Srk017 (talk) 00:08, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Peer Review
I will be evaluating the entry with the heading "Ecological History of Saint Helena." First, I will address what I think worked well in this section. For one, there appeared to be a very neutral perspective; there was no clear bias in the writing that would lead a reader to question the credibility of the information. Additionally, the author cited two credible sources, both written by Richard Grove, a respected authority on environmental issues, which seem to offer valuable information about the subject matter. Finally, the section seems to offer a wealth of valuable information about the subject matter.

Now, I will address where the article falters and where some improvements might be made. First off, I think that the section might be more appropriately titled "Ecological Significance of Saint Helena," as the section mostly discusses the importance of Saint Helena to the study of ecology. In other words, the section is focused on the ways that the history Saint Helena has shaped ecology, and not so much the ways that ecology has shaped the history of Saint Helena. Next, I think the grammar and language could be improved; the section contains a number of typos and grammatical mistakes, which makes it difficult to decipher the meaning of some of the sentences. Finally, I think the structure of the section might be altered to paint a more cohesive picture of Saint Helena's ecological signficiance. For example, the author first addresses the heavy deforestation that occurred on Saint Helena, then makes an offhanded comment about the Foresters, and then returns to a discussion about deforestation. Maybe if these two thoughts were paired at the end (even if they do not pair chronologically), the section would gain some cohesion. All told, I think the article is well cited, unbiased, and informative, but if it was more clearly written, reorganized, and retitled, I think it would be much more effective.

Aleary1 (talk) 05:02, 15 April 2014 (UTC)Aidan

Further comments
I also wanted to add a few comments here. I think the two peer reviews above offer very helpful and insightful feedback on structure, images/text balance, the neutral perspective, mechanical issues (grammar, sentence structure), and headings/titles. They also point out the relative strengths and areas for improvement. This is an important article and I'm glad you selected it to work on. My feedback is mostly regarding the content and where you might go from here. You emphasize Grove's analysis of the importance of islands for understanding deforestation. I think you can say much more about why this was so at the time, and how islands have since continued to play similar roles in the history of ecology. I also thought you could say more about what the Forsters' studied on the island. What questions did they have? What materials did they collect? What were their conclusions? Third, I thought you could continue the discussion of the history of ecological study on the island further in time, as I'm sure your sources indicate other studies done in the 19th and 20th centuries. Finally, I thought the content could take advantage of Wikipedia's other entries by cross-linking certain concepts or people to other Wikipedia pages. Looking forward to more! --Enstandrew (talk) 19:25, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

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