User talk:Sarasunadalkilic/sandbox

Assignment 1 (17th Sept)
Wikipedia critique (Bacterial circadian rhythms)

The “Bacterial circadian rhythms” article, although interesting and somewhat informative, does not meet essential criteria for a high-quality encyclopedia entry. Its main issue is a biased delivery, similar to an essay with a particular argument; here, the argument is that prokaryal circadian rhythms are complex and significant like eukaryal ones. Many section titles are long-winded, aiming to hook readers in, whereas a quality encyclopedia article would have short, functional section titles. Additionally, paragraphs (and section titles) open with rhetorical questions, frequently use rhetorical devices, and are filled with descriptions of scientific methods (e.g. "exquisite" system) that encyclopedia entries should minimize. The decorative delivery dilutes the core scientific content to promote the author’s viewpoint. In addition to the tone, the unbalanced presentation of perspectives and relevant subjects is seen in the unequal section lengths. The section on history has multiple paragraphs while “relationship to cell division” has 3 sentences; essentially, the "history" of discovery dominates over any information on bacterial circadian rhythms themselves. There are also referencing and copyright issues, like statements that seem to closely paraphrase the methods or discussions of articles being cited. The paraphrasing of sources contributes to the article’s narrative tone, as there are many (unnecessary) descriptions of what was done to obtain the scientific knowledge that the article should be focusing on. Overall, the text reads like a subjective narrative; while engaging, it does not conform to Wikipedia’s guidelines on neutrality or follow appropriate citation and copyright conventions. --Sarasunadalkilic (talk) 02:13, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

Assignment 2 (26th September)
Wikipedia Article Selection (Response regulator)

I have chosen to edit the Response regulator page, due to the topic’s notability and the entry’s need for improvement. Considering the importance of response regulators for the ecophysiology of bacteria, this subject deserves a more informative and longer article. There is a growing wealth of independent and reliable sources, such as books and journal articles, that discuss response regulators at length. Some sources discuss specific examples, like the involvement of response regulators in the flagellar motility driving chemotaxis, while others are general sources on the regulation of gene expression in bacteria and thus devote a significant portion of content to response regulators. Despite the extensive research and coverage on the subject, however, the Wikipedia entry on response regulators is uninformative on the subject, with a hefty portion of the article focusing on histidine kinase function rather than response proteins. The entry has three sections, with the first (on response regulator function) being significantly longer than the other two (on the classification and evolution of response regulators). Even in this section, there is very little on response regulators themselves; rather, the paragraphs seem to be more about histidine kinases. In addition to the lack of content on response regulator function, there is very little discussion on the different classes of response regulators beyond one sentence for each type. In the final section on evolution, the entire section seems to be a close paraphrasing of the Wikipedia entry on two-component regulatory systems. The article could benefit from edits and the addition of a number of items. One addition that the article would highly benefit from would be the detailing of examples under each classification subtype, with descriptions of mechanism. Although the chemotaxis regulator has been name dropped, little has been mentioned about its function or structure in terms of what makes it an exemplary single domain response regulator. The article would also benefit from editing the evolution section, and changing this section to include response regulators in non-bacterial organisms. Finally, the function section could be improved by adding more information on the ecophysiological implications of response proteins. --Sarasunadalkilic (talk) 00:34, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Assignment Comments
Comments on the critique: This assignment really articulated to me that an "interesting" Wikipedia article isn't always a neutral, trustworthy one. I have personally always loved Wikipedia and have spent a lot of my free time reading articles that I thought were interesting and engaging (but I edited none). This assignment made me focus on how engaging or interesting texts do not always make for reliable content, and that the genre of an encyclopedia article is the delivery of information as neutrally as possible. I found it quite hard to condense my critique to 250 words. I have a decently strong Arts/writing background, but we tend to focus on something very "descriptive" about our writing; I'm used to writing thousands of words of critique, and it was challenging for me to not exceed the 250 cap. The easiest part of this assignment was to find something to critique about the article (at least in the one I picked it was glaringly obvious), but that only made condensing my writing more difficult. Regardless, I enjoyed the assignment quite a bit; it basically incorporated a past time activity that I've done regularly since I could access the internet, into the assignments that I have for class. --Sarasunadalkilic (talk) 02:19, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

Sarasunadalkilic's peer review
Your edits added more content and greater depth. They were mostly neutral, relevant, and supported by a variety of different references, reflecting all perspectives depicted in each reference. However, some suggestions for improvement are included below…

Structure
The structure of the article seems to mirror that of a “classic five-paragraph” essay: an introductory paragraph listing out the three broad classes, three sub-topic paragraphs – one for each class, and a concluding paragraph. Therefore, the order of the three sub-topic paragraphs should be the same as the order of the classes listed in the introductory paragraph.

Content
However, the fourth paragraph, describing single-domain response regulators, does not use the term “single-domain response regulators” at all. Adding sub-headers to each sub-topic paragraph may help distinguish them better, or you could start each paragraph with the name of each class so that the reader is fully aware of the main idea in each paragraph. These will make your edits more concise.

Writing
To be consistent with most Wikipedia articles, citation markers should be placed after punctuation, typically after a period (last sentence, paragraph 2; first sentence, paragraph 5). Sentences 5 and 6 in paragraph 2 are both run-on sentences – commas should be used to separate the two finite clauses in each sentence. Contrarily, sentence 1 of paragraph 2 should not have a comma – the last part is an infinite clause. Also, the use of the words “prominent” (paragraph 4) and “often” (paragraph 3) are not typically considered as neutral adjectives and may be interpreted as bias. Furthermore, the word “often” is not used in the cited literature.

Reliable sources
There are quite a few sentences without any citations: the last sentence in paragraph 1; sentences 3 and 4 in paragraph 3; the first 3 sentences of paragraph 4; and the last sentence of paragraph 5.

Ykgbmn (talk) 08:54, 6 November 2017 (UTC)