User:SophieL3/sandbox

Article Evaluation
I learned to be very careful about how you retrieve information, and how to properly place it in an article so it is not plagiarized or a violation of copyright.

The very first thing I noticed about the Steel article is that the first sentence of the introduction is a little awkward. The extra 'and' could be removed and replaced with a comma instead. Nothing really distracted me from the article and everything seemed to be related to the subject. The multitude of pictures around the Modern Steel Making section was a little distracting, as was the main article links under each section (while they could be helpful, the point of Wikipedia is to have the information available on the one page, and maybe if they were linking the extra articles but not speaking about them all it is unnecessary information).

I found that most of the citations (although I didn't look at all of them) checked out, but I found that overall the article had more links available (to other Wikipedia pages) than citations to other articles and quite a few citations to dictionaries or other encyclopedias (Britannica) instead of articles or journals. I didn't like that the article didn't have as many references as it looked like it needed to have. The introduction section did not have a single citation available, just links to other Wikipedia articles. There didn't seem to be a bias toward anything, that I noticed at least, and I find that it would be quite difficult to report facts on steel and create a bias. The section titled Steel Industry has been highlighted by Wikipedia saying that it needs to be re-written, so it would be a good place to start adding information or seeing what is missing and editing what is there. One small thing I would change would be the headings and subheadings formatting. I like to have each word start with a capital, such as Material Properties or Modern Steelmaking.

Clicking the first couple of links throughout the subheadings revealed that there were not many new sources, the newest one I remember was dated back in 2013. The page is a Level 3 Vital Article, a GA-Class article, and has been classified as High-Importance, as well as it being within the scope of WikiProject Chemistry. The Talk page mostly consists of mistakes being corrected, such as the section on Recycling, small grammar changes, translations needed, or fact-checking being double checked.

Steel wasn't discussed to this detail in class.

Siberian Traps AnnikaET
I would like to add to the Formation section and the Impact of Prehistoric Life section. Both are lacking information and written fairly poorly. The Formation section lacks new scientific information, citing that the debate is ongoing as of 2004. I wish to add to the Formation section, or completely re-write it using a few sources, one of them by Fristad et al, I believe this article has more in depth information into the formation of the traps in Siberia (and their compositional makeup) and it has more recent information than the current article is using. The last two sentences in the Formation section also need citations, but if we can't find the data to back up the sentences they will be deleted. I will also use articles by Alexei V. Ivanov, Iacono-Marziano , Reichow, Marc , Black, B , and Jones, M to further add to the formation section, the introduction/geological extent section, and the Prehistoric Life section.

I noticed that the source for 'the possible cause of the extinction' under the Prehistoric Life section is the New York Times, while looking quickly over the article it seemed fine, it would have been better to find the papers the article was referencing, instead of the news article, which uses unnecessary words (or exaggerated words) to draw a reader in. The article has a lot of information that could be useful, sort of a starting point to finding more information.

I would combine the introduction and the Geographical Extent into the introduction. The information in both sections are closely related and would do well to be under the same heading.

Introduction
The Siberian Traps (Сибирские траппы, Sibirskiye trappy) form a large region of volcanic rock, known as a large igneous province, in Siberia, Russia. The massive eruptive event that formed the traps is one of the largest known volcanic events that has occurred in the last 500 million years. It continued to erupt for roughly another million years and spanned the PT Boundary, or the Permian–Triassic boundary, which occurred between.

Large volumes of basaltic lava covered a large expanse of Siberia in a flood basalt event. Today, the area is covered by about seven million km2 of basaltic rock, with a volume of around 4 million km3.

Formation
The source of the Siberian Traps basaltic rock has been attributed to a mantle plume, which rose until it reached the bottom of the lithospheric crust, producing volcanic eruptions through the Siberian Craton. The Siberian Traps were created during the PT Boundary (Permian-Triassic) as the lithospheric plates moved over the Icelandic mantle plume and later, at the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods, caused volcanic activity on the floor of the Arctic Ocean. This activity, during the Late Cretaceous, began the long-winded volcanic activity in Iceland. Other plate tectonic causes have also been suggested. Another possible cause may be the impact that formed the Wilkes Land crater in Antarctica, which is estimated to have occurred around the same time and been nearly antipodal to the Traps.

The main source of rock in this formation is basalt, but both mafic and felsic rocks are present, so this formation is officially called a Flood Basalt Province. The inclusion of mafic and felsic rock indicates multiple other eruptions that occurred and coincided with the million year long eruption that created the majority of the basaltic layers. The Traps are divided into sections based on their chemical, stratigraphical, and petrographical composition.