Talk:Orcinus citoniensis/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Gug01 (talk · contribs) 01:49, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

Final Comments
First, I want to congratulate you on quickly dealing with my objections or (in the cases where this applied) explaining why my objections were unreasonable. You did a good job on this article. I'm generally not quite used to articles where the topic matter has so little information, but this is definitely the best article that could be written with the material on hand. The sections are now concise, get to the point, and cover all relevant topics that we know about for the whale. Good job. Gug01 (talk) 00:50, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

Resolved

 * 1: There is a lot of "may have", "could have" language, etc. While obviously there's a degree of uncertainty about the article, the language gives rise to a question: is the research in this article debatable, and just speculation, or is there a relatively large degree of certainty/consensus? If there's a lot of consensus, the language should be amended, making it mostly indicative ("was", "did", etc.) and throwing in the occasional "probably".
 * Well as something that doesn't exist anymore, anything said about how the animal was in real life is pure conjecture and therefore must be treated as such, as is standard for articles on extinct creatures. Did it look like the modern killer whale? Pretty likely yeah, that would stand to reason. But it could also have been blue, we don't know for certain  User:Dunkleosteus77 &#124;push to talk 02:50, 29 December 2018 (UTC)


 * 2: The lead section needs work. Is the fact that the whale had 8 more teeth central to the whole article? I think not. The lead needs to be more general, encompassing the general ideas in the article. Specific details with numbers generally shouldn't be in there, and those details should be moved down the article into other sections.
 * Well size and tooth number are the distinguishing traits of this species from the modern killer whale and so are the most important parts of the Description section, so I should think it belongs in the lead  User:Dunkleosteus77 &#124;push to talk 02:50, 29 December 2018 (UTC)


 * 3: The article needs work on relevance. How is the "Paleoecology" relevant to the species? It seems to me to be more of a description of the "Pliocene of Tuscany" than about the whale. If it's meant as a description of the habitat the whale lived in, it needs to be more geared about the whale. While it's interesting that "The Red Crag Formation is representative of a temperate, shallow nearshore environment, perhaps at the mouth of a large river indicated by conifer pollen and small terrestrial vertebrate remains", it isn't pertinent to the article. I suggest spinning off the information in the section into a Red Crag Formation and Pliocene of Italy or Pliocene of Tuscany.
 * It's pretty standard of extinct animal articles to describe what other animals it lived alongside and in what conditions it lived in (like biome or sea temperature) in a paleoecology section. Do you think it's too long?  User:Dunkleosteus77 &#124;push to talk 02:50, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
 * The way the section is written, it seems as if it is describing solely the environment where the species lived with little emphasis that it was the environment where the species itself lived. I understand that, but at least make it more centered around the species and how it interacted with the environment around it. Gug01 (talk) 17:52, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
 * For example, from the Smilodon article, "Smilodon lived during the Pleistocene epoch (2.5 mya–10,000 years ago), and was perhaps the most recent of the saber-toothed cats.[23] Smilodon probably lived in a closed habitat such as forest or bush.[77] Fossils of the genus have been found throughout the Americas.[3] In North America, the varied habitat supported other saber-toothed cats in addition to Smilodon, such as Homotherium and Xenosmilus; the habitat here varied from subtropical forests and savannah in the south, to treeless mammoth steppes in the north. Smilodon inhabited the temperate latitudes of North America, where the mosaic vegetation of woods, shrubs, and grasses in the southwest supported large herbivores such as horses, bison, antelope, deer, camels, mammoths, mastodons, and ground sloths. Other large carnivores included dire wolves, short-faced bear (Arctodus simus) and the American lion.[13][60][78] Due to competition from larger carnivores in North America, S. fatalis was perhaps not able to attain the same size as S. populator. The similar sizes of S. fatalis and the American lion suggests niche overlap and direct competition between these species, and they appear to have fed on similarly sized prey.[79]". This is describing the habitat where Smilodon lived, but isn't simply saying "The Oregon Forest in North America was . . .". The paleoecology about O. citoniensis should be more about the species rather than simply describing the formation. I would also rename it to "Distribution and Habitat" but that's personal preference from me. Gug01 (talk) 18:03, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Well there's a lot more known about Smilodon, and it's known from a lot more than 2 locations so you can be more generalist about the description. I think a better comparison would be with the GA Kogia pusilla which is equally obscure. Anyways, I rewrote it, is it better now?  User:Dunkleosteus77 &#124;push to talk 20:40, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes. Gug01 (talk) 00:37, 30 December 2018 (UTC)


 * In the description section, describing what parts of the holotype for the species were found isn't the same as describing the species. Make it more about extrapolation, generalizing it to the entire species. "As the holotype was probably x feet long, which was shorter than the orcas at y feet long, O. citoniensis was shorter than modern-day orcas", or just skip straight to the latter part of the sentence.
 * Well I don't think I'm allowed to do that because there's only the one fossil. O. citoniensis may have grown much bigger, or maybe this specimen was just freakishly big, we don't know for certain. What we do know is this specimen is a certain size, but we don't know enough, I think, to say all O. citoniensis were around that size  User:Dunkleosteus77 &#124;push to talk 02:50, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
 * That's the only fossil ever found? Then I see your point. Gug01 (talk) 17:52, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm worried that there might simply be a lack of information on the article. There's nothing you or I can do about that, however. Gug01 (talk) 18:03, 29 December 2018 (UTC)


 * 4: One of the synonyms in the taxonomy box is the same as the official species name. That's redundancy.
 * but different genus name  User:Dunkleosteus77 &#124;push to talk 02:50, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. I didn't catch that. Gug01 (talk) 17:52, 29 December 2018 (UTC)


 * 5: Vocabulary. It needs to be understandable to an 8th grade. Technical terms are important only if they add value, and a lot of the terms used don't. A lot of the examples of these were found in sections that were anyway redundant, however, so it's not a major concern.
 * We tend to have that problem with extinct animal articles, so we try to wikilink and explain as best we can (for example, "The holotype specimen...an incomplete skeleton," now you know when I say "holotype" I'm referring to that skeleton). Anatomical terms where there's no common name I give its location (like, "acromion on the shoulder blade"). Are there any specific concerns?  User:Dunkleosteus77 &#124;push to talk 02:50, 29 December 2018 (UTC)


 * 6: Can you find a better picture of the holotype?
 * That is the only picture of any O. citoniensis remain at our disposal unfortunately. I thought the same thing too, but there is nothing else  User:Dunkleosteus77 &#124;push to talk 02:50, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

That being said, the variety of sources is impressive and the fact that so much information was able to be collected about an obscure species is a testament to the dedication of the people who wrote the article. Please work on and resolve some of the issues with the article. Gug01 (talk) 02:11, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah honestly I wasn't planning on getting this to GA at first until I saw how big the article was getting  User:Dunkleosteus77 &#124;push to talk 02:50, 29 December 2018 (UTC)