Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Oryzomys gorgasi/archive1

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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 Karanacs 16:07, 16 March 2010 [1].

Oryzomys gorgasi[edit]

Oryzomys gorgasi (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Nominator(s): Ucucha 04:53, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Toolbox

This is another endangered rice rat, but this time there's actually something halfway decent known about its biology. It is part of a planned good or featured topic on the genus Oryzomys. Ucucha 04:53, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - nice article; dablink, deadlinks and alt text all good. A few picky comments

Taxonomy
  • Para 1, sentence 3: "Hershkovitz considered the new species most closely related to Oryzomys palustris, which at the time included North and Central American populations now placed in the marsh rice rat (O. palustris)..." - "includes...now placed in" suggests a contrast with "then placed in"; while this is appropriate for O. couesi, it's a bit confusing the way it's phrased, all the more since the wording switches from scientific name to common name. Something along the lines of "which at the time included not only populations currently included in [the species], but also..."
    • Rephrased.
  • Para 3 - following so closely on a discussion of subfossil remains retrieved from owl pellets, the word "extracted" produced a little confusion when I first read it. "Removed" might be a better choice here.
    • Good point. Done.
  • Para 4 - should not start a sentence with an abbreviation (sentences 1 & 2). in addition, you might want to consider moving it up to the start of the section. While it gives away the story recounted in the section, it works better as an overview than as a conclusion.
    • The current taxonomy is the result of the history given in the previous paragraphs, so I think using it as a conclusion is actually appropriate. Fixed the abbreviation.
Description
  • Para 1, sentence 1: I assume that oryzimine = Oryzimini, but this may not be apparent to every reader. To avoid any potential confusion, I would recommend linking the word.
    • Done.

Guettarda (talk) 18:02, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the commments! Ucucha 18:07, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Guettarda (talk) 18:26, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thank you again. For Sandy's convenience, could you place the "support" at the beginning of a line? Ucucha 18:29, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, one more question - with regards to the range map - are the two colours (red and brown) distinct enough in greyscale? Guettarda (talk) 18:30, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The similarity is because I cropped it from File:Oryzomys distribution.png, but for this one there are other colors available. I'll make the range of couesi blue or something. Ucucha 18:36, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Image Check: Passed - 2 images. One is a map on Commons with a long CC-by-SA derivatives history with authors intact (also a candidate for svg-ization, but that's not required) and the other is PD (US GOV), sourced appropriately. Looks good! --PresN 19:38, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That image trail is nice, isn't it? Thanks for the check. Perhaps I'll learn to do SVG sometime. Ucucha 19:45, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support another rice rat - tell me there aren't any more! I fixed a missed conversion, otherwise the only quibble is whether the lead and ecology sections imply that nematodes are always present? Jimfbleak - talk to me? 16:52, 9 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks for the review! There's a little over a hundred species left, so I'll have something more to do. I took the conversion you added out again; I think in context "1 m above sea level" simply means "a little above sea level"; your 39 in conversion is much too precise. Saying "3 ft" may be reasonable, but I don't see much of a point in it, since the elevation was unlikely to have been taken at such a precision.
    • I don't think it's unrealistic to imply that they are always present, but I recast the two relevant sentences into active voice, which should take away this implication. Ucucha 18:16, 9 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support with comment Good article what I can see. But why is only half of "hemimandibles" a wikilink? It looks like this atm: hemimandibles. --Esuzu (talk • contribs) 17:52, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks for the support. It's linked like that because it links to mandible and the way the Wikipedia parser works then makes it look like that. The mandible is the entire lower jaw, both left and right, and a hemimandible is half of that, either left or right. In rodents, those bones usually separate in subfossil collections like those of O. gorgasi. Ucucha 22:56, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments - sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:45, 13 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Compact, focused, and to the point. Great article.UBER (talk) 04:15, 15 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks Ealdgyth and UberCryxic. The reason it's so compact is there's nothing else to say—for some reason I don't understand a lot fewer people have written on this animal than on liberalism or the Catholic Church. Ucucha 13:18, 15 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Check the toolbox; there is a dead link. Dabomb87 (talk) 03:31, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I wondered when that would happen; the technology of the site for that journal is probably as old as the animals discussed in the paper I cite from it. It should be good now. Ucucha 03:43, 16 March 2010 (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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