Talk:Verrucosa arenata

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 15 September 2020 and 17 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Saachijain.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:39, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Plagiarism
Here is an excerpt from the first paragraph:

''These arrowhead spiders are most commonly in woods in late summer and early fall. They are also often seen in yards and other places where trees and bushes create appropriate open areas for them to spin circular webs.''

Here is the corresponding passage in the source:

''Most commonly seen in the woods in late summer and early fall. ... Also often seen in yards and other places where trees and bushes create appropriate open areas for them to spin their circular webs.''

This is plagiarism, meaning that the text in the article appears to be written by the article writer but is mostly copied from somewhere else. I don't know the copyright status of the MO site that is the source. but probably it is not copyright protected, but peculiarly they make the following statement: Applications using data supplied by this site must include the following disclaimers on their sites: ... If the site is not copyright protected, then this plagiarism is allowed. --Ettrig (talk) 07:19, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Webs
The description of the web is indirect, cryptic and very short: Verrucosa arenata are orb-web spiders and their webs are nearly invisible to their insect prey.

I suppose that orb-web spider refers to Orb-weaver spider. But the web is not well described there either. Note also that in English, the word orb means sphere. I think I get the idea from the text and one of the illustrations in Orb-weaver spider. The web is not spherical.

A large part of the Webs paragraph belongs in the paragraph about trapping and feeding.

The intro says that this is an Orb-weaver spider. If this is what is referred to with orb-web spider, then that should be replaced with Orb-weaver spider. We can expect that the identity is not obvious to all readers. Nothing is won by using two names for the same family. --Ettrig (talk) 17:54, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I'll admit I was the one who changed it in the intro to orb-weaver yesterday, because our article is called Orb-weaver spider, with Orb-web spider as a redirect to that article. Both of them reference the family Araneidae. Didn't take a good look at the body but I'll fix this inconsistency.  bibliomaniac 1  5  19:31, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Admit??? In my view that was an improvement. I may sound harsher than I mean to. My ambition is to describe problems clearly, to help these new contributors understand why I complain. --Ettrig (talk) 08:29, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Distribution and habitat
The paragraph Distribution and habitat looks like three citations rather randomly placed after each other and not as one text written as a whole. One of the problems I am talking about is that the edges of vegetation is stated twice. It should be rearranged to talk about each aspect only once and with distribution and habitat separated. --Ettrig (talk) 18:18, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I've rewritten the entire section to try to address the plagiarism concerns as well as the "edges of vegetation" redundancy. It's not unheard of to combine distribution and habitat in one section.  bibliomaniac 1  5  19:43, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * With aspect I meant to refer to smaller aspects. I agree that lumping distribution and habitat in the same paragraph is fine. The problem was that the statements were sorted according to where they came from rather than thematically or meaningfully.

YES, much better now. --Ettrig (talk) 08:22, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Feedback
I appreciated the Gallery of photos of the spider that is present at the bottom of the page; it adds so much vibrant color to the page and makes the page more engaging. I added many hyperlinks to this page, including links like: North America, orb weaver spiders, sexually dimorphic, and more. The biggest thing that I changed about this page was the format of some of the headers. The author had a header titled “Behavior and Ecology,” which I changed to fit under the headers from the sample Wikipedia page header list. The headers now are: “Webs,” “Diet,” and “Thermoregulation.” I think this change helps make the flow of the page more clear and more easily searchable. --juliaskittle (talk) 12:00, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Behavioral Ecology Student Suggestions
I added a sub-section to the web section for clarity, and also moved a paragraph from the diet section to this new Prey Capturer Technique section. Besides this I didn't make many changes. I thought the article was very concise and well written. For suggestion to improve I think this article could benefit from more sections to learn more about the spider. Also it would be good to clarify the differences in color between the female and male spiders in the description section, it does seem a bit confusing as written. 17lchang (talk) 22:54, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

ahamed Overall, this article was really well written. You're definitely on the way for a good source article. The only things that I did were add a few hyperlinks to common names. I also added it to the electromagnetic spectrum that you mentioned. Furthermore, I added a few sentences in order to help with the flow, and I shorted one of your sentences. It was very interesting to read on your spider and I wish there were a bit more information. I noted that some things may have needed clarification but you did so well overall. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ahamed01 (talk • contribs) 23:39, 9 December 2020 (UTC)