Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Vitamin C/archive2

Vitamin C

 * Nominator(s): David notMD (talk) 04:37, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

This article is about Vitamin C. I raised it to Good Article in 2017. I nominated it for Featured Article on 20 December 2023. That nomination was canceled as premature. I have done a lot of editing since then, including resolving all requests for citations. I requested a Peer review on 9 January, but closed that on 8 February because it was unanswered. I have raised a total of 19 articles to GA. David notMD (talk) 04:37, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Image review


 * Suggest copy-editing captions
 * copy-editing completed
 * Some images are missing alt text
 * alt text added
 * File:Linus_Pauling.jpg: when and where was this first published?
 * According to Wikimedia Commons this is a cropped image of a photograph published in The Big T (yearbook of California Institute of Technology) in 1955. It is identified as in the Public Domain. An uncropped version is used in Linus Pauling.
 * Where is the Swedish tag coming from, if this is a US image? Nikkimaria (talk) 05:35, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
 * File:NIH_citrus.jpg: source link is dead
 * Replaced
 * File:James_Lind_by_Chalmers.jpg needs a US tag
 * An editor provided a US tag
 * File:GyorgyiNIH.jpg: this image doesn't appear at the source link provided. Nikkimaria (talk) 06:01, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * image deleted (Gyorgy extracted ascorbic acid from paprika, not from bell peppers, and it was for research purposes, not manufacture of dietary supplement vitamin C.
 * Looks like it was a different image that was removed? Nikkimaria (talk) 05:35, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

WP:MEDSAY
 * A request was made at Talk:Vitamin C to comply with WP:MEDSAY
 * The Medical uses section was revised to remove the MEDSAY-type wording ("A meta-analysis reported..." or "Reviews concluded..." )

Reference quality
 * A comment was made at Talk:vitamin C to consider WP:MEDDATE and use of MDPI journals, especially Nutrients, when reviewing reference quality toward deciding if some references should be removed, and if no better quality references available, the content removed. The sections most affected are Deficiency, Medical uses and Adverse effects (refs 19-81). I will leave a note here when I have completed my references review, but ask that FA reviewers also look at this issue of reference quality. David notMD (talk) 12:43, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Jens

 * Generally, avoid references in the lead. This is because the lead is only a summary; every information should be cited in the body in any case.
 * Ref use in Lead in process of being reduced. I do not agree with no refs in Lead
 * The first sentence of the lead is way to long and goes into detail (such as "wrinkles on the face") that clearly don't belong there.
 * Sentence shortened, and all mention of topical treatment deleted
 * The section "Definition" does not contain a single definition. I am not sure what this section is for, actually.
 * This section has been deleted. the content (if not already duplicating content existing and referenced elsewhere) will be incorporated elsewhere.
 * You start the article with sentences like "The term vitamin C encompasses several vitamers that have vitamin C activity in animals", but those do not explain and are not helpful for a general reader who wants to understand the topic. What are vitamers? What is vitamin c activity? This article is relevant for a very broad, general audience, and should be written accordingly.
 * The next section is "deficiency", but first I would expect something about its occurrence, functions, chemistry, etc. The associated diseases should come at the end.
 * I intend to leave the diseases section near the beginnings of the article unless more reviewers criticize this placement. My thinking is that a majority of viewers come to this article because of a curiosity about a health condition, and so should find that information where it is now.
 * Given second reviewer also suggested the diseases section moved to later - done. Also, there was scurvy content in deficiency and in diseases - now combined in diseases.
 * As a second reviewer also challenged the order of section, in process of rearranging.
 * All of these molecules have vitamin C activity and thus are used synonymously with vitamin C, unless otherwise specified – Which "molecules"? None are mentioned.
 * Deleted
 * The section on chemistry should be much more extensive. Sections on physical properties and molecular properties are missing entirely.
 * The article should also have an extensive section on physiology (how vitamin C works in the body), seems to be missing entirely.
 * Sorry, but I have to oppose this article, it is nowhere close to FA level in my opinion. It is very unfortunate that the article did not get any feedback at the peer review. To improve the article, I would recommend to have a look at the German Wikipedia's article, which seems to have a good and logical structure; that might be a solid starting point. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 02:09, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I will work on addressing your comments even though your conclusion is that the article is not of sufficient content and structure to warrant approval for FA. I point out here that the sections and order of section is similar across the other vitamin articles in English Wikipedia (with the understanding that this may be a criticism of all of those rather than a justification of this one). David notMD (talk) 12:49, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I think that the article Vitamin A could be a pretty good model in terms of structure and content. It has everything I was asking about above (except for the chemical, molecular, and physical properties). Also note the position of the "Deficiency" section (it makes sense to have that section further down: We first need to cover what Vitamin C is and what it does in the body, and from what food it comes from; this is the foundation, we need that before we can understand the deficiencies). Jens Lallensack (talk) 14:23, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Esculenta

 * I also agree with the deficiencies pointed out by Jens above, and would oppose if pressed. Here's some additional specific comments that I hope will be helpful in your improvements efforts. Esculenta (talk) 17:37, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * the Albert Szent-Györgyi image has a quotation, but no source
 * Ref used in text added for quotation in the image caption
 * "Society and culture" - one-sentence sections aren't a good look.
 * Deleted (trivia; anyway, ref no longer worked)
 * "Pharmacopoeias" what is this two-word section even for?
 * Deleted (this was years-old content that I had neglected to look at)
 * there seem to be several instances of poor citation practices; for example this sentence: "In humans and in animals that cannot synthesize vitamin C, the enzyme l-gulonolactone oxidase (GULO), which catalyzes the last step in the biosynthesis, is highly mutated and non-functional.[128][129][130][131]" These four citations are to papers all 20 years old or more, some of them primary sources. If the statement made is true and important, then it should be citable to a recent MEDRS-compliant source.
 * "Limes, lemons and oranges" image needs MOS:CAPFRAG check
 * Period added to image caption because the caption is a sentence
 * The "References" section needs some attention to detail:
 * FN#7 is multiply cited to a page range of 90 pages; this should be broken up into specific page cites
 * page numbers provide for each use of FN#7
 * inconsistency with page numbering format: compare e.g. "pp. 155–70." vs. "pp. 260–275"
 * All ref pagination now consistent, using the former system
 * inconsistency with sentence case/title case in article titles
 * All changed to sentence case

TompaDompa
I'll also oppose this nomination as premature. A quick look at the article reveals (non-exhaustively): I would suggest closing this. TompaDompa (talk) 21:16, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Several unsourced passages. The entire first paragraph after the lead in the current version, for instance.
 * The entire Definition section has been deleted, with any referenced content incorporated elsewhere.
 * As noted above, a rather counterintuitive structure. For instance: surely the role vitamin C plays normally should be mentioned ahead of deficiency and medical uses, no?
 * Although I have voiced that I oppose this (above), it is "not a hill to die on." I will deal with other criticisms, then get to this.
 * Per your and another reviewer's comments, Medical uses moved to later in article.
 * Some apparent self-contradiction: "Ascorbate and ascorbic acid are both naturally present in the body, since the forms interconvert according to pH." versus "In biological systems, ascorbic acid can be found only at low pH, but in solutions above pH 5 is predominantly found in the ionized form, ascorbate."
 * The sentence "However, a lack of conclusive evidence has not stopped individual physicians from prescribing intravenous ascorbic acid to people with cancer.", which really has no business appearing in an article going through WP:FAC.
 * Deleted.
 * A bunch of repetition and redundancy. The relationship between vitamin C, collagen, and scurvy appears repeatedly ("In humans, vitamin C deficiency leads to impaired collagen synthesis, contributing to the more severe symptoms of scurvy." and "Scurvy is a disease resulting from a deficiency of vitamin C. Without this vitamin, collagen made by the body is too unstable to perform its function" and "Vitamin C has a definitive role in treating scurvy, which is a disease caused by vitamin C deficiency." and "The disease scurvy is caused by vitamin C deficiency and can be treated with vitamin C-containing foods or dietary supplements or injection."), for instance.
 * The information about scurvy has been consolidated.

Response to opposition to date
The editors who have voiced oppose were kind enough to leave specific criticism, which I have been addressing, and will continue to. I hope that a final decision of accept can be reached. If this is closed before I have had the time to address the critical comments to date (and any more that new editors may add), I will not try again. I believe that an article which Wikipedia considers a Level 5 Vital Article and which gets more than 500,000 views per year deserves patience. David notMD (talk) 22:02, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Section deletion question
On 8 October 2018 an editor moved content from Chemistry of ascorbic acid to the Vitamin C article, where it now exists as subsection "As food preservation additives" within section "Sources." In the opinion of FA reviewers, does this content belong in the article? David notMD (talk) 23:27, 15 February 2024 (UTC)


 * That section seems relevant to me, and does not fit within the scope of Chemistry of ascorbic acid. However, maybe it should be combined with the "medical uses" into a general "uses" section (which then discusses medical uses, uses in the food industry, and some other uses that are not yet mentioned in the article). Jens Lallensack (talk) 13:23, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Moved out of Sources, as this use (food preservative additive) is non-nutrient. David notMD (talk) 13:43, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Copyright infringement evaluation
See Talk:Vitamin C for a copyright infringement evaluation. As the nominator of Vitamin C for FA, my evaluation is that the duplication of text in the article and the mentioned sources is due to many short text fragments, and in two of the four, to referenced quotations. I leave to the FA reviewer whether the quotations need to be removed. David notMD (talk) 13:37, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Comments from Vanamonde
Beginning to read through: after a few paragraphs, I confess I am also leaning oppose. I have some background in science, and yet I'm still struggling to follow some of the prose. Having read the first paragraph, it isn't clear to me if ascorbate is considered Vitamin C; with the second paragraph, I'm confused as to how the detection works, because both enantiomers are surely chemically equivalent? Or is it that natural sources only produce one? The deficiency section isn't largely about deficiency at all, but about concentrations in the blood (both high and low), and methods for determining them. In the Diet section, I'm not sure that a lengthy list of recommended intakes is encyclopedic; in the presence of such information, we really need some summarizing sources. Indeed having read those statistics I'm left wondering why the RDA varies across countries by a factor of 2.5. I will keep reading, but I think this may need working over at peer review. I don't fault the nominator necessarily; a lot of work has gone into this, and it apparently did not receive attention at PR; it's also a huge topic in terms of literature. Vanamonde93 (talk) 04:49, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Addressing each comment separately:
 * first paragraph, it isn't clear to me if ascorbate is considered Vitamin C
 * I'm confused as to how the detection works, because both enantiomers are surely chemically equivalent? Or is it that natural sources only produce one?
 * The enantiomers do not appear in nature, and when synthsized and fed to animals, have less than 5% of vitamin C function.
 * The deficiency section isn't largely about deficiency at all, but about concentrations in the blood (both high and low), and methods for determining them.
 * In the Diet section, I'm not sure that a lengthy list of recommended intakes is encyclopedic; in the presence of such information, we really need some summarizing sources. Indeed having read those statistics I'm left wondering why the RDA varies across countries by a factor of 2.5.
 * While each country or organization may have a justification for how a recommended intake was set, I cannot find any science journal article that discusses the range across the various expert panels. So, for example, for adult men, the US in 2000 identified 75 mg/day as the estimated average requirement and 90 mg/day as the recommended dietary allowance - the larger number to allow for two standard deviations above average - whereas the EFSA (European Union) in 2013 used 90 and 110 mg/day for average and recommended. Each organization used a combination of efficiancy of absorption, metabolic catabolism and urinary excretion to calculate an average oral intake needed to maintain blood concentration, but referenced different journal articles to source those numbers.

Coordinator comment
A fair few comments and a consensus that this is not yet ready for FAC. I am afraid that I agree - the appropriate venue for this discussion is PR, not FAC. I hope that it will continue there and that the article will return here in better shape. But for now I am archiving it. In any event the usual two-week FAC hiatus will apply. Gog the Mild (talk) 14:46, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Gog the Mild (talk) 14:46, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Nominator comment
I will address a few more of the FA reviewers' comments, but do not intend to ever nominate this for FA again. This has been an informative, but in the end, disappointing, process. David notMD (talk) 18:52, 1 March 2024 (UTC)