Talk:Polish cochineal

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Polish cochineal has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
February 19, 2007	Good article nominee	Listed
March 5, 2007	Peer review	Reviewed
July 22, 2009	Good article reassessment	Kept
A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on February 4, 2007. The text of the entry was: Did you know ...that the Polish cochineal* gave its name to the color red and the month of June in many Slavic languages?*
Current status: Good article

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GA Passed[edit]

This is a very well written article, and the research is impressive. It must have taken a lot of effort to run down the obscure (but good) sources. One thing I would suggest is an inline citation for the source on the life cycle information.Rusty Cashman 19:35, 19 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I did a review of this article, good job. I have the following points.

The life cycle section, though well written, is hard for me (a non-specialist) to understand. Particularly since it immediately follows the introduction it would be better if it was expanded a bit (explain things in the text rather than linking to other articles). The words that I think should be explained the first time that they're used are encyst, instar, imagines and maybe oviposition (though context makes the last one clear to me). The way ecdysis is explained is a good example of how to expand the others. I think it looks better if you italicize a word when it's first used and then followed by an explanation, though this may be a matter of taste (e.g. "At this point, the larvae undergo ecdysis, shedding their exoskeletons together with their legs and antennae..."
- I added short explanations of the terms "encyst", "instar" and "imago" in the text. I hope this will make it clearer for non-biologists now. I decided not to italicize those words though (I normally italicize only book titles and non-English words). — Kpalion^(talk) 15:04, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In the section on dye production it states "and dissolved in leaven or kvass (light rye beer) in order to remove fat." Leaven redirects to leavening agent and I don't know if that's what's meant here, I don't understand the sentence if it does. It's not clear to me if light rye beer refers to just kvass or to both leaven and kvass (are they two words for the same thing)? Could be reworded to "in leaven or a light rye beer called kvass" to clarify.
- I replaced the word "leaven" with "sourdough" to make it more specific. Sourdough is a natural leavening agent traditionally used for making bread, borsht and kvass; the article sourdough has a picture of it, from which you can see that it was ineed possible to dissolve ground cochineal in it. I rephrased the part about kvass according to your suggestion. — Kpalion^(talk) 15:04, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The proto-slavic word "*čьrvь" is in the linguistics section. It would be good if there was a clue to the pronunciation of this.
- Proto-Slavic is a reconstructed language, so pronunciation of words like "*čьrvь" is uncertain. However, I added the most probable pronunciation (in IPA), based on the Phonology section of the article Proto-Slavic language.
Except as noted above, I found no problems with the text of the article.
Stefan_Czarniecki2.jpg doesn't indicate who the artist is. This information should be provided and then the image can be moved to the commons.
- I don't know the source of this image (I would guess it was painted during the subject's lifetime, i.e. in the 17th century, and the author could be anonymous). I saw you already tried to contact Emax, the Wikipedian who uploaded it, but I'm afraid he is no longer active. — Kpalion^(talk) 15:04, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Image:Scleranthus perennis eF.jpg might look better if it was cropped to just include the center bud.
- Done. — Kpalion^(talk) 15:04, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Mkultra72 02:02, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot for your effort to review the article, Mkultra72. Please let me know, if you have any more questions or suggestions. — Kpalion^(talk) 15:04, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well done, the "third instar" still bothers me a little when I read it. Perhaps it should include a dash "A third-instar (developmental stage) male larva" to make it clear that third modifies instar and not larva. Or even wikilink all of "third instar" (linking to just instar). Perhaps even it should read "When the male larva reaches the third-instar developmental stage it forms a delicate..." These are just ideas. For the next sentence "Females are neotenous, they retain their larval form, and in late June or early July they re-emerge from the ground..." might work better. With the current wording it's not clear if all females are neotenous and re-emerge, or only those females that are neotenous re-emerge. Mkultra72 21:45, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I hyphenated "third-instar" and rephrased the part about neotenous females. Should be better now. — Kpalion^(talk) 22:27, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proofreading[edit]

This article was in wonderful shape. I made a small number of nit-picky changes, mostly to punctuation. I hesitated before removing the L (for Latin) after the two instances of Porphyrophora polonica but saw that the author had not used a similar L with other Latin names, and it seemed unnecessary to use it for these two. Finetooth 23:03, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Finetooth. The L didn't stand for Latin, but for Linneaus, the guy who came up with the Latin name. I just read that this kind of nomenclature is actually only used in botany, so you were probably right removing it anyway. I decided to leave it in the references though, since there the L is part of a title of a book. — Kpalion^(talk) 00:05, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

GA Reassessment[edit]

This discussion is transcluded from Talk:Polish cochineal/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.

GA Sweeps: On hold[edit]

As part of the WikiProject Good Articles, we're doing Sweeps to determine if the article should remain a Good article. I believe the article currently meets the majority of the criteria and should remain listed as a Good article. However, in reviewing the article, I have found there are several issues that needs to be addressed.

The first paragraph in the "Life cycle" section is unsourced. If the information is taken from the source in the second paragraph then add it to the end of this one as well. I was going to verify it myself, but it's in a Polish.
The first paragraph in the "Trade" section also needs citations.
There's two dabs that should be fixed.

Hopefully it shouldn't be too difficult to add the sources for these areas of the article. This article covers the topic well and has several great free images. I will leave the article on hold for seven days, but if progress is being made and an extension is needed, one may be given. If no progress is made, the article may be delisted, which can then later be renominated at WP:GAN. I'll contact all of the main contributors and related WikiProjects so the workload can be shared. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 23:06, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

~~Could you extend the period until the end of July, please? I have no time for Wikipedia during this week. Thanks. — Kpalion^(talk) 09:27, 22 July 2009 (UTC)~~[reply]

I managed to find some time and do all the corrections suggested above. It wasn't that much work after all. Thanks for reviewing the article, Nehrams2020. — Kpalion^(talk) 15:39, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

GA Sweeps: Kept[edit]

Good work addressing the issues. I believe the article currently meets the criteria and should remain listed as a Good Article. Continue to improve the article making sure all new information is properly sourced and neutral. It would be beneficial to update the access dates for all of the online sources. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. I have updated the article history to reflect this review. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 17:32, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Refs??[edit]

The linguistics section has one ref for many facts. And in fact, one fact bothers me a lot - the claim that the name for June comes from the name of the beetle. Firstly, I've seen another red beetle that comes out in summer around then and it is everywhere in Warsaw (don't know the name of the beetle.. but it's not this one). Secondly, the article on Ukrainian months says that Ukrainian June is named after the red berries. It has no ref, but hey, this article has none either. Can we get some sources together? Malick78 (talk) 19:39, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ok: it seems that the beetle I was thinking of comes out of bit earlier... but, the Polish WP page for the month of June says that the name comes from either the larva of [bees] (with a general citation), or our cochineal bugs (no citation). Either way, there seems a bit too much doubt here to make the claims we do without refs. Malick78 (talk) 19:49, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Section still unreferences (the only reference goes to an online dictionary). Is this section important, if it is removed the article may still be classified as Good. AIRcorn (talk) 01:36, 30 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Photo?[edit]

Shouldn't a 'good article' have a picture of its subject? Not a 250 year old engraving. A photo! I want to see what these things actually look like. Malick78 (talk) 19:39, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Alas, we don't have any free pictures of the insect (yet), so all we have are public-domain drawings from the 18th century. We do have some pitures of the closely related Armenian cochineal, though. — Kpalion^(talk) 10:46, 11 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]