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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Willie Wagtail

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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 promoted by User:SandyGeorgia 05:02, 4 August 2008 [1].

Willie Wagtail

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Nominator(s): Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs)

I'm nominating this article for featured article because it is comprehensive, the prose is good (having been reviewed and/or copyedited by t least 3 others) and it is amply illustrated with free images from commons. Please let me know how I can improve the article. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:43, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments - sources look good, links all checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:29, 15 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support - with a few points. Nitpicking really.
You seem to tippietoe around whether the fantails as a group are a family or not. No mention of the family in the intro and noncommittal as to subfamily or family in the taxonomy section. Yet if I recall the discussions as to breaking up the Dicruridae the problem was not so much the fantails as the break up of the monarchs - I don't think it would hurt the article to described the fantails as a family, while mentioning other points of view.
Guilty as charged - I did focus on genus classification, though I did mention the 3 families in para 4 of the taxo section. I will place a sentence in the lead. OK, I added 'Within this group, fantails are placed in the family Dicruridae or their own small family Rhipiduridae.' to the lead. Question is, should I add note on Corvidae as I have seen some taxonomic arrangements lump all the corvines into a large broadly defined Corvidae family or is that view uncommon enough to leave out?
The superlumping approach has not been widely adopted, I'd leave it out of the lead. Sabine's Sunbird talk 01:10, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The Wagtail is very "chatty" with a number of distinct vocalisations and can be quite noisy - should be the Willie Wagtail, and what do you mean by noisy? Loud? Intrusive? Obnoxious?
Aaawww, never heard of them being classified as obnoxious, they are noisy in a quiet sorta way really...
Noisy is seldom complementary; if they are loud or insistent those would be better words to use. Noise is loud sounds that annoy (to my mind). Sabine's Sunbird talk 00:41, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I just removed that segment. It added nothing as "chatty" already mentioned. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:06, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
but avoids densely forested areas such as rainforest even in New Guinea? Some birds that avoid rainforest in Oz are less picky up there.
The PNG books indicate it prefers cleared areas there, but is not clear on how absoloute this is. I will clarify I put in an extra line due to it being quite a different environment and thus notable to specify
Fair enough, I wasn't sure. Sabine's Sunbird talk 00:41, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Although the Willie Wagtail is a successful species, predators do account for many eggs and young. , any student of biology will tell you that common and successful species ar common prey items. The whole sentence seems slightly redundant.
What about European settlers - I seem to recall them cropping up in children's books, but I could be wrong.
Yep, forgot about them. There is a Willie Wagtail in Blinky Bill and Dot and the Kangaroo. I could have sworn it'd be in the May Gibbs stories too but I can't find my old copies of them and there is nothing online


done Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:25, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It is unrelated to the true wagtails of the genus Motacilla; instead it is a member of... not convinced "instead" is the right word here
...Isle of Man, as well as Northern Ireland. why not just "and" (those pesky conjunctions..)
Reference 54 Bill Blinky Bill Grows Up'. I'm not sure why this is bold in ref? (it is the volume within the book, which is a compilation of 3 books.not sure what to do meslf here..)
jimfbleak (talk) 05:36, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There are rich opportunities for improving the prose in the lead. This doesn't augur well for the whole article. 1a is at issue. Please bring in one or more of your wordish collaborators, Cas.

  • Measuring 19.0 to 21.5 cm (7½–8½ in) in length"—Either use "From" at the start or "19.0–21.5". (fixed)
  • Semicolon after the second "underparts" to avoid sentence-stub. (fixed)
  • "islands north of Australia"—vague: Papua? Borneo? Timor? I'd say "Papua and numerous small islands in its vicinity", or something like that. (fixed)
  • Comma before "including", or better "group that includes". (fixed)
  • "Within this group, fantails are placed in the family Dicruridae or their own small family Rhipiduridae." Remove "placed". I don't get the "or". Is it "either ... or"? Is this a family within a family? If so, please clarify succinctly. (see below)
  • "It is insectivorous"—What is "it", especially at the start of a para? (fixed)
  • Remove "areas such as". Tony (talk) 13:19, 27 July 2008 (UTC) (fixed)[reply]
OK, I dealt with the points but need to explain classification. The genus of fantails (Rhipidura) lies in a large group of corvine birds, but with in it, some authorities rank them in their own family Rhipiduridae, while others reduce them to a subfamily of a larger family called Dicruridae. It is not acrimonious or particularly controversial, only an issue of where one places the Linnaean yardsticks into a newer understanding of relationships. I need to sleep now but am happy to receive input on it plus look over text more tomorrow. I'll ask Reworded to Within this group, fantails are placed in the family Dicruridae, although some authorities consider them distinct enough to warrant their own small family Rhipiduridae.

Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:18, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support Thorough treatment of the subject, nicely supported by the included photos. Melburnian (talk) 12:02, 3 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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