Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Ovalipes catharus/archive1

Ovalipes catharus

Featured article candidates/Ovalipes catharus/archive1

Nominator(s): TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 17:15, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about the New Zealand paddle crab, Ovalipes catharus. It's one of twelve species of Ovalipes and the only one found in New Zealand. Known for their paddle-shaped rear legs, high aggression, voraciousness, and proneness to cannibalism. I found this a couple months back in this state, where its last two major contributions were by Prosperosity and Ttbioclass (the latter being a student editor who did almost all of the work on the 'Mating and reproduction' section). However, major edits prior to these – while helping to expand the article – had what I felt were severe problems with copy-editing and focus (for example, at one point, comparing these crabs to prawns by saying they don't have a narrow body and tail). I quickly realized I had to rip out basically everything before the 'Mating and reproduction' section and start from scratch, and so I did. I worked on improving this to GA status over a month or so, reviewed by Esculenta, and at this point, I want to stress test it as a FAC because I think I've done about as much as I can with it after the GA review.

Disclaimers:

The Osborne 1987 PhD thesis is cited so much because it really was a landmark work on O. catharus. Attempts to cite peer-reviewed journal articles for this information would just result in citing something that cites Osborne 1987 in some way which is likely indirect to what we need to communicate. I promise it seems absurd until you realize that probably 80% of the works cited in this article also cite Osborne in some way; it's just that seminal.
The Richards 1992 master's thesis is discussed in the GA review, and I think its usage is easily defensible. The R.J. Davidson 1987 master's thesis was written at a time where R.J. Davidson was already an expert on this behavior, having published about almost this exact subject the year prior (note there are two pre-eminent O. catharus experts named Davidson, the other being G.W.).
There are still unused refideas which I've suggested, but for the vast majority of them, I think they walk a fine line between meticulous and extraneous detail. I just keep them there in case someone has a revelation about how to include them in a relevant way (or, in the case of H.H. Taylor et al. 1992, in case I ever get access to that $200 book).
I really would love to have better images in the infobox (the dorsal view of the preserved specimen is a great angle but lacks the real colors of O. catharus due to the preservation, and the ventral view despite being a great angle with correct colors is literally a dead crab in a puddle on the shore), but these were the best suitably licensed images I could find of these two crucial perspectives of the crab.
If there's anything even remotely important I didn't cover in the article, you can probably audit that by checking either in the Fisheries 2023 citation or the McLay 1988 one.
I had minimal involvement with the 'Mating and reproduction' section, but reviewing it, it seems to hold up. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 17:15, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

~~Image review~~

~~File:Ovalipes_australiensis_dorsal.jpg: licensing doesn't match source. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:09, 16 December 2024 (UTC)~~[reply]

I'm very confused. At Commons, I licensed it under "Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International". At the source, it's licensed under "Copyright Museums Victoria / CC BY (Licensed as Attribution 4.0 International)". I don't see the discrepancy. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 19:33, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies; I was looking at something else. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:07, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's all good! It just worried me for a second because I'm convinced that's the only genuinely good freely licensed image of this variety on the entire Internet. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 02:35, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Generalissima

Ooh, New Zealand biology? Mark me down for a prose review to come. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 05:47, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

TheTechnician27 A most preliminary thought; this would be quite a good use case for SFNs or Harvids. Especially with larger sources like Osborne 1987, readers will struggle with where to find the claim within the source material without a page number for each cite. This will also make the job of source reviewers much, much easier. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 05:51, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I was thinking about doing that, but I didn't know to what extent they were used for journal articles/theses rather than books. I can definitely go ahead and implement that (today, even), since I agree it'd be especially useful for Osborne 1987. Incidentally, I checked out Endemic flora of the Chatham Islands on your list of articles to see if O. catharus was there (before noticing it said "endemic" and "flora", duh), and then I realized it was a FLC. Since I've been thinking about featured lists myself (like is Paralomis a list or an article? I really don't know at this point!), I think I'll familiarize myself with the criteria and take a look at it. This isn't an invitation for you not to tear this article to shreds, though; since I'm tentatively planning to target another species of Ovalipes, I have a personal, vested interest in making this article as robust as possible to be able to draw on its structure in the future. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 15:18, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Generalissima is being tactful. Eg, if I were reviewing then - to select the first random example I came across - I would want each of those ten references to Haddon narrowing down to something tighter than the entire six-page article; ideally a single page each. Even as a closing coordinator I would be unhappy if there were several like that, or if they had longer page ranges. Like Haddon and Wear, or Fenton et al. As for Glaessner - you want me to wade through 55 pages to verify your cite?! I recommend that you take Generalissima's advice and beseech her to keep giving it. Gog the Mild (talk) 21:24, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

To answer your question above tho, I think the typical strategy for large genera like that is to have the genus article be an article while splitting off the table of each species into its own list (though a basic taxonomic list of species without the details/subspecies/etc. is often included within the genus article itself from what i've seen) Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 00:16, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

All done! All remaining sources which don't use {{sfn}} are ones where we only use at most three pages. The lone exception to this is Vennell 2022, which spans six pages, because I don't have access to the book and have to take (and willingly trust) Prosperosity's word for it. I wasn't trying to pull a fast one here; I just didn't know what the typical sentiment around using {{sfn}} for journal articles and theses was compared to book citations. @Gog the Mild:, I did ask for this article to be torn to shreds, so I hope you'll believe me when I say that I appreciate the nature and manner of your feedback. During this process, I also corrected several pieces of misinformation, and I strongly believe these were among the last if not the last ones. A few of these were small-to-moderate mistakes I directly made, but some were in the 'Mating and reproduction' section which I realize in hindsight that I was inappropriately lax and frankly negligent in my review of. I think I had a subtle preconceived notion going in that this was the "good part" of the article. I apologize for grinding the review to a halt right as it got started, but I think it should be able to proceed as normal now. If nothing else, this probably cleared out several problems that would've come up anyway. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 06:08, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

One comment: I can't do a full review, but its recommended that there be no cites in the lead paragraphs. They are meant to summarize the body of the article which should already be cited. Otherwise, good luck. We need a crab FA article. LittleJerry (talk) 00:29, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I understand the premise here, but I heavily disagree that the lead should be uncited. This sort of stylistic prescriptivism 1) directly contradicts WP:LEADCITE which indicates editors are free to choose either way, 2) makes the lead substantially less maintainable by forcing editors to go digging in the article to then find a citation, and 3) is to the detriment of a reader who might simply want to get the gist of a subject but still wants to verify something we're saying. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 05:02, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]