Wikipedia:Peer review/Atlantic blue marlin/archive1

Atlantic blue marlin

• A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for November 2008.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I would like people to tell me if I have any gaps in my information or if any of my information is not clear or poorly written. Also, I would like some people to check my sources.

Thanks, --Grander13 (talk) 00:37, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: Here are a few suggestions for improvement.

• The lead should be a summary or abstract of the rest of the article. A good rule of thumb is to try to include at least a mention of the main ideas in each of the article sections and to avoid including things in the lead that are not developed in the main sections. Please see WP:LEAD.

• It's often not clear in this article what part of a long block of material a source supports. For example, the "Physical description" section consists of one long paragraph with citation 5 at the end of the next-to-last sentence and citation 6 at the end of the last sentence. It's not clear whether 5 or 6 support earlier parts of the section such as the claim that the blue marlin's "first dorsal fin has 39 to 43 rays". Another kind of sourcing problem occurs in the "Economic importance" section, where the first paragraph is unsourced even though it includes statements such as "Atlantic blue marlin landings totaled 3064 metric tons in 2000." Things like this need a source. A good rule of thumb for Wikipedia articles is that each paragraph, each statistic, each claim that might reasonably be questioned, and each direct quote should be sourced.

• Be careful not to imitate the language of sources too directly. In the "Economic importance" section, the enthusiastic language seemed out of place to me. The article says, "Makaira nigricans has become a highly sought, prestigious catch for recreational fishermen on rod and reel because of its rarity, substantial size, blistering speed, and awe-inspiring aerobics." The source says, "Due to its rarity, large size, legendary speed, and powerful aerobics on rod and reel, M. nigricans is a popular and prestigious catch for recreational fishermen." The source supports the claim, but the source language is a bit too rah-rah for an encyclopedia.

• Quantities often need to be expressed in metric as well as imperial units of measure in the format recommended by the Manual of Style. A handy way of doing this is to use the "convert" template, which gets the arithmetic right and uses the correct spellings and abbreviations automatically. I added one of these to the "Conservation" section as an example of how the templates work. The template can handle many things, including conversions from Centigrade to Fahrenheit that should be added to the "Range" section of the article. Please see Template:Convert/doc for more details.

• All of the many phrases such as makaira nigricans that are in Latin need to be in italics.

• A copyeditor would probably catch and fix many small errors in the text. I fixed a few, but I see others such as the line of all-caps in citation 7. Wikipedia uses what's called "title case" even if the source uses all caps. "EVIDENCE OF BLUE MARLIN", for example, would be rendered as "Evidence of Blue Marlin".

• I would suggest linking terms like "bycatch".

I hope you find these brief remarks helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 23:36, 24 November 2008 (UTC)