Talk:Mosasaurus/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: FunkMonk (talk · contribs) 15:48, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

• Alright, for the record, I already peer reviewed the article here[1][2] and thought it looked good. Now I'll take a look at modifications made since then, and what else might help at FAC. FunkMonk (talk) 15:48, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

To my knowledge, the only meaningful changes post-PR are all related to optimizing links and codes.Macrophyseter | talk 17:35, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

• At first glance, Squamata seems to be duplinked.

Fixed. Macrophyseter | talk 17:35, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

• There seems to be image "sandwiching" under Size, with the text being squeezed between a size comparison and a restoration. This could perhaps be improved by moving the restoration up, directly under the Description header? And then moving the jaw image so it is by the paragraph that mentions it.

Fixed.Macrophyseter | talk 17:35, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

• Anything useful in this new paper?[3]

I don't have access to the article (I don't have access to paywalled articles published starting 2021) and it hasn't been posted on ResearchGate yet, so at the moment I'm not able to incorporate it.Macrophyseter | talk 17:35, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

If you think it looks useful, you can get it through WP:RX. FunkMonk (talk) 19:10, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

• As I stated durign the PR, image reviewers at FAC will probably ask for some kind of verification for the various usermade restorations and skeletals. You can avoid this by adding sources that support those images (proportions and other morphology) to their Commons descriptions.

I've added sources in some of the images where I find the restorations to be consistent with papers. However, some of the restorations are just too generic to easily cite (i.e. the M. beaugei and M. missouriensis restorations), so they may be problematic to reinforce. Macrophyseter | talk 17:35, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

Any citation is better than nothing, it's really just a formality to avoid image review problems. So for example, you can just say the general shape matches a certain citation or measurement, then the reviewer has something to check off. FunkMonk (talk) 19:10, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

I've added a citation to the remaining restorations that sources the consistent general body plan as a mosasaur. I guess that works? Macrophyseter | talk 23:56, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I think as long as the reviewers just see some kind of citation, they'll be happy. FunkMonk (talk) 00:05, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

• There have been some heated discussions at FAC lately about explaining technical terms even if they are linked. I don't think this aticle is problematic, but might be a good idea to look through it and explain more terms if needed, just to avoid the drawn out process seen at the recent Bajadasaurus FAC.

Thanks for the reference! Personally, a solution I've started running with in later articles is to mention the terms in a vernacular wording and wikilink the technical term (unless there is no way to vernacularize with a word or few, for example really specific bones). Macrophyseter | talk 17:35, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

I just had a discussion with Jens Lallensack about this also, and we concluded that if a common term for something is used widely enough, we may not even need to mention the scientific term, as is the case with for example orbit and alveoli. The technical terms can just be pipelinked, as you said. Maybe technical terms for directions could also be replaced where it makes sense. FunkMonk (talk) 19:10, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, absolutely. In addition, I see another potential problem if you want to take it to FAC, which is WP:LENGTH. This article is at 15,610 words of readable prose, while 10,000 words is often considered a limit. Just a few days ago, an article much shorter than this (Santería) has been asked to be trimmed down to below 10,000 words at FAC. Possible solutions are 1) more concise writing and 2) applying WP:Summary style, i.e. opening sub-articles for long sections and only leave the summary here. Maybe you can make a good argument to justify this article as an exception; I just want to mention this so that you will not run into this issue unprepared. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 19:33, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

This one may be tricky. An attempt at decreasing verbosity could help, although I find it unlikely that it will make much of a dent given that the article is almost 6 thousand words above the limit. Regarding Summary style, I've estimated that applying it to research history and relationship with snakes and lizards subsections would reduce the word prose by about three to four thousand words, which still won't suffice.

When you mention about arguing for an exception, is there a precedent on such a scenario? Macrophyseter | talk 21:35, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

I always point to longer articles, such as Maya civilization, having gone through, but yeah, you can prepare for it maybe being brought up. FunkMonk (talk) 22:52, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

Maya civilization is only at 15,357 words of prose though, slightly shorter than Mosasaurus, and is arguably a much broader topic. I don't think you need to hit the 10,000 (which is not a fixed limit), but it might not hurt trying to get as low as possible. Especially the classification section seems to blow it quite a bit. Maybe the "Relation with snakes or monitor lizards" can also be moved to Mosasauroidea or such, with a much shorter summary and main-article tag left here? Another trick is to place more non-essential additions into the foot notes, since those don't count as readable prose (especially those info that you have in parentheses already). --Jens Lallensack (talk) 23:37, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

As I mentioned at the PR, I also think the best contender for shortening would be the "Relation with snakes or monitor lizards" section, as it concerns the group as a whole rather than this particular genus. I'd even go as far as say it could be a single paragraph long, but that's of course just my taste. But the text could of course be duplicated in full at the mosasaur article. FunkMonk (talk) 00:05, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

I've transferred the aforementioned content into the mosasaur article. Macrophyseter | talk 20:23, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

• "a latecoming member that has evolved advanced traits" Had?

Fixed. Macrophyseter | talk 18:27, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

• "cdisappeared" Freaky word!

Fixed. Macrophyseter | talk 21:35, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

• Some paragraphs are really long and dense, I think it might look less daunting to the reader if broken up slightly more. For example, the middle para under "Later discoveries" and the last under "Early depictions and developments", but there are similar places throughout.

I've split a few paragraphs so far. Do you think it is a problem for the paragraphs in the Paleobiology and Paleoecology sections? Macrophyseter | talk 21:35, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

It's of course subjective, but I just glance over sections and see if something looks like a "wall of text" when determining it. For example the first para under "Paleopathology", or "Intraspecific combat". But I'm not sure if it would even be brought up at FAC. FunkMonk (talk) 22:56, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

From my experience with the Cretoxyrhina FAC, nobody has ever brought up the fact that some of the paragraphs in Research History are pretty big, so I guess so too. I've decided to split Intraspecific combat and some of the Paleoecology paragraphs as well, but I think keeping the chunk in Paleopathology is better.

• Do we have a good image of the palate teeth? As one of the more unusual mosasaur features, I think it would be good to show clearly. This is the best I could find at a glance:[4]

Added that image. Macrophyseter | talk 21:35, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

On a related note I think "and pterygoid teeth (a feature present in all mosasaurs and various modern reptiles)" could add "a feature present on the palate of" to make this clearer, as the reader may not remember where the pterygoid is. FunkMonk (talk) 00:53, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

Done. Macrophyseter | talk 15:27, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

• I see you're removing extraneous info, this detail struck me as unnecessary here: "the former house of the Great Exhibition"

Cut. Macrophyseter | talk 20:23, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

• I think this looks pretty good to go now. Any last remarks before I promote? FunkMonk (talk) 10:10, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

I'll be continuing to try trimming the article prose, although I highly doubt I can get the article at 10k words and might have to argue for an exception at FAC. That is unless I do the summary strategy for another chunk of the article, although I'm not sure what would work for such a case. Macrophyseter | talk 20:08, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

We'll just cross our fingers for it not being brought up, I'll promote now! FunkMonk (talk) 20:15, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Great! I'll start the FAC nomination soon while continuing the trim at the same time. Macrophyseter | talk 20:45, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

• Might as well just put further trimming suggestions here if I see them, but I wonder if all this is needed: "In his 2003 book Sea Dragons: Predators of Prehistoric Seas, Richard Ellis speculated". We really just need to know when and by who. FunkMonk (talk) 17:14, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Trimmed. Macrophyseter | talk 20:41, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

• I just noticed that Cuvier's original speculation about whether Mosasaurus was closest to monitor lizards or iguanas was also removed with the classification stuff, but I think this was actually still relevant here (as it was about this genus specifically), maybe it could be mentioned?

Re-added. I also formally nominated the article to FAC, since I can't really find any more places to safely trim. Macrophyseter | talk 20:41, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Reviewers will probably come with suggestions in the case they think it's too long. If the nom stalls, I'll also come by with a support. FunkMonk (talk) 20:58, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Sounds good. Macrophyseter | talk 21:06, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

• Macrophyseter, now that length was brought up at the FAC, though I'm a mergist when it comes to palaeo species, M. hofmanni may actually be one of the rare species that is famous enough and has enough written about it to get its own article, which could maybe help by being a container for very detailed information about that species, such as the long history section currently about it. Something to consider maybe, I won't mention this at the FAC page so the reviewers don't push for it. Maybe Jens Lallensack and Lythronaxargestes have thoughts about this too? FunkMonk (talk) 20:13, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, difficult to say what the best splitting strategy would be. The difficulty is to trim the article while keeping balance. Right now, with Research history of Mosasaurus split off, there is very little on history in Mosasaurus but a lot anatomy and so on, so this is no longer balanced (it is much too little on history now). With M. hofmanni as sub-article, the separate sections could perhaps be trimmed more evenly? In any case, I would suggest to move the eight-stage process of tooth replacement to Mosasaur, since it does not seem specific for this genus, and leave one or two sentences as summary here. I would also suggest to significantly trim down the paleoecology; i.e., all the non-vital information that are not specific to Moasaurus. Maybe you can find more suitable articles where some of this info can be moved into (articles on particular ages, Western Interior Seaway, or the respective Formations, maybe). --Jens Lallensack (talk) 20:39, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

Never realized that the simple need of trimming an article culminates into daunting tasks like this. I'm also usually a mergist for pre-Neogene genera, but I'm not sure if I would agree that M. hoffmannii may be notable in its own right for a separate article. While its identity is famous, it lacks name recognition; everyone just recognizes it as simply the Mosasaurus, and there is no individual common name that distinguishes the species from the rest of the genus like in Megalodon and Megalania. Is there any precedent on a Mesozoic genus that has successfully passed GA/FA? There's articles like Temnodontosaurus that has a separate article for one of its species, but I personally think they lack the notability for warrant. Macrophyseter | talk 04:22, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

One example is Edmontosaurus with Edmontosaurus annectens. This is a purely organisational question, it has nothing to do with notability (since all species are considered notable).

In my opinion, however, the disadvantage of this species approach is that 1) it is not obvious to the reader that in-depth information can be found in that particular species article, so "main article" tags are needed for each shortened section, and 2) that M. hofmanni is by far the most important species, and by separating it out we might risk to have the focus of the main Mosasaurus article too strongly on the other species (for which we would still need excessive detail). For these reasons, I think I personally like your section-based approach better.

But as said, we can't simply remove entire sections (because of the balance issue; an article still needs to be complete); instead we need to copy the section to a sub-article and then trim the section in the parent article down (to, e.g., 50% or something, sometimes more, sometimes less). So some more work will definitely be needed, and yes, it is a bit of work unfortunately. Let me know if you need a hand. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 07:55, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

Even with the split off Edmontosaurus annectens, it doesn't really "count", because it was originally seperate as Anatotitan and only renamed to its current title years after Edmontosaurus had been promoted to FA. As for the split off Temnodontosaurus species, it is believed it will end up in its own genus anyway, which is why I at least haven't tagged it for merging... But yeah, I'm surprised they're so strict about length now, for several years it was rarely brought up. FunkMonk (talk) 10:51, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

I would also add that that if we split off M. hoffmannii, one could argue the same for another species like M. lemonnieri, which would eviscerate this article to point an FA would be pointless. Perhaps the sub-article trimming strategy as Jens mentions would work out as the best. The challenge here would be to identify the details in each section that can be moved elsewhere, and the remaining details seem pretty well integrated with the topic of Mosasaurus. Getting help with identifying details to move elsewhere and general copyediting to minimize verbosity to make space for returning details in Research History will certainly help. Macrophyseter | talk 13:46, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

I've done some balancing on Research history, and it turns out the word limit hasn't increased as much as I expected. It's currently at around 10.7k words, so maybe only a tiny bit of trimming is necessary if the reviewers think that's too much. Macrophyseter | talk 16:32, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

Ok, will have a look later and hopefully make some edits as well (which you please revert if you are not happy with them). The paleoecology section still bothers me, since it is very oversized compared to the rest. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 16:43, 30 May 2021 (UTC)