User talk:Lincolnp8/sandbox

EnvZ/OmpR two-component system
The Wikipedia article “EnvZ/OmpR two-component system” provides viewers with basic subject knowledge. The lead section is terse with only three sentences and could be rewritten to summarize all article topics. The structure of certain sections should be reorganized. For instance, “Overview”, covering structure, signalling, and the regulated porins, encompasses too many topics to be grouped under one heading, and should be broken up and headed under their respective topics. The writing style is overall neutral and objective, but the words “important” and “significant” in “Overview” represent bias and should be changed. The content is relevant but skewed towards environmental responses, with “Low/High osmolarity response” listed under their own headings. Regarding “References”, while half are over twenty years old, all sources listed come from accessible, reliable, independent scientific journals. However, much of the information found in the article itself is uncited, which is not in line with Wikipedia’s plagiarism policy. The article references the study by Egger et al. in every paragraph except for the lead, indicating over-representation of that study. The lead section’s last sentence about ompR holds two citations but do not appear in the body, suggesting the article can go into further detail about this protein. Information from additional sources would add more perspectives to the subject and increase content detail and interest in the article, such as this study which disagrees on the phosphatase activity of EnvZ. Overall, the solid base of the article can be furthered with additional organized subsections and details. Lincolnp8 (talk) 05:38, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

EnvZ/OmpR two-component system Reflection
This assignment helped me look at written text with a more critical approach, as many people (including me) seem to just eat up whatever information is given to them. As a result, I find it is fairly difficult to read an article without accepting every piece of information, and at the end write up a concise, comprehensive evaluation concerning its credibility. The training, however, did give me a guide as to what to look for when critiquing articles. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lincolnp8 (talk • contribs) 06:20, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Pseudomonas - Assignment 2
The chosen Wikipedia article “Pseudomonas” is a noteworthy article with 43 references, contributing to the article’s high notability. Although some poor sources are listed (see Reference 15, 20, and 21), there are more than enough peer-reviewed journal sources entirely devoted to the subject to meet the 3-5 sources requirement for notability (Reference 33, 25, and 7, for example). A vast majority of the references listed are peer-reviewed journal articles, as well as a few textbooks. All sources come from a wide distribution of various publishers (over 15 found) and scientists, suggesting little apparent conflict of interest or overrepresentation of one study.

Despite the article’s notability and number of sources and content, the section titled “Food spoilage agents” is largely incomplete. Being only two sentences long, there is a Wikipedia tag declaring that expansion of the topic is needed. The first sentence adds no information about how Pseudomonas causes spoiling, only that certain aspects of Pseudomonas such as growth in low temperature environments allow it to do so. The second sentence merely lists the food types that specific species can spoil. There is no information on mechanisms or enzymes used for food spoilage or prevention measures that can be taken to combat food spoilage by Pseudomonas. As well, there is no mention of the prevalence and distribution of spoilage-causing species in the genus, for instance whether only certain Pseudomonas species or all species are capable of spoilage. “Food spoilage agents” can be improved on by, for example, adding a paragraph discussing ribotyping as one method that can be used to isolate for species and strains that are more likely to cause spoilage. This encourages more editors to find similar studies in order to better categorize which species can cause spoiling of certain types of food. As well, an addition of a paragraph discussing the enzymes in which Pseudomonas uses to cause spoilage in certain types of foods, for instance, information about the protease and lipase activity of Pseudomonas fluorescens on milk at certain temperatures, can be of help to readers who wish to know how spoilage can happen. Lincolnp8 (talk) 06:08, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Peer Review
The content provides a neutral point of view. There are no personal opinions, exaggerated expressions, or the use of such words as “best, highest etc.” The sources used are from authors of different affiliations; for example, one paper is from the University of Nottingham, UK and another paper is from   Cornell University. Information presented from both paper are given equal significance in the edit. Information is presented in an orderly fashion. The second paragraph states general information about Pseudomonas species and their roles in diary spoilage. This is supplemented by the third and fourth paragraphs which provide more details about metallo-protease and lipase respectively; these are examples of enzymes used by P. fluorescens to cause spoilage. However, the third and fourth paragraph could be incorporated into one paragraph, as they both fall under the category of enzymes. Statements in the second paragraph are supported with evidence from literature. Statistical data regarding the diversity of Pseudomonas species and their characteristics from the original paper are nicely summarized. The paper also discusses the method of ribotyping as a method to identify the different Pseudomonas species in dairy spoilage. However, in the edit, the terms “Ribotyping”and “ribotype” are used without any definition; tt will improve the reader’s understanding if they are explained, as they appear several times in the second paragraph. Another suggestion is to substitute the word “ribotyping/ribotype” with something more colloquial for ease of understanding, for example, “groups” or “types”.

The title of this section is “ Food spoilage agents”; however, the edit only focuses on diary spoilage. In order to provide a more balanced coverage, the edit should also elaborate on other bacteria that cause other types of food spoilages, for example those that cause meat and fish spoilage.

Lastly, citation 9 used in the last paragraph is missing. Cath.ubc.ca (talk) 01:21, 9 November 2017 (UTC)