Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Short-beaked Echidna

Short-beaked Echidna[edit]

Another unusual animal from Australia/New Guinea, written by me, reviewed and copyedited by many others. Sadly I haven't been able to find any substantial detail on the species in the cultures of Papua New Guinea or West Irian Jaya, otherwise the article is comprehensive.--nixie 00:03, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

SupportWell written.---(Smerk)
Support. Another well-researched and written article. Given the problems of New Guinea, any lack of information concerning those species is certainly forgivable.--cj | talk 06:11, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: I've redirected spiny anteater to Short-beaked Echidna. It was originally redirected to a general Echidna article. - Mgm|^(talk) 11:08, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Support -- ALoan (Talk) 11:56, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 17:27, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. Sources used for footnotes should be added to reference section as well.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 20:19, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Seems like a rather pointless duplication of information - I have a couple of FAs with the refs arranged this way.--nixie 23:12, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - Agreed it is not of the outmost importance, but style is style, and notes do not equal references.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 23:09, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    - The problem here is a lack of appropriate title, the notes in this article are not explanatory footnotes, they are, as in any scientific paper, references to original primary research. I have adjusted the format of the section a bit to refelct this, but as long as the information is there and in a consistent format then there is no issue.--nixie 23:39, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Support -- Saravask 02:31, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Support—I've copy-edited the article; please see the inline queries, inserted by me and previous editors. Tony 01:34, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks for the once over, I've addressed most of the inline queries (some of them were mine - and won't be resolved until I get a good book of Aboriginal myth).--nixie 07:22, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Comment — This article appears nearly excellent to me. Upon closer reading, I only have two nitpicks:

" ... where it is the most widespread mammal species ... " (from the second para) — I don't know whether this refers to native or all species distribution. All here means fauna (exotic or native) in Australia. Doesn't Australia have major problems with rabbit infestation and introduced species (rats, etc.) outcompeting native fauna? My suspicion would be that one of those invading exotics would be the most widespread mammalian species, instead of any echnidna. In any event, I think this assertion should be elaborated upon and be linked to a source.
Repeated capitalization of short-beaked echidna (i.e., "Short-beaked Echidna"). This is not the practice followed in scientific literature (at least that dealing w/ chronobiology and fungal genetics). Thus, I would not expect to find Neurospora crassa referred to as "Bread Mold" (instead, "bread mold" — although I see "Neurospora" capitalized, which is correct) nor Magnaporthe grisea as "Rice Blast" (instead, I see "rice blast" or "Magnaporthe"). And after having read through hundreds of neurobiology- and neuroethology-related scientific papers, I don't recall coming across such capitalization of the common names given to bird, mammals, etc. But still, the science of this article appears solid to me (a non-expert). Overall, great work. My support vote still stands. Saravask 18:17, 20 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed your first query, on the second point, Wikipedia convention is to have caps for mammal and bird page names, I have used the same capitalisation consistently throughout the problem- so I don't think its an issue.--nixie 21:35, 20 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Oh. I didn't know about the Wikipedia capitalization convention; I was rather sure you had a good reason for doing that. And thanks for addressing the first point. Saravask 21:53, 20 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]