Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Loihi Seamount/archive2

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by SandyGeorgia 19:31, 6 June 2009 [1].

Loihi Seamount edit

Nominator(s): ResMar 23:50, 29 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is my second shot. Since the first nominations, we've been tightening the article, and Mattaise has done a great go-over of the prose. Try, try again... ResMar 23:50, 29 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The section on macro organisms had material that was copied without understanding and without quotation marks. Probably the article should be more carefully checked before some author finds their work as a featured article in wikipedia without their permission. It's also useful for the reader of the article if the material copied (although prefer it not copied, but rewritten and developed with proper attribution and expanded and placed in pointed context) is directly related to the article. Data in the table and lists were about species found in general by expeditions to primarily other seamounts, not this one, or were not found at the linked site, or were used in ways that did not show the relationship to this article and its unique sealife that is a function of its historical activity and location relative to the hotspot. Please check sources carefully. Also please read carefully to see if the article makes sense. --69.226.103.13 (talk) 01:13, 31 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

More importantly, article abstracts should never be used as references (that's where the disputed material came from), only the articles themselves. In any case, 69.226.103.13 offers excellent criticism and I hope it will improve the article. Viriditas (talk) 08:53, 31 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I did not realize that editors were using just the abstract for the information. My corrections, however, are from the article, not the abstract, and if the reference as is means that only the abstract is used for this section it is incorrect. I will change this to the UH link to clear this up. The 213 species out of 250 taxa photographed, is, yes, for the entire series of dives mostly concentrated at Johnston and Cross and should probably remain deleted until additional information is included about the colonization of the seamount from the surrounding areas. For this last piece of information is an important aspect of the colonization of the seamount. The comment about lack of faunal zonation is also an important ecological description for a young volcano, and an attempt should be made to find the reference and include the information in this section. --69.226.103.13 (talk) 02:05, 1 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments -
Just one observation, if you're only using the abstract of an article as the source, you must make that clear in the referencing. I'm not a scientist, so I couldn't even begin to opine on whether that's good practice or not

Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:03, 2 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for taking the time to check out the sources and links.

This particular abstract should not have been used as the source for information because the article was primarily about two other locations, not Loihi. This has been fixed in the Loihi article.

In general, for writing encyclopedia articles, scientific information should be well-established. If it is published as an abstract only, as in the case of a convention, the information may be too new and not as vetted as one would want for an article in a general encyclopedia. Most information should come, also, from within an article, rather than from its abstract, for the same reason: the abstract is the new information, the text contains discussion of well-established information. Within the article, the introduction, relating the basis of the experiment to prior information, and the discussion section, relating the results to prior information, are the most appropriate areas to find usable information for a derivative piece, such as a general encyclopedia article or a popular science or newspaper write-up. --69.226.103.13 (talk) 23:12, 2 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Enough inaccuracies have been found to make me quite wary about this article. Examples include the macro-organism material mentioned above, the seamount's height (diff), and the issues around the 1996 eruption recently discussed on the article's talk page. As 69.226.103.33 suggests above, the article needs to be thoroughly checked against its sources. There is a lot of good work being put in, though, so I'm still hopeful. -- Avenue (talk) 11:57, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I would recommend closing this FAC, for the second time. It isn't ready. One thing I noticed early in the article development was some confusion caused by the reliance on HCV web sites. These sites were, for the most part, using data found in published sources. For example, the paper in the further reading section, "Researchers rapidly respond to submarine activity at Lōʻihi volcano, Hawaiʻi", supports much of the current article. Whenever possible, however, editors should try to review the published literature before using web sites which extract partial data for public consumption, and compare it to multiple sources to determine accuracy. Some of the initial editing of this article was rushed and copied haphazardly from web sites without careful attention to detail and comparative fact-checking from the original sources. Viriditas (talk) 23:29, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments:

I've gone through and made a quick round of changes based on things I picked out in the article. Let me know if any of the changes created problems as you see them.
Several of the changes I made include adding fact tags where I think a citation is needed.
The expression "the most recorded for any historical Hawaiian volcanic activity" in the lead is a bit awkward. Is there a way you could rephrase it to something like "This series included more earthquakes than any other swarm in Hawaiian history"?
I'm a little concerned that the fourth citation is used so heavily. For me, anything more than 10 uses indicates that more research could be needed. I'd strongly suggest finding additional citations to replace the multiple uses -- those new citations might reveal new facts about the seamount as well.
The caption for the bathymetric map of the seamount uses a period for an incomplete sentence. I didn't change it since there's another sentence there, and you could probably combine the two.
In the geology section dealing with Pele's Pit, there's a bit of redundancy and confusion. You mention that Pele's Pit is the youngest pit twice; I'm also not clear what Pele's Vent was -- there's no explanation; also, when you talk about the thick crater walls, is that referring to all the pits or just Pele's Pit.
Where are the other two pits located, and what's their structure? You mention so much detail about Pele's Pit, the absence of information about the other two was noticeable.
You mention how the rift zones create the "distinctive shape from which its Hawaiian name derives". The problem is that you don't mention what Loihi means until later in the article and in the infobox.
In the sentence "transported with the seafloor itself to its location in the Hawaiian Islands", you may need to mention crustal movement, since the natural question is to ask how a volcano can be transported.
I hesitate to offer this as a suggestion, since it would be a lot of work: Consider merging the exploration and activity sections into a "history" section and move it in front of Geology. I say this because the Geology section contains a lot of information that is tough to grasp unless you understand the history of the seamount. Forex, the article mentions about how until 1970, it was thought that Loihi was a defunct seamount moved into place by the moving crust and that scientists discovered in 1970 that it was an erupting volcano. You're using historical marks to discuss the geology, and that makes me wonder if it'd be better to move the history of exploration and eruptive history up. For examples of where this worked really well, check out the featured article Jupiter Trojan.
The summit depth in the infobox and the one given in the geology section don't match.
There are a lot of double and triple-spaced words in the article. I think I nailed most of them, but I'd suggest doing a find/replace for them.
In activity, you say the volcano was known to be active before recordkeeping began in 1959; that seems to contradict the assertion in the geology section that it was thought to be a dormant seamount prior to 1970.
I like the table of major events. It's a good idea and presents its information clearly.
In the activity section, the 1991–1992 earthquake lasted several months? Or did you mean eruption?
When you say a "low level" of activity, by what definition is it low?
The sentence "detected 10 times the amount of quakes that were to be found on the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) seismic network" leaves me more questions than answers. How many quakes were found by HVO? Is that a lot? What does HVO cover? How many volcanoes? How do those volcanoes compare to Loihi?
When you say the swarm was the "largest" recorded for any Hawaiian volcano, does that mean intensity or number?
You've got moment magnitude scale wikilinked twice in quick succession in the activity section and again later on in the article.
Why were scientists unable to study iron-oxidizing bacteria at any time other than the 1996 quake swarm?
What is a "significant" amount of shore-based research? It's not a very clear amount.
In the earthquake swarm section, you use the word "event" a lot. The problem is that it's often not clear whether you're talking about the swarm or the eruption that preceded it, especially in terms of the effects. I know there's probably no way to tell in some cases, but the formation of Pele's Pit was a result of the eruption, not the quakes, yes?
Calling the volcano "alive" might be a bit too much anthropomorphism. Same for the use of the word "born". Be cautious.
"temperatures exceeding 250 °C, a record" ... for Loihi, hydrothermal vents, underwater volcanoes, or something else?
In the last sentence of the swarm section, you say "the study" ... which study is this referring to: the quick one in August or the longer ones in September and October?
Is there any tsunami danger from Loihi quakes or eruptions? Any danger to human operations of any kind?
There's a lot of relative terms in the article: "ideal", "famous" and so on.
The iron-oxidizing bacteria information in the exploration section might be better sited in the ecology section.
Why is the first mention of Kapo's Vents in the microorganisms section? If it's a significant feature, I'd suggest putting it in the geology section. I'd also suggest moving discussion of the makeup of vent fluids in a similar fashion.

Well, I think that's about it. I don't claim that this is everything, but it should get you started, at least. JKBrooks85 (talk) 08:28, 6 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.