Talk:Flaco (owl)/GA1

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Reviewer: Etriusus (talk · contribs) 04:56, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Grabbing this review. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 04:56, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Images

• 'File:Flaco with trap.jpg', it's on wordpress and I see the release. But, reverse image searching finds news coverage including this image that predates the wordpress release. Unless I'm missing something, this image needs to be removed. see query
  • Thanks for picking up the review. I'll just respond to this one and wait for the rest to come in before following up. You can see in the video you linked to it's attributed to ManhattanBirdAlert. That's the twitter account of David Barrett. The link on the Commons page links to a page David created on his official website with a release statement (which I asked him for :) ). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:26, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
    • So, I went through his whole Twitter profile and was unable to find it. That being said, I can see the attribution and am willing to WP:AGF for the time being. This could go either way. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 02:16, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
      • I don't recall if he posted it to his Twitter. Probably, but he tweets a lot so may be hard to find. The photo is credited to ManhattanBirdAlert on-screen in the ABC7NY link above, though, and that account links to and is linked from the website in the source field of the file. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:11, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
• All other images properly attributed
• Captions look good
• Recommend alt text (optional)

Sources

• Urban Hawks (FN 13) appears to be a blog, please provide justification
  • It is a blog, and I'll concede it's borderline. It's written by someone who isn't an ornithologist but known in the world of NYC birding for his focus on local raptors. He's given talks for Audubon (for example) and referenced in places around their site (example). It's not absolutely needed in its second instance, and if you think it's a big problem I can see if I can find an alternative for the other use. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:23, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
• Late Night with Seth Meyers, not thrilled with a political satire source
  • Variety show more than political satire, but sure, it's not top shelf stuff. :) In this case, it's only being used for its description of why people might like Flaco. It got my attention because it was a prominent example of a very high-profile national television show talking about the subject, so it seemed to make sense to work in somewhere. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:23, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
• Defector, what makes this reliable?
  • I only know Defector because of its split with Deadspin, but afaik it has a pretty good reputation. Only using it here for an attributed culture-related quote, rather than a factual claim, though. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:23, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

  That works fine for this article. Thanks for the clarification. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 01:06, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

• All sources reviewed that they are live and/or archived
• I always recommend archiving (Optional)
  •  Done — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:23, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Copy-vios

• Earwig only flags one source that pulls from Wikipedia.
• I performed random checks on one source per section, all information cited properly and no copy-vios of note
• I'll make more checks as I go through the prose, no news is good news

Misc

• Page is stable

Prose

• the dangers for owls in the park, like rodenticide. be more succinct
  •  Done
• Add a 'see main' template for the Background section
  • Not entirely sure that fits, but don't have an objection either.  Done — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:49, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
• It is one of the largest species of owl, with males sentence is weirdly written, rephrasee
  •  Done
• The background section gets way too in depth for the purposes of this article. The first two paragraphs should be pared down to one paragraph. The last paragraph can remain as is.
  • I felt this way at first, too. The thing is, a description of the species is a description of this subject, and its food sources, typical habitat, etc. have implications for the way people think about it in a city park. I guess if I were going to remove something it'd be everything in the first paragraph after "largest species of owl", though I feel like a physical description usually makes sense? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:49, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
• Is there no other coverage of Flaco's early life?
  • I did a pretty exhaustive look for sources and didn't turn up much. There's a bit more detail in unreliable sources ("I visited the zoo and..."), and I reached out to a couple people to see if they'd donate their images of Flaco in his zoo enclosure but didn't hear back. Unfortunately this is what we have, I think. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:49, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

  I did a search myself, nothing immediately jumped out at me on either google or newspapers.com. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 01:08, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

• through the new hole in the exhibit's stainless steel mesh reword to "through a hole left by the vandals in the exhibit's stainless steel mesh"
  •  Done
• first days of freedom change to "First days outside of captivity". This is charged language that implies a lot.
  •  Done
• and briefly got one of his talons caught change to "and was briefly caught"
  •  Done
• Later the same week... run on sentence
  •  Done
• his permanent freedom same as above
  •  Done - also realized this sentence makes more sense at the end of the previous paragraph
• projected their desire to move out of a small apartment onto Flaco I don't understand what this means
  • It's kind of cliche to talk about people in New York City living in a tiny apartment. Some sources suggested one of the reasons people may like Flaco so much is that they identify with how he spent his life in a tiny enclosure and longed for more space. I reworded it a bit -- is it clearer now?
• The Wall Street Journal described him as "peeping tom", having been recorded multiple times staring through people's windows, including those of playwright Nan Knighton funny, but should be in the other section.

• I'm a bit lost by the section organization. "Vandalism and escape" covers an attempt at recapture, and "Monitoring and attempts to recapture" covers some public outcry. I personally recommend merging the 'Monitoring' section into "Monitoring and attempts to recapture" as a subsection named 'ongoing monitoring' or something to that effect. "Monitoring and attempts to recapture" should also be a subsection of Vandalism and escape". 'Public attention and concern' section should be reworded as a "reception" section. This is just a suggestion, I'll leave the restructuring to you, but the current layout isn't GA ready.
  • Did a few, responded to a couple, and will come back later to respond to/act on these last couple. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:49, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
  • As you've picked up on, the organization here is tough. I moved some things around and thought about what made sense before nominating, but didn't come up with something that seems ideal. "Vandalism and escape" does include the initial attempt to recapture by the NYPD because it seemed to make sense to cover everything up to his getting settled in Central Park together. I suppose the vandalism/escape could be moved up to "background" and the rest down to the next section, but that wouldn't be my ideal.
    I've changed the title of the next section to "attempts to recapture and hunting" to avoid having "monitoring" in two headings. Your suggestion of moving the "monitoring" section under the [newly retitled] "attempts to recapture and hunting" makes sense, though I've kept it a top-level category (it seems like less a part of the previous one than a continuation). I moved one sentence about "renewed" fears of rodenticide since rodenticide hadn't properly been covered yet; that's now a line in the "public attention and concern" section.
    Regarding the "peeping" bit, which section are you saying that belongs in? It's in [what's now called] "continued monitoring" since it's kind of about people seeing Flaco in other parts of the city and documenting where he is. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 04:19, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

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All-in-all, a fun little article about an owl. I cleaned up a bunch of prose and reworded a few things, please review when you can. Apart from the layout issue, the article is well composed. On hold. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 02:07, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

@Etriusus: Thanks again. I think I've fixed or responded to your points above. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 04:19, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Good Article review progress box Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

I restructured the page a bit and cut down on some repetitive wording/made clarifications. There was nothing intrinsically wrong with how you had the page laid out, I just structured it to what made most sense to me. Most of what I did was just downgrading section headers and merging paragraphs together to improve flow. Please review when you can, I just figured that it wouldn't be appropriate to hold this review up due to semantics. The current sourcing is fine, if you plan to take this to FA, then you may need to reassess that blog, but I'll bite for now. Passing GA at this time, congrats!!! 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 04:36, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Section headings

See MOS:SECTIONS , MOS:AT and WP:AT:

"Attempts to recapture and hunting" and "Public attention and concern" are not concise. The former also uses both a plural noun and an inappropriate gerund. I strongly suggest changing these section headings before granting the page GA status Just-a-can-of-beans (talk) 20:58, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

@Just-a-can-of-beans: Thanks. What do you suggest? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:14, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

The first one is harder. I reviewed some other articles, often about fugitives, runaways, etc, and a common term I see used for a section heading like this is Pursuit. I think Recapture attempts would also be appropriate after thinking on it a bit more (this is probably an acceptable situation for a plural noun). Search might also work if you think Pursuit is too strong.

For the second one, shortening it to Public attention might work. Just-a-can-of-beans (talk) 22:43, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. I think "public attention" is fine for the second. The issue with renaming "attempts to recapture and hunting" (which I agree is awkward) to just "attempts to recapture" is only part of that section deals with attempts to recapture. I think I found a solution, though: just spinning the second half of the section to a new section just called "successful hunting". Thoughts? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 02:13, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.