Talk:Island/GA1

GA Review

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Nominator: ForksForks (talk · contribs) 12:54, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 08:05, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Comments

I'll have a go at this one.

• The 'Definition' spends a lot of time on continents, especially Australia, basically off-topic. Please cut it down.
  • Done

• The 'Etymology' is slightly backwards, as we wait until the last sentence to discover the cognates, complete with an apologetic "is actually a cognate", as if Swedish were somehow a less-valued language, very odd. Please restructure so that we have the real etymology first, all of it; and then (I suggest a separate paragraph) the false etymology, trimmed to reduce repetition (the 3 mentions "false ... incorrect ... etymologically unrelated ..." are all synonyms, and we don't need the wikilink on "etymologically" either).
  • This is an artifact of the previous crufty version of the article. Should have rewritten but was scared to touch, thank you!

• 'Geology' alludes to atolls in paragraph 1 but doesn't introduce them until paragraph 3. Suggest rearrange.
  • Attempted to make this make more sense

• The 'See also' list of lists is excessive; since 'List of islands' is actually a misnomer for 'List of lists of islands', all the links to other lists of islands (listed there in that list of lists) should be removed as duplicates. 'Island country' could be a 'further' link for 'Political significance', and again remove it from 'See also'. (Not sure that 'Political significance' is quite the right heading, maybe 'Island nations and territories'.)
  • Done

• 'Island biogeography' and 'Island ecology' are obviously important subtopics, and they are in fact briefly discussed (without naming them!) in 'Life on islands'. Please name and link them there (and remove them from 'See also'); I'd suggest you restructure the chapter with subsections with these as headings and "main" links.
  • Added biogeography, will work on ecology section after I finish the first pass.

• 'Life on islands' should discuss and illustrate Island gigantism in a short subsection (it's part of Island biogeography); there is good material with sources to select from in that article, which should get a 'main' link. The subsection should mention Foster's rule and Insular dwarfism too. Perhaps the section should be named 'The island rule' to cover both gigantism and the lesser-known dwarfism.

• 'Life on islands' should also mention the species–area relationship in an island context.

• The last paragraph of 'Life on islands' is evidently about 'Conservation of endemic island species'. Obviously the concept of endemism needs to be discussed (populations evolve in isolation [French isolé="put on an island"], become new local i.e. endemic species), and then the conservation of endemic species can be explained in that context. I think you'll need a 'further' link to endemism. From there, you should discuss dispersal (by flying, swimming, floating on rafts, blowing in the wind...) and hence the idea of diverging evolution on island chains or groups (adaptive radiation): and that will be the place to introduce Darwin and natural selection. So the section will need a bit of rearrangement - I think you will be able to reuse most of the existing text, but with this logic and a new set of subsection headings (maybe 'Endemism', 'Dispersal', 'Evolution on island groups', 'Darwin, the Galapagos, and natural selection').
  • This is a great idea and will improve the article.

• The subsection on 'Conservation of endemic island species' could be placed separately alongside '[Impact of] climate change': both sections affect life on islands, and both have human causes, so they will fit well together. There seems no reason to place one in the 'Humans' chapter and the other one outside it really, so perhaps both should go in a new 'Threats' chapter.

• The 'Islands portal' adds nothing to the article; here the reader gets links in precise and explained context, there the reader gets random links with no logic to them. Suggest we remove it.
  • Done, I just wanted to avoid making possibly contentious changes, but I agree with you.

• Not sure why a modern article needs to list the short and outdated 1911 EB text, either.
  • Done

• Earwig flags one page as a close match (48.5%). It looks to me as if they have directly copied Wikipedia, and indeed they mention us shortly afterwards, so no worries there.

• "Many island nations ... generally have little land" - could be improved. Having little land on an island is definitional (islands are smaller than continents), so no need to hesitate about it.
  • done

• "Bananal Island" - please add that it's in the Tocantins of Brazil.
  • Done

Images

• Suggest the caption for Kansai Airport has the city name "Osaka" added.
  • Done

• Similarly, the Outer Banks caption should add that it's off the East Coast of the United States.
  • Done

• Several captions just describe their images, without saying why they are relevant to the article. E.g. "A tropical beach in Malapascua, the Philippines": well, so what? The caption needs to say "Tourists are attracted in large numbers to tropical beaches, such as to ...". The same goes for several other captions, so please check all of them.
  • Interesting, that was the idea I had for how captions were meant to be, but will switch. This is good info.

• All the images are on Commons and plausibly licensed.

cross section through Earth at the Hawaii hotspot. Magma from the mantle rises into the lithosphere, creating a chain of volcanoes as the lithosphere moves over the hotspot.

• The 'Formation in oceans' section would benefit from an image explaining the formation of island chains.
  • Done

• The kangaroo/Australia image is basically off-topic for this article. There is no shortage of endemism images on Commons, so please replace the image with something more suitable, such as of island gigantism to accompany the suggested text more closely.
  • Done

Adaptive radiation of finch A (Geospiza magnirostris) into three other species of finches on the Galapagos Islands. Due to the absence of other birds, Darwin's finches adapted to new niches. Their seed-eating beaks evolved to handle foods such as nuts, fruits, and insects.

• The Galápagos turtle image is a possible choice for the Darwin subsection, but I'd suggest you might do better to replace it with an image of Darwin's finches (and link that article) as these much more directly suggest the evolution from the island endemism story. For instance, the image of adaptive radiation of Finch A into three other species tells the story rather plainly.
  • Done

Sources

• [1], [15], [27], [30] are all Britannica. This is not forbidden exactly, but it does seem rather intensive use of the tertiary source; we certainly prefer reliable secondary sources.
  • Tried to pretty extensively take care of Britannica. I think I only couldn't remove one cite (Bananal island)

• [3] is a dead link (and seemed a dubious source), please replace.
  • Done

• [12] is not a journal paper; there are many better sources on atolls.
  • Done

• [18] is a desperately old (1968) source for island ecology and biogeography. Please follow the suggestions above and the provided wikilinks to obtain more up-to-date sources for this chapter, there are plenty in the linked articles.

• [21] is ok, but article has made very heavy use of it for the human geography.

• [22] please spell out and wikilink "Encyclopedia of Life Sciences".

• [28] is a whole book. Please provide page number(s).

• [29] - ethnogeriatrics! This may be a reliable source for facts on geriatrics, but it is presumably just copying from other sources on the history of the Pacific islands, on which it can't be an authority. Please find a better source.

• [31] - what makes Ballard Brief a reliable source?

• [35] please add second author (you have Fisher, need Hirschfeld also).

• [36] Fang, Duan is a whole book, please provide page number(s).

• [37] and [38] Mirasola are the same source, please merge them.

Summary

• Nom has recently rewritten this article, mainly in a single draft, starting from an old but mainly geographical article. The new 'Humans' chapter is a large improvement; the new 'Life on islands' chapter too is very welcome, but needs rearrangement, linking, and illustrating. Suggestions have been made on the article's illustrations, and for adjustments to the text. Some attention is needed to the sources used. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:47, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
  • Will continue working soon. Have covered several comments already ForksForks (talk) 13:24, 13 July 2024 (UTC)