User:Kyra Robertson/Surface mining/Davidbbell3 Peer Review

General info

 * Whose work are you reviewing?

Kyra Roberston


 * Link to draft you're reviewing
 * User:Kyra Robertson/Surface mining


 * Link to the current version of the article (if it exists)
 * Surface mining

Evaluate the drafted changes
Hi Kyra!

Your article is really strong! You raise a lot of interesting points making for a really good read.

I feel that you could improve clarity in many places. Clarity is important because it makes the article easier to read, so the reader can understand what you've written. In several paragraphs you use short, curt sentences that don't flow very well from the line before. For example, in your section on environmental impacts, you go through several types of surface mining and list their negative environmental impacts. The transitions between these jumps are harsh and difficult to read. You follow a long, well-written sentence such as "An open-pit mine can yield an enormous quantity of waste rock, sinkholes, flooding and the same negative impacts as strip mining", with the abrupt "Mountaintop removal mining is destructive.". This can be easily fixed by using transitional words such as "also" or "Another type of surface mining with negative environmental impacts is ____". This will allow the paragraph to flow much better. You could also try dividing the huge paragraph into a series of smaller paragraphs, which would also facilitate flow, but you may risk making these paragraphs too tiny, so you may need to add more information if you do this. Also on the subject of clarity, in the first section on environmental and health effects, you say that "Surface mining is subject to state and federal reclamation requirements...". This sentence is confusing because of your use of the words state and federal. I assume you mean American jurisdictions, but this in unclear in the text. If it is indeed referencing American law, you can add a couple words to the sentence to fix that! This may also be an opportunity for you to discuss how laws surrounding reclamation differ between countries.

There are a few other places where you could be more clear. Under the section: Environmental Impact, you say "the tailings are placed back into the hole and covered up" when you never mentioned a hole before. If this is explained in a section of the original article that you didn't place in the sandbox then thats fine, but if not you could change it to "the hole created by the mining processes due to removal of material", or something along those lines. Also, at the beginning of the Human Health subsection you reference adverse respiratory health effects of coal mining but don't actually mention that its from coal mining. These are little fixes that will go a long way to making your article more clear!

Your article has excellent structure! You have headings and subheadings which help break up the article into manageable chunks. Your large paragraph on environmental impacts has harsh transitions as I've already mentioned, but the ideas are very well structured and balanced. Your ideas are clearly well thought out and well placed. I don't see anything written by you on the talk page. If you had used the talk page it would have helped me greatly to determine what you did, which sources you found, and how much you wrote versus how much you edited. For future edits I encourage you to record what you did in the talk page.

You have a large references section which is fantastic! There are lots of solid references which reflect good balance in the article. Ideas are well cited throughout the article. You have one citation needed in the first paragraph, as well as a controversial claim that needs some research. Doing this will help improve the overall balance and neutrality. Your article also takes a very American approach to surface mining, discussing laws and studies from the U.S. To improve the neutrality of your article, try to find some studies and examples from non-American surface mines. You briefly mention Canada, but I'm sure there's lots of surface mining outside of North America! For instance, in Germany, massive amounts of surface mining is done for coal, and the pits are then filled in to create artificial lakes. This would be a great addition to your paper. Here's a place where you can start looking for references: Hambach surface mine.

I really enjoyed your draft and I hope this feedback helps!

David