Talk:Sei whale/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Grungaloo (talk · contribs) 19:12, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi, I'm going to take this review on. It may take me a few days for a full review but I'll ping you when I'm done. Feel free to ping me in the meantime if you have any questions. grungaloo (talk) 19:12, 30 December 2023 (UTC)


 * I've applied almost all of your suggested changes. I'm taking a break, and when I come back, I'll try to find citations for "each description of the species (Rudolphi, Cuvier, Lesson)". 20 upper (talk) 10:59, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi, I've finished my review. My comments are almost entirely prose-related, so hopefully it should be easy enough to get this to GA. Feel free to respond to my comments inline, just indent/sign them so I know they're yours. Ping me when you're done and ready for me to check. grungaloo (talk) 19:16, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm ✅, please have a look. 20 upper (talk) 10:34, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the work, it looks great. There are only 2 outstanding items from what I can tell. I've marked both in the comments below with . Once those have been resolved I think this will be good to promote. I also made a few minor copyedits (grammar fixes, missing words) during this read-through. Let me know if you have any issues with the changes I made. grungaloo (talk) 03:06, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm done. I think I've specified the second issue; if not, please tell me what you don't understand. 20 upper (talk) 08:31, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
 * My apologies! When I re-read it I missed the change you had made. Thanks for all your work on this, I'm promoting this article. grungaloo (talk) 23:57, 3 January 2024 (UTC)


 * GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)


 * 1) It is reasonably well written.
 * a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):
 * See comments Issues addressed, prose is good.
 * 1) It is factually accurate and verifiable.
 * a (reference section): b (inline citations to reliable sources):  c (OR):  d (copyvio and plagiarism):
 * Ref spot checks all good. No sign of OR or copyvio.
 * 1) It is broad in its coverage.
 * a (major aspects): b (focused):
 * Good coverage of topic, not overburdened with detail.
 * 1) It follows the neutral point of view policy.
 * Fair representation without bias:
 * Meets NPOV
 * 1) It is stable.
 * No edit wars, etc.:
 * No problematic reverts or obvious edit-warring.
 * 1) It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.
 * a (images are tagged and non-free content have non-free use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
 * Good images, appropriately captioned.
 * 1) Overall:
 * Pass/Fail:

General comments

 * Some measurements are meters converted to feet, others are feet converted to meters. It looks like this is because of different authors, but one convention should be used throughout.

Lead

 * Last sentence about CITES appendices could be better written by explaining what that means (one requires immediate intervention, the other less so). General readers likely won't know about CITES.

Etymology

 * Not required for GA, but what are your thoughts on moving this as a subsection of Taxonomy? I've usually seen common names describe under that section.
 * First 2 sentences seem to be directly copied from the source, need to be rewritten. Other refs that I can access look good.
 * - This is more or less repeated in the Taxonomy section, so if you do combine the sections I'd drop this.
 * The last sentence about it being compared to a cheetah, is this the place for that? I think it should be moved to Life history > Surface behaviors where you talk about its speed.

Taxonomy

 * References seem light in this section, could you find and add references to each description of the species (Rudolphi, Cuvier, Lesson)?
 * - Comma needed after "in Schleswig-Holstein".
 * - "described and figured" sounds odd, I would just say "described Rudolphi's specimen as "rorqual du Nord"".
 * ✅There's disagreement with the speciesbox synonyms - did Flower describe it as Sibbaldius laticeps or Sibbaldius schlegelii?
 * Still an issue here. The text says . Reading that, Flowers described Sibbaldus schlegelii, but the species box now has Flowers listed as describing Physalus laticeps. Could you please double check the source and confirm which is correct?
 * - "sejhval" should be italicized per MOS:FOREIGN
 * Reference spot check good (fn 14/15/16)

Size

 * ✅ Entire section needs a re-write. It's hard to parse what's important from it, needs more prose injected and could drop some of the information from less important sources.
 * Double check the wording of the weight conversions. Some say "average between X and Y" (good) and others says "average X and Y" (bad). I'd even suggest dropping "average between" and just list measurements using en-dashes like this: . Makes it easier to read.
 * I'd break the St Kilda fact out into it's own sentence for better flow.
 * - Missing the unit on the first measurement.
 * - Why the use of "sexually matured male" here as opposed to "adult" where it's used everywhere else in the paragraph? Is this a distinction the source makes?
 * 3rd paragraph, ref 21 is repeated 3 times. Only needs to be cited at the end of the paragraph in that case.

Anatomy

 * Suggest starting the section with "The sei whale's body" rather than just "The whale". I think it adds clarity.
 * - Comma needed after the measurement conversion.
 * - "especially to its smaller..."
 * - Specify "Large sei whales". Since it was just talking about Bryde's whale, it's good to be clear on the whales you're now referring to.
 * - This doesn't sound quite right. Could rewrite to "The right side of the whale's lower jaw is white, while the left side is grey" or something similar. Also, is this referring to sei whales or fin whales?
 * Ref spot check, fn 31/36/29 look good. Ref 35 (Schilling et al) goes to a dead link, doesn't need to be fixed for GA but wanted to point it out.

Life history

 * Ref spot check good (37,22,42,44,48,56,57)
 * First few sentences in Surface behaviors don't flow well. They're short declarative sentences with no connection between them. I'd suggest rewriting for better flow. Even joining the parts about group size and unknown social behaviours would help.
 * - ref 39 needs to be at the end of the sentence.
 * - "and is generally less active". Subject/verb agreement.
 * - This sentence feels odd, specifically "unusually relatively" paired with "for the most part". I'd rewrite this, at least splitting up "unusually relatively".
 * - What's the relevance of this? Suggest dropping since it's not cited either.
 * Vocalizations section uses British English "metre" while the rest of the article is primarily American English. Suggest changing to make consistent.
 * - What does it mean, "only significantly associated"? Was there a question of whether it was associated with another species? Suggest rewriting the sentence for clarity, might just need to drop either "only" or "significantly".

Range and migration

 * Ref spot check - 70,71,72, dead links so couldn't verify. 80 is good, AGF book sources are good.
 * - This sentence doesn't seem to agree with itself. Does it mean that we don't know much specifics beyond the 75% distribution.
 * - This is a run-on sentence, needs to be split up.
 * - "caught of Gabon" - Subject/verb agreement.
 * - Needs a rewrite, seems like the last half of the sentence is maybe missing some words?
 * - "The Falkland Islands appear to be" - Subject/verb agreement.
 * - Add a hyphen between between "late June".
 * ✅ - Unclear of the timing, do they move early June, or later in the summer?
 * They move in early June, and arrive in the summer; will specify in the article. 20 upper (talk) 04:44, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
 * - Ref 27 needs to go at the end of the sentence.
 * - Is F O Kapel well known and worth naming here? Most of the article just uses "a study" or something generic rather than the authors name, I suggest removing their name for consistency.

Whaling

 * - Specify the sei whale here since it's a new section.
 * - Comma not needed after "and in 1885 alone".
 * - Unclear what's meant by "ending commercial whaling". Was this the general end of commercial whaling in Japan, or the end of hunting sei whales specifically?
 * Post-protection whaling - The 2nd and 3rd paragraphs are single sentences. Suggest joining them into one paragraph.
 * - Sushi doesn't need to be capitalized.
 * Is there any information regarding illegal whaling on sei whales?
 * Yes, I think it's recent hunts off of the waters of Japan. Will try to find an academic journal on this. Couldn't find anything, at least from reliable secondary sources. 20 upper (talk) 10:25, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
 * No worries, thanks for double checking. grungaloo (talk) 03:04, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Conservation status

 * - Unclear what's meant by the "misreporting". Does this mean that this misreporting does show that sei whales were still hunted?
 * Most probably yes. 20 upper (talk) 04:14, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
 * - I don't think this is relevant anymore. The latest IUCN report on sei whales is from 2018, so it staying on the list in 2000 isn't really relevant. Also, you don't need to put quotations around "endangered".
 * - "are listed in CITES Appendix". Same goes for the next sentence about appendix I.
 * - This whole paragraph cites one source, cite it at the end of the paragraph and not inline.
 * - Run-on sentence. Could probably be shortened too, no need to restate all of CMS' goals - just get the general gist.

Population estimates

 * ✅This section suffers a bit from WP:OVERCITE, both in ref-bombing and repeats. It's not too bad but could be cleaned up.
 * Make sure that the date is listed for older population estimates. For instance, the Nova Scotia estimate is from 1977 but that date isn't listed. Since population can change dramatically over the years, it's important to know when something was recorded.
 * - 4000 what? Adults, individuals?
 * - Un-capitalize "sei".
 * - "poisoning causes may have caused" sounds odd. Drop "causes" after the (red tide).
 * IUCN lists the population as increasing - might be worth mentioning also.