Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Red-bellied black snake/archive1
- 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 Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 04:19, 7 January 2019 [1].
Red-bellied black snake[edit]
This article is about a critter I once saw in my garden....much to my chagrin. It got a pretty good going over at GAN. I reckon it's within striking distance of FA-hood. Have at it. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 03:52, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
FunkMonk[edit]
- Seems you're having a snake season (coupled with black mamba)? Will look soon. FunkMonk (talk) 04:21, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
- Australia is duplinked in the intro. Should it be linked at all?
- "37 mg of venom", " being 94 mg", "high as 7 mg/kg" and "2.52 mg/kg", are there conversions for these?
- "78 cm (for males) or 88 cm" Conversions needed.
- Shouldn't the intro have something on its behaviour?
- Still think it would be cool to show the small cobra-like hood[2], perhaps in the venom section, as this is after all how I guess it looks right before it strikes... I can remove the watermark. That photo is also good as it is the only one that shows the distinct orange underside of the snake.
- ok go for it Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:22, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
- Hmm, it doesn't add a huge deal but if it can be added without crowding the article then ok I guess.. have a play if you want Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:45, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
- Now only some people mentioned are presented, others get nothing.
- "This beautiful snake, which appears to be unprovided with tubular teeth or fangs, and consequently not of a venomous nature" This seems entirely wrong, I wonder if something like "he incorrectly wrote" could be added?
- "The species name is derived from the Ancient Greek porphyreus" You haven't even mentioend the species name until that point though.
- "though several subsequent species have been added." Why "though"? Seems to be fairly standard practice.
- Hoser is notorious, so I wonder if his views are given undue weight and could be trimmed a bit further?
- thing is, there are three disjunct populations, so he has possibly got precedence at some point if it is found they are genetically distinct. Also the snake taxonomy issue is huge - see this, this and this. Still he is familiar with the snakes. see this. fun pets, eh? So I think the best response is to lay it all out. I suspect there will be genetic work soon. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:27, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
- What does the genus name mean?
- "Naja porphyrica Schlegel" No discussion of this synonym?
- ""Coluber porphyriacus", Zoology and botany of New Holland (1794)" I wonder if it would be more relevant if the caption stated specifically it was an illustration form the original description?
- "eggs of a green tree snake" Link in caption?
- " It is on average around 1.25 metres" The last thing you mentioned was the tail, so perhaps good to specify it is the whole snake you're talking about here.
- Link elapid at first mention in taxonomy instead of description.
- "The Macquarie Marshes marks" Mark?
- "They also thermoregulate" Link?
- " In July 1949, six large red-bellied black snakes were found hibernating under a concrete slab in marshland in Woy Woy, New South Wales.[30] Groups of up to 6 hibernating red-bellied black snakes have been recorded from under concrete slabs around Mount Druitt and Rooty Hill in western Sydney" Why are the years or locations significant? Isn't the take home point that, in both case,s up to six have been found hibernating together?
- "1220 m in a day" Convert.
- "cane toad toxins.[33] The introduction of cane toads in Australia dates to 1935, when cane toads (Rhinella marina)" Why only give the scientific name on second mention?
- "by kookaburras, brown falcons" No links or scientific names?
- myotoxicity, diaphoresis, polypeptide, link?
- "While black snake antivenom" Link?
- "it is one of Australia's most familiar snakes" Only seems to be stated in the intro.
William Harris[edit]
Support - External links updated, disimbag links zero. Bonza work on a well-known acquaintance of mine. William Harris • (talk) • 20:41, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
Hawkeye7[edit]
Support I have a red-bellied black snake living under my front porch.
- A cheaper pet to operate than my Ridgeback/Mastiff!! William Harris • (talk) • 06:04, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
- "analyzed" should be " analysed"?
- Image review
- File:Pseudechis porphyriacus (35307320466).jpg, File:Red-bellied Black Snake (Pseudechis porphyriacus) (8397134493).jpg CC, Flickr Bot verified.
- File:Pseudechis porphyriacus (Sowerby).jpg PD-Image, appropriately tagged.
- File:Pseudechis porphyriacus eating eggs.jpg CC0 image, PD release is not valid in Australia, okay.
Opabinia[edit]
I originally was just going to read the venom section, since I wrote some articles on snake venom toxins awhile back, but it's not long, so...
- From the taxonomy section, the original 1794 description (erroneously) claimed it wasn't venomous. Later, in the venom section, the article says "early" settlers were afraid of it. Do we know anything about how impressions evolved over time, from not venomous to dangerous?
- Minor point, but it seems like you could make a stronger statement about Hoser's proposed classifications based on the Kaiser review. As written, and without knowing anything about Hoser, it sort of sounds like a routine scientific dispute rather than "one guy self-published a bunch of stuff that academics don't take seriously".
- There's two mentions of individual (and fairly old) reports of hibernation, but nothing more general - is hibernating normal/common behavior, or is it just sporadically observed?
- The article says pregnancy happens in the early spring to late summer, lasts 14 weeks, and results in births mostly in February or March. It took me an embarrassingly long time trying to make those things consistent before I remembered oh yeah, Australia :) But I bet I'm not the only northern-hemisphere inhabitant who'd find that confusing.
- The source for the 25-year lifespan says it is about snakes in captivity. Anything known about whether this is different in the wild?
- I poked around quickly and didn't find anything, but you'd know better than me - any idea on the mechanism for the anosmia? That's weird.
- The sentence mentioning α-elapitoxin-Ppr1 seems a little jarringly technical relative to the rest of the text, especially without a wikilink. (I'd suggest at least linking to the protein family, three-finger toxin, but COI alert, I wrote that article.)
- There's a few instances of in-text attribution by name where the name isn't wikilinked and doesn't seem significant - I'd expect that way of introducing a study to indicate that its author is notable or significant in some way, that the reader needs to know or will be interested in who specifically did the work. I noticed this in the venom section, about Vaughan, Schmidt and Middlebrook; the same applies to Kaiser above.
- Speaking of Vaughan, I was unclear why the fairly old research characterizing pseudexin warranted its own paragraph, given that pseudexin itself has no article and PLA2s are very common venom components; I think it'd be worth mentioning here that pseudexin accounts for 25% of whole venom.
- The article says bites are "generally treated" with tiger snake venom. I think it's more the case that "when antivenom is used, it's generally tiger snake venom", isn't it? Churchman 2010 says only 39% of the bite victims in its survey got antivenom at all.
- Super nitpick: Churchman 2010 says that black snake antivenom is cheaper and can be used at lower volume, but doesn't claim there's a causal relationship between those two things. The article says "can be used at a lower dose and is thus a cheaper treatment" (my emphasis), which is a little more than what the source says (though maybe it's in other sources). Also, lower volume isn't necessarily lower dose, unless you know they're the same concentration.
- The paper about evolution in response to cane toads (which was cool!) implies, but doesn't say outright, that snake populations had declined in areas with lots of toads, but this doesn't come up in the conservation section. Is that not a significant effect overall (only small areas of overlap?), or does it not come up in the sources?
- Knowing they're kept as pets made me wonder how many of those bites mentioned earlier in the article were from captive snakes vs encounters in the wild. Are they bred as pets, or are they captured in the wild? Opabinia regalis (talk) 09:19, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
- Support looks good now! Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:05, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
Support by Ceoil[edit]
Notwithstanding the remaining points above, support on prose, after some fairly trivial copy edits. Very straightforwardly and clearly written. Ceoil (talk) 23:07, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
Coord note[edit]
Source review? Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:52, 31 December 2018 (UTC)
- Sources are all authoritative and of high quality. Not seeing any formatting issues. Ceoil (talk) 23:25, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
- Closing note: This candidate has been promoted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FAC/ar, and leave the {{featured article candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Ian Rose (talk) 04:19, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
- The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.