Talk:Vespula rufa

I thought this article included a lot of good information and was well written. The largest edit that I made was with the article's references, such that they no longer repeated each other. I also made some grammatical edits sand made sure that when a genus was mentioned that it was capitalized. Overall, however, I thought the article is off to a good start. Yangjennyh (talk) 21:13, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Thank you so much Jenny (Yangjennyh) for your edits! I think they greatly improved my work!Alison Gozlan (talk) 00:36, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Peer Review
I made some minor grammatical and wording edits to the page. There was one instance in the description where I was uncertain of the author’s intentions, but I believe there may be an incorrect citation. A sentence is ended with “(3)” which I believe is supposed to be a citation back to the third source but I did not want to change it without confirmation and accidentally cite the wrong source for the information. The Worker Queen Conflict description was interesting but it would have been nice if it were tied back to Vespula rufa specifically. Otherwise, it may be sufficient and more concise to break this section up and add the relevant information to the appropriate subcategories. Overall, the page is well written and very informative and I enjoyed reading it. Tgalosher (talk) 03:15, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you so much Talia (Tgalosher) for your comments. I changed the citation. Thanks for not directly changing it as it was not actually source 3 in wikipedia (but was source 3 in my original draft). I did tie the relevant portions to Vespula rufa in, but I think it is important to describe the worker-queen conflict since the average Wikipedia user is a layman who is probably unfamiliar with the idea. Alison Gozlan (talk) 00:36, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Peer Review
This article was quite thorough. Facts are well well-referenced and the phrasing is concise for the most part. I made small grammatical changes to the section on orientation flights, as the narrative of how these flights worked needed a little clarity. One of the biggest suggestions I'd make is to start linking a lot of the vocabulary words used in order to give the article more readability. Also, the section on Colony Cycle may benefit from subheadings considering the wealth of information there. VGurusamy — Preceding undated comment added 04:21, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you VGurusamy! I added several more links. I actually don't see a need for subheadings on the "Colony Cycle" as it is not that much information and it is all related, so will refrain from further dividing the section at this time. However, if more information is learned and added to this area, then I will consider making the change. Alison Gozlan (talk) 00:36, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Peer Review
Thank you so much Mayxac for your thorough review. I used your commments to go back and edit. I added more linked to the Descprition and identification section (like "workers" and "Eusocial wasps") and improved the flow of the page based on your comments.I added a comma to make clear that V. rufa is the Red Wasp and I capitalized this throughout. I also decided to keep the last sentence in the overview since a criterion of good articles is that the overview is comprehensive and this sentence touches on what I discuss in more detail later. Unfortunately the source does not identify who Burila is and does not provide his first name, so I cannot be sure of who that is.Alison Gozlan (talk) 01:19, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

I think adding links would help readers understand your topic, especially since there are many sections that do not have any links at all. Also, under “Interactions with other species” and “Leaving the nest,” there are subtopics that have very little information. It might be best to combine these sections so that there are not just two sentences for a subtopic. You also include a lot of detail that will most likely confuse the author rather than help. Perhaps you can get rid of necessary detail and talk more broadly about the subject. Lastly, the article could really benefit from altering sentence structure or reorganizing sentences so that the article flows better. I made some minor changes and had some questions that I included below. Otherwise, this article has a lot of good information about the red wasp, and I enjoyed reading about it! Mayxac (talk) 05:27, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Overview
I made some small changes to the overview. I linked Vespula, Europe, Asia, North America, predators, and parasites. Although the overview does indeed give an overview, it could use some work getting the sentences to flow. Some suggestions are to vary sentence structure so that the sentences are not so choppy and to include some more information in the last two sentences, as they are vague. For example, “The species goes through a series of events before leaving the nest” does not really tell the reader what to expect later in your article. Mayxac (talk) 05:27, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Taxonomy and phylogeny
There are some cases of vague pronoun usage that causes a lot of confusion. For example, in the sentence “This differs from typical red wasps V. rufa of the western Palearctic that have ivory rather than yellow markings,” you might want to explicitly say what “this” is. Also, I am not sure what you meant by “red wasps V. rufa.” Isn’t V. rufa commonly called the red wasp? You might also want to define uncommon terms, such as monotypic. Mayxac (talk) 05:27, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Description and identification
There are no links to other pages in this section, but I think it'd really be helpful to the reader if you did. For example, you could link things like subterranean and aerial. In the second paragraph, I don’t think it is necessary to include a specific experiment or the article title, especially since it is cited right after. Perhaps you can discuss the general findings of the experiment without discussing the experiment itself. Similarly, in the last sentence, I think you can paraphrase the quote since the quote does not say much. And lastly, you can use undefined undefined with any measurements you have. Mayxac (talk) 05:27, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Colony cycle
You have a lot of quotes that also could be paraphrased. In the second paragraph, who is Birula? I don’t think it is necessary to include the name but rather just the information. Lastly, you capitalize “Red Wasp” at the end but did not use capitalization earlier in the article. Mayxac (talk) 05:27, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Comments
The first organizational mistake I noticed was that the “Description and identification” section has a very large chunk of text. The edit I made was adding two subheadings: “Morphology” and “Nests.” I think that these edits would make the article look better and more organized. The “Colony cycle” section also appears to be long, but after reading, I am not sure how to separate the information into subheadings. Lastly, there were a small number of corrections of punctuation and spacing. Overall, this was a pretty good, well-referenced article. Sydney Joyner (talk) 16:59, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Thank you Sydney for your edits and suggestions. I do not feel like there is a good way to break up the colony cycle section either so I am just leaving it as is, especially since it isn't that long and I think it is still pretty readible.Alison Gozlan (talk) 01:06, 21 November 2014 (UTC)