User talk:Joshdalmann

Welcome!
Hello, Joshdalmann, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Ian and I work with the Wiki Education Foundation; I help support students who are editing as part of a class assignment.

I hope you enjoy editing here. If you haven't already done so, please check out the student training library, which introduces you to editing and Wikipedia's core principles. You may also want to check out the Teahouse, a community of Wikipedia editors dedicated to helping new users. Below are some resources to help you get started editing. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:29, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Assignment 1: Critique a Wikipedia article; "Anaerobic respiration"
Anaerobic respiration

In the Anaerobic respiration articles opening paragraph there is an obscure and potentially un-cited naming of any anaerobic respirations ETC being called a “physolomere”. A Google search of this term only returns 4 pages of results and each site uses the exact same sentence as the one used in the Wikipedia article. While this sentence does have a citation to a microbiology textbook it doesn't seem to be a common term and that could mean it is potentially from an outdated/unlegitmate source which would violate at least one of Wikipedia’s rules¬. My concern is that the textbook that is cited and therefor its author may have created the term and thus has a bias towards its use. This would violate one of Wikipedia’s core values of only sharing unbiased work. In the second paragraph it opens up with details about aerobic respiration and then it follows comparing it to anaerobic respiration. I would simply switch the order of these two to give it a smoother read that is more focused on anaerobic respiration. The “Economic relevance” subsection opens about denitrification but never explains clearly that this a type of anaerobic respiration. The rest of that section continues on about bioremediation and creating fuel cells but none of these topics economic relevance is ever mentioned. Splitting this section into two sections of “bioremediation” and “energy cells” with more information on each would be better. Overall this article needs to be more focused on the subject it is supposedly about.

Joshdalmann (talk) 05:03, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

Assignment 2: Evaluation of a Chosen Article; "Anaerobic respiration"
The article I have chosen to evaluate is Purple sulfur bacteria. It is a topic of notability as evidenced by the approximately 2000 “Scholarly and Peer Review” articles returned from a search of the UBC library database when searching for the phrase “Purple Sulfur Bacteria”. It has been rated, as a part of the WikiProject Microbiology as an article of High-importance and yet only Start-class quality. Obviously this article has many shortcomings, as evidenced by its ranking, that need to be addressed. What is initially most obvious is that it lacks proper formatting. The article does not contain a proper introduction section that gives an overview of what the article is about. Instead there is just one big block of text and only one subheading and associated subtopic, on the Biomarkers of the Purple Sulfur Bacteria, for the article. Wikipedia encourages initial introduction overviews on all their articles and is something that should be implemented here. Continuing, the Biomarkers subtopic only contains one reference to a study about the specific biomarker mentioned and this reference is only one of two references cited in the entire article! Obviously more citations and references need to be added to add to the legitimacy of this article as well as confirming its notability. The structuring of this article causes it to read more like a list of topics of the things Purple Sulfur Bacteria are known to do but really lacks any insight to why those would be important, impactful, of even notable. It lacks depth on the impacts and importance of the nutrient cycles PSB can contribute to including carbon, nitrogen, and of course sulfur, in their environments While it mentions microbial mats it doesn’t mention the impact they have on lessening sediment erosion in those environments and the increases of CO2 they cause This article does not contain any information about the ways in which they can be used for bioremediation, specifically for manure wastewater lagoons of farms, as well lessening their stench. The majority of the article goes completely un-cited, and while some of this may have been common knowledge to the original author, a source is still needed. I have found a very extensive complete volume of all things purple bacteria which can perhaps be used as reference for some of this more “common knowledge”, titled Advances in Photosynthesis and Respiration, 28: Purple Phototrophic Bacteria. The articles only other citation is near the end of the paragraph on PSB environments and I would suggest the addition of other sources for these points. Finally, two facts at the end of the first massive section are completely non-contextualized. There is a fact on how the bacteria use inorganic sulfur substances as their electron and proton source but it needs to be better contextualized because it does not currently add anything to the article where it is. Just before that there is a fact on how they use bacteriopurpurin pigment. This information is out of context and uncited it also doesn’t include any inherent significance unlike the previous fact about the electron and proton donors it is not self evident why it could be viewed as noteworthy. As well I could not find a reliable source for this “bacteriopurpurin pigment” and its relation to purple sulphur bacteria so for the meantime I would consider deleting this fact. This article needs the addition of more sources to increase its reliability as well as clarify and cite the information it already has. It also requires a restructuring with proper subheadings added, and a clear introduction overview.

Joshdalmann (talk) 00:20, 28 September 2017 (UTC)