Talk:Mauritius blue pigeon/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs) 10:41, 8 September 2012 (UTC)


 * I propose to take on this review and will be starting in the next couple of days. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:41, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry to have taken so long to get started on this but I have been quite tied up elsewhere! Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:09, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
 * No worries, I've had plenty to look for myself... FunkMonk (talk) 10:43, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

First reading
The prose in general seems of a good standard. I have listed a few things I noticed below and will look at other aspects of the article later. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:09, 10 September 2012 (UTC) Done. I reworded it, does it also seem strange?. Done. I think it's valid, but changed it anyway. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done.
 * Wikilink - "extant"
 * "... which some of its names refer to." - Sentences should not end in a preposition.
 * "Another skin arrived in the Paris museum in 1800, collected by Colonel M. Mathieu, who collected specimens for Louis Dufresne." - You should avoid, as far as possible, repeating the same word in the same sentence.
 * "Only these three taxidermied specimens survive to this day." - I am not sure about the use of "taxidermy" as a verb.
 * "The Blue Pigeons perhaps colonised the Mascarenes, the Seychelles or a now submerged hot spot island by "island hopping" and evolved into a distinct genus there before reaching Madagascar." - I think this sentence should be split in two.
 * "The legs were dark slate-grey, the iris was reddish orange and had an inner yellow ring. It was 30 cms (12 in) in length, ..." - Probably better to have a different sentence for the legs and iris and to what does the "It" at the beginning of the next sentence refer?
 * "Juvenile Seychelles and Comoro Blue Pigeons have green feathers, so this may also have been true for juvenile Mauritian pigeons, as it was most similar to these species." - Mauritian pigeons needs capitalising for consistency and I think the last bit of this sentence is redundant.
 * "The bird has also been depicted with facial crenulations, but neither this or the red legs are mentioned by contemporary accounts, and are thought to be erroneous." If you consider this sentence without the part between commas, you can see that the grammar is not quite right.
 * "Only few descriptions of the behaviour of live Mauritius Blue Pigeons are known." - "Only" is awkward and probably redundant.
 * "The only two images based on a live bird were drawn after this individual, by G. Haasbroek." - This sentence could be rephrased.
 * "They must have become rarer from 1715 to 1810 during French rule over Mauritius" - Needs rephrasing.
 * "went extinct" -You use this combination where I would use "became extinct". "Went" implies an active involvement of the bird in the process, but maybe this is accepted phraseology. You also use "gone extinct" in the lead.
 * "Before humans arrived, Mauritius was entirely covered in forests, but very little remains today due to deforestation" - The subject of this sentence is "Mauritius", of which you say little remains! Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:09, 10 September 2012 (UTC)


 * page numbers
 * Hi, folks. I've upgraded the referencing mechanisms, here. A few of the collated footnotes could use more specific page numbers than are present. See:
 * Hume 2011 has 18 refs to the large range 1–61 of this journal article that seems to have also been published as a small book. Page numbers can now just be dropped into p and the footnotes will automagically collate as needed.
 * Cheke & Hume 2008, pp. 22–115 is also a rather large page range and should probably be narrowed for the specific bit being cited
 * Sincerely, Br'er Rabbit (talk) 12:35, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I can fix those two, but not Goodwin 83, for the same reason as Quammen on the Dodo page... FunkMonk (talk) 08:46, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I see you have done some alterations but do you want to do anything more about page numbers? What is the problem with Goodwin 83? Cwmhiraeth (talk) 09:27, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Everything brought up so far has been addressed, but the problem is that I don't own Goodwin's book, so I can't give the specific page number. But that isn't part of the GA criteria as far as I can see either, so maybe it's irrelevant. FunkMonk (talk) 10:45, 13 September 2012 (UTC)