User talk:Nmeyer32/Gauss-Matuyama reversal

Suha Hussain's Peer Review
Lead

The lead provides a good overview of the article, appropriately sets the readers’ expectations, and is easy to understand. Furthermore, the first section properly introduces the information contained in “Biological effects”; it does not detail and repeat much of the claims in that section, but does mention the overarching idea. However, I noticed that the first section heading is different from the title of the actual article. Was this done intentionally? It looks like there is a minor grammatical mistake where “frequently used to as a boundary” is written instead of “frequently used as a boundary”. The first section mentions that the reversal “is often used to date sediments”. Does that correspond to the “Methods for dating reversal”? If it does not, it seems out of place to include it. If it does, it might be worth clarification.

Structure

The structure of the article is clear and straightforward. The article moves from the introduction to “Biological effects” to “Methods for dating reversal”. This enables the reader to glean the most significant information about the reversal first. The etymological information does seem out of place in the first section. Moving it into its own section may be more appropriate. In addition, it might be more appropriate to change the third section to “Methods for dating the reversal”.

Balance

More information about “Methods for dating reversal” would improve the article. Presently, there is only one sentence, yet three sources are provided. Additionally, more information on the significance of this event serving as a boundary between time periods would benefit the article. While the article is well-written, it is a bit heavy with jargon at points, particularly in the second paragraph on “Biological effects”, so adding more sentences elucidating terms such as “geomagnetic reversal” and “ionospheric ionization” would help readers who are not as well-versed on this topic. However, that is not of chief importance as links to some of these terms are provided.

Neutrality

This article clearly has a neutral point of view. Phrases like “thought to have” are used, indicating parts of the article describing viewpoints that may or may not be representative of the field at large. However, the article does make some claims on behalf of unnamed groups of people. For instance, in the sentence fragment “The reversal is thought to have contributed to a hostile environment...”, the use of the passive voice hides who actually holds this belief and why.

Sources

There are two statements in the article that lack a citation. One has the “Citation Needed” indicator and the other is the claim regarding the etymology of the name. Aside from that, this article excellently references and utilizes reliable sources. All the references are accessible, reputable journal articles. Seven different sources are used to support the article’s claims.

—Suhacker256 (talk) 07:38, 12 November 2021 (UTC)