User:ForTheForest-ForTheTrees/sandbox

TITLE: Emerald ash borer forest disturbance
introduction/summary

Distribution and Spread
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Borer-Host Interactions
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Forest Impacts
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Management
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Recovery and Future
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Proposed Article Topic
Emerald ash borer forest disturbance. See below "add to an article".

Add to an Article
There is an existing article on the Emerald ash borer broadly, but a section about the effects on forests as a disturbance event would be an original submission. The existing article mentions only in passing ecological changes occurring in forests with high ash tree mortality, stating that "the loss of ash from an ecosystem can result in increased numbers of invasive plants, changes in soil nutrients, and effects on species that feed on ash." I am confident that studies have been done that would help elaborate on that important piece of the article. A quick browsing of the journals shows some possibilities:

Article Critique
I chose to review the article titled Fire-adapted communities because I noticed that it had several "maintenance flags" listed from the year 2010; and I was curious to see how these items could be addressed to improve the article.

The first maintenance flag regarded unclear sources and insufficient inline citations. I found some sections of the article to have a reasonable amount of incline citations, while other sections seemed too few. Also the author chose to use both parenthetical citations and footnotes, which was confusing and counter to Wikipedia standards. The author should instead use additional inline citations and only footnote citations to provide consistency and further clarity. The second maintenance flag regarded a perceived bias in the article where the author, at times, seemed to be stating opinions or "personal feelings". The article seemed to present a one-sided presentation of the information. To appear unbiased, the article should present multiple viewpoints--namely ones that challenge the success or validity of fire-adapted communities (as I am sure not everyone agrees that their implementation has been a success). The third maintenance flag stated that the "article may be confusing or unclear to readers". This may have been referring to the poor quality of the writing, including the above comments, confusing sentence structure, and typos. Similarly, the fourth maintenance flag stated that the article needs to be cleaned up to meet Wikipedia standards. Addressing the first three maintenance flags would likely address the fourth by default.

For all of the above mentioned faults, the article still has value. Anyone reading the article who was unfamiliar with the topic would receive a reasonable, brief overview--but from a lopsided viewpoint. With a bit of work, however, it could be brought to a higher quality standard.

Feedback
Good point, but note the comments in the talk page about "Good article" rating that was already established. I'll grade you pass for this assignment, but you need to reconsider this addition if you want to continue with this articleJfaay (talk) 04:56, 30 October 2017 (UTC)
 * ForTheForest-ForTheTrees and Jfaay, I've noticed that it looks like Emerald ash borer forest disturbance is now a planned new article at this time based on this sandbox and the course dashboard. For a little more background on the EAB article, we already had a separate article called emerald ash borer infestation that more or less mirrors what is being proposed here. We merged that content into the current emerald ash borer page before the Good Article assessment because it was redundant.


 * Basically, people were adding in too dense of information related to ecological effects, etc. as if they were writing a journal article rather than for an encyclopedia (WP:NOTJOURNAL for more info). Instead, we used review articles citing those studies to summarize the ecological information for us, which is the preference for writing about scientific content on Wikipedia. Writing about scientific topics as a scientist can be tricky on Wikipedia, and I outline some of that on my userpage. The EAB page can definitely be expanded if there is information in the cited reviews such as Herms et al. 2013, Poland et al. 2014, and Valenta et al. 2016 that was not appropriately summarized, but that can be tricky for a student assignment.


 * If this eventual draft is moved out of the sandbox and into article space, it would have issues conflicting with the main article and other Wikipedia processes in addition to the ones I mentioned previously. If I were advising students on article topics, I would generally advise them to avoid an established article like emerald ash borer where the perceived lack of ecological information is actually intended. You'll likely be fine for assignments before week 8 on your course page, but ForTheForest-ForTheTrees, I would suggest you chat with your instructor about expectations and topic choice (also understanding that editing Wikipedia can be nervewracking trying to navigate its rules or lack thereof). I'm happy to give some guidance if questions come up too. It will be easiest to reach me at my talk page. Kingofaces43 (talk) 16:23, 7 November 2017 (UTC)