Template:Did you know nominations/Dendroctonus valens

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Yoninah (talk) 22:01, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Dendroctonus valens[edit]

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... that since being introduced in the 1990s, the red turpentine beetle has killed six million trees in China?

Reviewed: Deepak Kumar (physicist)

Created by Cwmhiraeth (talk) and Hanberke (talk). Nominated by Cwmhiraeth (talk) at 13:20, 9 June 2017 (UTC).

New enough, long enough, sufficiently neutral. Reliably cited, and hook is inline cited and interesting. QPQ completed. The following phrasing seems a little too close to the source: "weakened by roadbuilding, construction, fire, drought, logging or by other insects" (article) vs. "weakened by roadbuilding, construction, logging, drought, fire or other insects" (source). In cases like this, maybe just quote the source directly inside quotation marks? There's only so many ways to rephrase a list and it will always seem similar to the original. Meanwhile, "covering an area of half a million hectares" could probably be rephrased (with addition of unit conversion template as used elsewhere in the article), as could "widely replanted on degraded land". That should take care of all the close paraphrasing issues. --diff (talk) 01:14, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

@Difference engine: Thank you. I have made changes to the paragraph concerned. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 05:12, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Works for me, thanks. Good to go. --diff (talk) 05:22, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Hi, I came by to promote this, but find that the Description section uses a lot of the same words as the source (footnote 2):
Source: The eggs are shiny, opaque white, ovoid cylindrical, and about 1 mm long.
Article: The eggs are cylindrical with rounded ends, white, opaque and shiny, and about 1 mm (0.04 in) long.

Source: A row of small, pale-brown tubercles become evident along each side of the body as the larva grows. The fully-grown larva can be up to 10-12 mm long.
Article: As it grows, lateral rows of pale brown tubercles become apparent. The fully grown larva is 10 to 12 mm (0.39 to 0.47 in) long.
Source: The legs and antennae are held against the body in the pupal or resting stage.
Article: the legs and antennae being held against the body.
Source: The adult beetles, which are the largest of the Dendroctonus genus, are typically 6-10 mm long and quite stout, 2.1 times as long as wide. At first, the beetle is called a callow adult and is tan, but it rapidly darkens to a reddish-brown.
Article: The adult beetle is 6 to 10 mm (0.24 to 0.39 in) long and about twice as long as it is wide. When it first emerges from the pupa it is tan, but it soon turns dark reddish-brown.
Yoninah (talk) 21:43, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

You must be joking!!!! How many ways are there to express the fact that something is shiny, white, and ovoid cylindrical for example? Perhaps @Nikkimaria: would like to give a view on this. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 05:02, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

@Cwmhiraeth: I was just referring to the ancillary words, like "apparent", "fully-grown", "held against the body". Yoninah (talk) 10:05, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
'held against the body' could be amended; the other examples seem fine to me. Nikkimaria (talk) 12:32, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you Nikkimaria. I have altered that sentence. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 17:17, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, that's a lot better paraphrasing. Restoring tick per Difference Engine's review. Yoninah (talk) 21:59, 18 June 2017 (UTC)