Talk:Biodiversity of Wales/GA1

GA Review

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

Reviewer: J Milburn (talk · contribs) 18:44, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Just claiming this now. Review to follow soon. J Milburn (talk) 18:44, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

I applaud you for taking on this subject, but I'm afraid that the article is not ready for GA status yet. I'm afraid that there are a number of problems; I am not going to go into excessive detail, but hopefully I can point you in the right direction.

• Some areas lack sourcing. For instance, the "evolution" section is seemingly completely unsourced, and has citation needed tags. Ideally, everything in the article should be sourced to published reliable sources.
• The coverage seems extremely patchy. For instance, why do you list only three trees, and why those in particular? Are these the three most common trees in Wales? I know they're not the only ones.
• There doesn't seem to be anything on fungi, other than an (inaccurate) mention in the lead. "Common plant species found in Britain include bryophytes (mosses and liverworts), lichens and fungi due to the unique climate in Wales." Fungi are not plants, and this sentence doesn't seem to make much sense. (As an aside, this failure to adequately cover fungi is not unique to this article- see "Raising the profile of fungi on the Internet: editing Wikipedia", Fungal Conservation.)
• Remember that specific names (for instance, Amanita muscaria) should be italicised. Common names should not be.
• Don't be scared of linking when species do not have an article- redlinks are not a bad thing.
• Section titles should use sentence case. So, for instance, "Lower Plants" is wrong; "Lower plants" is right.
• Inconsistency between lists and prose. For instance, compare the section on endemic flowering plants to the section on endemic reptiles.
• The gallery is not adding anything to the article. The use of illustrations to show key species and such is definitely a good idea, but a block of images isn't particularly useful.
• Citation templates will help you format your footnotes, but the references at the moment are not ideal. A few references to conservation websites probably isn't too bad, but the article would ideally be based on published books and academic articles. Some of the items in the further reading list would be good examples; with some, it's hard to see what they're doing there at all.

I'm sorry if this seems a little harsh, but this article is not close to GA status. Perhaps, as this is a longer article, it would benefit from the use of a peer review once you have dealt with my thoughts. I hope my comments are helpful- feel free to contact me on my talk page if there is anything in particular with which you need guidance or help. J Milburn (talk) 19:07, 3 October 2012 (UTC)