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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 not promoted by Karanacs 19:23, 14 April 2009 [1].

Traumatic insemination

[edit]
Nominator(s): Raul654 (talk) 22:11, 5 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

An article I found a few months ago and made a mental note to work on later. I spent much of last week expanding it and now I think it's up to FA quality. Raul654 (talk) 22:11, 5 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comments Aside from the first sentence of the lead, nowhere does the article say what T.I. actually is, and at no point is the actual mechanism explained. If the sources exist, it really ought to say how it actually works at a deeper level than "the male pierces the female's abdomen with his penis and injects his sperm through the wound into her abdominal cavity" – I'm not talking about a long technical lecture, but just basic "how does he aim it? why doesn't she die? is it always the abdomen in all species?" type basics. I think it should probably at least mention love darts, if only to explain that they're not involved in insemination; most people with a slight-but-basic knowledge will likely have a garbled image of T.I. in which the love dart itself carries the sperm, and I think that's a common enough misconception that it warrants a brief debunking in this article. – iridescent 23:02, 5 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • I've added a mechanics section to address some of the points you raised. I'm not sure some of the questions you are asking are in the scope of the article. (To wit - a male finds and mates a female using the exact same senses any other animal does - sight, sound, smell, and touch. The wound is not immediately fatal for the same reason a needle prick is not fatal -- the wound is simply not damaging enough to cause immediate death. Not only is this, IMO, rather obvious, but in general our articles should not address why things don't happen.) The article already gives a more technical description than is found in most literature. Raul654 (talk) 23:51, 5 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: I was excited to read this article. A lot of the FA's today are on what I would consider 'boring' subjects. This is a very important topic in species evolution. However, I also have a few concerns:
    1) no peer review
    2) red links are bad style
    TeH nOmInAtOr (talk) 01:30, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Just for starters, I see no references for the Insect Anatomy section, or the first two paragraphs of Mechanics of Traumatic Insemination, or the first paragraph of Bedbug adaption. And some prose:

    • I've added a ref for the mechanics section. The anatomy section is all extremely basic stuff (basic high-school biology) and doesn't require a ref. Raul654 (talk) 15:27, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • Have been through high school rather recently, I can tell you we really didn't learn anything about hemolyphes migrating the female ovaries of an insect. Also, if you start talking about "high school biology", then where do you draw the line? And in any case, if FAs are supposed to be the best work of Wikipedia, then I think you could find at least one ref for that single paragraph. Noble Story (talk • contributions) 13:30, 14 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The mating plug is an mechanism used by many species." This is rather isolated and interrupts the flow.
  • "There is a tendency for dense colonies of bedbugs kept in laboratories to go extinct, starting with adult females." I would believe "go extinct" is not a formal way to say that. Also, is there a better word to use than "extinct"? I would have thought that it only refers to the whole species dying out, not individual groups dying.
  • "Bachelor herds of Bottlenose dolphins will sometimes gang up on a female and force her to have sex with them." "force her to have sex with them" is another informal phrase.

I could go into more detail, but this is just the start. Noble Story (talk • contributions) 03:48, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]


Oppose The article needs a lot of work before reaching FA quality. Sasata (talk) 05:08, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • needs a MOS workover; some problems I saw from a quick read included inappropriate capitalization of headings, non-use of endashes for page number ranges in the refs, 2-sentence "paragraphs" in the lead; (a whole parenthetical sentence in the "Bedbug adaptation" section); too many long quotes - why not just summarize the info in your own words?
  • Needs a regular copyedit as well... some random examples:
  • "The mating plug is an mechanism..."
Fixed. Raul654 (talk) 16:51, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • "...holds that traumatic insemination evolved in as a new development..."
Fixed. Raul654 (talk) 16:51, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • "...risk of infection through the puncture would,"
Fixed. Raul654 (talk) 16:51, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • bloodstream incorrectly written as two words
  • "Once in the blood stream, the sperm act..." They act?
  • The section "Use in the animal kingdom" is merely a list of other species known to use TI; at FA level I would expect at least a little more information about each, as I expect the process differs among different phyla/classes with different anatomies
  • The section "Insect anatomy" is completely unreferenced
    • As I said above, the insect anatomy contains extremely basic, undisputed facts, such as "In humans and other complex life forms, blood and lymph circulate in two different systems, the circulatory system and lymphatic system". There no need to reference these things. Raul654 (talk) 16:51, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Several sections have short 1-sentence paragraphs
  • The caption for the second image is excessively long; I thought the ideal was to have succinct captions
  • The comprehensiveness is also an issue; a quick check on the ISI Web of Knowledge Academic database reveals many recent articles (several of them reviews) that one would expect to be cited in this article
  • I could go on, but I think you get the point. No disrespect intended but as the FA director shouldn't you know better? Or was this a test? :)
  • Comments -
  • s the Hugot ref (current ref 4) a journal article? If so, the article title should be in quotation marks, the journal title in italics.
  • Same for the Valerie Schmit ref (current ref 7)
  • Same for current ref 10 (Jane A. Smith..)
  • Same for current ref 12 (Trowbridge...)
  • Same for current ref 17 (Siva-Jothy..)
  • Same for current ref 22 (connor..)
  • Current ref 8 (Arnqvist..) is a book but we need publisher and page numbers at the least
  • Current ref 9 (Arnqvist and Usinger) needs page number
  • Lastly, was there a reason this was inserted further down the list than usual? I almost missed it.
Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 21:38, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have fixed all of the your above points except the last ( was there a reason this was inserted further down the list than usual). I'm not sure what you mean by that. Raul654 (talk) 04:03, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - Much work needed before this becomes FA. I think GAN is a better place to put this article in its current state. --mav (talk) 19:42, 12 April 2009 (UTC) In addition to and repeating what others have said:[reply]

Whole article
  • Overuse of long quotes (esp in the 'Homosexual traumatic insemination' section). I'd get rid of all of them; much better to synthesize what several researchers have reported vs quoting a few in long form. Short inline quotes are fine in an article of any size but long quotes, I think, should be avoided in short articles unless absolutely needed.
Lead
  • Every paragraph starts with 'Traumatic insemination' - suggest mixing it up a bit to improve readability and flow.
  • Last two paras are two sentences each. Suggest combining them.
Use in the animal kingdom
  • Just a list as is. Suggestion: Much more discussion about how this method of reproduction is represented in the animal kingdom is needed, citing as examples from the list (hopefully, thematically organized somehow into paragraphs). The flatworm / penis fencing bullet is the only one that I think is currently sufficient.
Insect anatomy
  • Seems to be unnecessary as a stand alone section. Suggest merging into the Mechanics section, perhaps putting much of the general background info in a ref note. Seems like too much of an aside right now that hinders flow.
Interspecies traumatic insemination
  • One paragraph sections, especially at level two, are to be avoided. I think this paragraph would fit nicely at the end of an improved 'Use in the animal kingdom' section.
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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