Wikipedia:Peer review/Carbon dioxide/archive1

Carbon dioxide
I'd like this to be a Featured Article, and I think that it's extremely close. I'd like the red links to be fixed and the shortest sections expanded. C. M. Harris 12:21, 30 July 2006 (UTC) Opabinia regalis 17:16, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
 * An article of this length needs more than 9 inline citations. There are large swaths of the usage and biology sections that are totally unreferenced.
 * The lead doesn't really summarize the article and needs to be expanded. In particular, dry ice is mentioned without reference to its use, greenhouse gases get only a brief mention, and there's nothing specific about the gas being a poisonous byproduct of human (animal) respiration, which is what I think a layperson knows most about it. Carbon fixation should be mentioned and linked, and CO2's role as a product of complete combustion should probably be mentioned somewhere.
 * The second person ("You may notice this sensation..." etc) is unencyclopedic in tone.
 * The usage and biology sections both read like random collections of facts rather than coherent prose. The uses section may be a tad more difficult to fix since the uses are so diverse, but rewriting the biology section for continuity shouldn't be difficult; there's an abundance of reference material available. In general, it looks like the atmospheric section has received vastly more effort than these two sections.
 * The entire "Solid CO2" section should be a subsection of "uses", and while dry ice bombs are a use for the substance, I wouldn't classify that use as industrial. The amorphous glass material belongs somewhere as a physical property of CO2, not a use (I don't think this has any industrial applications).
 * In addition to being listy, the biology section is awkwardly written. "...dangerous to the life and health of humans, plants and other animals"?? What?
 * The image illustrating the vibrational modes of CO2 is interesting and relevant, but misplaced. Move it, along with a text discussion of vibrational modes, to another section (possibly "properties", after the discussion of the absence of dipole - which itself should get a mention that there can be an induced dipole effect) and let that provide the necessary context for the statement about vibrational modes in the atmosphere section.
 * There's a bit of a linkfarm at the end.

Some additional comments: Thanks! &mdash; RJH (talk) 22:37, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Suggest comparing to the Acetic acid article, which is FA. You can't go too far wrong by mimicking the layout, where applicable.
 * Typo: "conducive"
 * The line "The data can be accessed at http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/vostok/vostok_data.html" should be converted into an inline citation. Likewise anywhere else in the text where there is an embedded external link, I'd prefer to see cite web be used instead as an inline citation. That provides more information about where the reader is heading.
 * Somewhere in the article you might mention that CO2 is the primary component of the atmospheres of both Venus and Mars. It has been discovered in the interstellar medium and is "an abundant component of cold interstellar grains".

Some other brief comments and ideas...


 * The article itself does not seem to be very cohesive. There are portions of the article where unrelated ideas are put together one sentence after another with little continuity - see the "uses" section as an example.


 * The use of carbon dioxide as a solvent does not seem to be described adequately - there is an example of how it is used, but not why it acts as a good solvent for certain chemicals. I would expect to see something about supercritical fluids - a brief mentioning would do. Also, something about the predominant solvent interactions would be good.


 * There should be something about the molecular point group that carbon dioxide belongs to, and its implications for IR and Raman spectroscopy. The reason is that CO2 is a rather "simple" system where this can be clearly illustrated - but perhaps this might be better put in the spectroscopy articles.


 * Other things as well, but I think I will leave it at this for now. I hope this helps! --HappyCamper 04:52, 2 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Please see automated peer review suggestions here. Thanks, AZ t 01:36, 9 August 2006 (UTC)