User:Sarahkwhelan/sandbox

Article Evaluation
The Wikipedia article Cetacean surfacing behaviour has some very useful information, however it is largely underdeveloped. The page is divided into two sections which are very helpful. These sections are Travelling Surface Behaviour and Stationary Surface Behaviour, which provide an efficient way to divide up methods of surfacing that are explained throughout the article. There is also a short section at the bottom of the page about human interaction which is interesting to include. The use of pictures and videos throughout the article is very effective and makes the page easier to understand.

The article stays on topic and all content included is relevant to the title. Most sources seem to be within the last ten to twenty years which indicates information included in the article is relatively up to date. An improvement that could be made to this page is simply more information and sourcing, as many paragraphs are short and include only a few sources to support the claims. For example, the sections on Peduncle Throw, Logging and Pectoral Slapping are very short and do not include a lot of information or view points. Elaboration on these seemingly important behaviours in cetacean surfacing patterns would really improve this article. In cases such as the Peduncle Throw section, there is only one source in the entire paragraph. This paragraph also includes some plagiarism, where the text is copied word for word from the article that is cited. Ideally, this paragraph should be re-worded and have more sources included, as the only source there is not a published academic article and presents only one point of view.

Another improvement to content on this page would be elaborating on the section about Lobtailing and slapping. This section includes good information about lobtailing, though it never mentions slapping or tail-slapping, or if this is just another term for lobtailing. The pictures included have captions that mention tail-slapping, though this term is never explained or mentioned anywhere else in the paragraph. Some more information should be inserted here about tail-slapping to reduce confusion over the terms.

While this article has a generally neutral tone, some areas such as the Peduncle Throw section and Logging section include only a few sentences and sources and therefore do not provide a good neutral overview of the topic. As mentioned above, this could be improved by adding in some more information and academic sources. The page is also titled Cetacean surfacing behaviour though it is largely an article about whale surfacing behaviour. Some examples have been given about select species of dolphins, though most pictures and examples are species of whales. This makes the page slightly less neutral as it is really focussed on whale surfacing. This is mentioned on the talk page, and examples of dolphins have since been inserted. However, the page is still largely about species of whales surfacing. It would improve this page to include more examples on a variety of species within Cetacea to more accurately reflect the title.

The talk page mainly consisted of underdeveloped portions of the article, and some issues brought up have yet to be resolved such as the focus on whales as previously mentioned. This article is a part of the Wiki Project titled "Cetaceans", is ranked as a B Class article and marked as high importance. The talk page is not very long, but has some good points made, many of which are now included in the article. It was mentioned that a section on human interaction should be added, and this is now included at the bottom of the article. It was also suggested on the talk page that a portion suggesting that spyhopping is performed to look at boats be removed or further cited as it is general and slightly anthropomorphic. This is no longer on the page and there is an academic citation for the cetacean reacting to the presence of a boat.

Claims made in this article are generally up to date. However, most sources are not from reliable, published academic webpages and are instead from general websites, news pages and unpublished research articles. For example, sources such as The Dodo and a general website called Conscious Breath Adventures are used on the page to explain a method of breaching though they are not reliable academic sources. There are many instances of this throughout the page and finding scholarly articles to support the claims would be much more effective. There is also plagiarism in areas throughout the page as briefly mentioned above. The section on peduncle throw has sentences defining peduncling that are copied directly from an article cited. This article is a research paper about marine mammals and how they are affected by tsunamis, though has areas explaining cetacean surfacing behaviour. This article is copied directly again on the page when a definition is given for breaching and lunging. The sentence and facts are copied from the article by Dr. Kaniklides, though his article is not even cited and instead a citation is generally given for a webpage with a list of a researchers work, which seems to be the original source for the facts given by Dr. Kaniklides. These instances of plagiarism should be removed to improve this article for academic integrity and also a more neutral tone since they are taken directly from an article about volcanic tsunami effects on the ocean life, which may introduce a bias into the explanation of surfacing behaviours.

This article has begun to provide a good overview of topics within cetacean surfacing behaviour and has links and pictures that make the page easy to use and understand. However, some improvements should be made such as more elaboration on specific topics and examples, more sources given to provide additional viewpoints and increase neutrality of the webpage, and the removal of all plagiarism.