Talk:Perothops/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Fritzmann2002 (talk · contribs) 22:37, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Hello and happy new year, I will have a review finished in the next couple of days. Fritzmann (message me) 22:37, 3 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Thank you! I look forward to improving this article and working with you. Happy 2024! User Memer  ( chat )  Tribs  22:42, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Review by Fritzmann
In its current state, the article is not yet ready for GA. However, a lot of work has gone into it and with some more diligence and hard work it has the potential to get there. In no particular order, here is a menagerie of suggestions that could be incorporated:
 * The lead of the article (before the table of contents) should be substantially longer. Ideally, one or two paragraphs at least. Everything that is discussed in the body of the article should be summarized in the lead. Additionally, there should almost never be references in the lead; they should be placed with the full content later in the article.
 * Common names should be bolded at their first mention
 * Done User Memer  ( chat )  Tribs  15:04, 6 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Many more wikilinks to other articles should be used. For example, the family Eucnemidae should be linked in the first sentence.
 * I am dubious of some of the information in the Taxonomy section. If "Perothops was synonymized into Eucnemidae," then it would no longer exist. Synonymization means the taxon is no longer considered legitimate and is folded into another taxon. That does not seem to be the case here. Furthermore, was the genus Perothops considered a separate family? It seems like what happened to me was that Perothops belonged to one family, but that family was demoted to subfamily and merged underneath Eucnemidae. I would double check this and expound upon what exactly happened.
 * I have added another source to support that. It was considered to be a separate family and was put under Eucnemidae as a genus. User Memer  ( chat )  Tribs  15:09, 6 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Does the cladogram add anything? Typically, cladograms are used to indicate the closeness of different taxa. For example, it could show that P. cervinus diverted earlier while P. witticki and P. muscidus are more recent relatives. If that information is not known, then a textual index of the species in the genus would be sufficient.
 * Removed User Memer  ( chat )  Tribs  15:09, 6 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Speaking of species, I like the approach that you have taken to include the species in the genus article, instead of creating separate pages for them. However, more discussion of the species is needed in this case. Who described each species? Do they have any synonyms? What are their relationships to one another? I notice you have a very short section on differentiation: this is a good start, but for example it only covers two of the three species.
 * What are the meanings of the specific names?
 * "Currently" should not be used, "as of _____" should
 * Done User Memer  ( chat )  Tribs  15:09, 6 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I do not think that this article is sufficiently broad. In particular, I am dubious of the claim that "no research is taking place" on several aspects of the species. The very first google scholar result for Perothops gives an unused 2007 study of their phylogeny and relationships to one another. The article needs more discussion of several aspects: ecology (diet and predators), reproduction and mating, behavior, and so on. Unless an exhaustive search for these subjects has been done, of course.
 * The PDF link you sent seems to be broken, though I believe that the source you were referring to has been added. That source sadly does not go into the behavior and ecology of these beetles, and trust me, I have searched for a while trying to find information on that. About the fact that no research is taking place, I could not find any research currently going on about these beetles, but again, I could be wrong and maybe some entomologists have not published their study yet. There is no way to know for sure so I'll remove the "no research is taking place, either" part. User Memer  ( chat )  Tribs  15:43, 6 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Several parts of the article are unreferenced. The biggest offender is "It is easy to distinguish Perothops muscidus as it is found in a different location" which does not have a reference.
 * iNaturalist is usually not used as a reference. It is a user-generated site without editorial oversight.
 * Removed User Memer  ( chat )  Tribs  15:04, 6 January 2024 (UTC)


 * The formatting on the Alpert journal article is messed up; furthermore, it is from 1972 so if more recent articles exist they would be much preferred.
 * Going backwards now, the description section is rather bloated and hard to read. In general, Wikipedia should be a summary that is readable by laymen (not experts). As it is right now, the description sections are filled with lots of jargon terms, or industry words that a non-expert would not understand. This problem is evident because a lot of the phrases are picked up by Earwig as copyvio; they have not been sufficiently trimmed and reworded for Wikipedia. Lastly, they all derive from a single source. Ideally, the description would amalgamate several descriptions to ensure continuity; in other words, if one author made an error we won't propagate it in that case.
 * I have tried my best to remove the complex wording or explain in a few words what the anatomical insect parts are. About the description part. The article says they collected samples and studied them themselves, your argument of human error still holds. However, after research, I can conclude that this is going to be the most detailed description out there. I do agree with you, but I do not think that there is going to be enough information about the morphology of perothopid beetles to provide a detailed description to readers without this source. User Memer  ( chat )  Tribs  15:40, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

I will leave the review open for about a week or so, but if you don't think that these goals are achievable in that time frame please let me know. I'm happy to peer review the article before GAN if you re-nominate later, or give additional guidance as you continue to edit. I recommend looking at other GAs for beetle genera, I know there are at least a few good ones that can serve as a template. Thanks for your hard work so far, and I hope it continues in the future! Fritzmann (message me) 01:39, 6 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I've been working for a while on it, then I noticed a lot of my progress disappeared, probably because I accidentally closed the Wikipedia tab with my edits. Guess I'll go redo that. User Memer  ( chat )  Tribs  15:48, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Oh, and one of the references somehow got completely removed. :/ User Memer  ( chat )  Tribs  15:52, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Disregard my comments, I have rolled it back to a previous version (I wasn't thinking because I was worried) User Memer  ( chat )  Tribs  15:55, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * unless you want to work on the article extensively in the next few days to keep the nomination moving, I am going to close it tonight. It'll stay archived on the article's talk page, so you are more than welcome to use the review later and then re-nom. Also feel free to ping me if you want to bring it to GAN again and I am happy to look at it again beforehand. Best wishes, Fritzmann (message me) 22:32, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * That's fine! I'll come back to this page and clean it up soon enough, but for now, feel free to close the nomination. User Memer  ( chat )  Tribs  02:45, 14 January 2024 (UTC)