Talk:Rodent/GA1

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Reviewer: Reid,iain james (talk · contribs) 02:35, 8 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]


Hello to Cwmhiraeth, Little Jerry, and others. As requested by Little Jerry on my talk page, I will review Rodent. Two things I was going to comment on before it was nominated but didn't find time for:

  1. The Classification section could use expanding, as the group is very old. Might be good to add a history of Classification section. And,
  2. The Uses section could be expanded in the short subsections (As clothing; As pets), or they should just be merged at the beginning of the section outside of a subsection.
Merged, as they are generally long enough already. Chiswick Chap (talk) 05:46, 9 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I am a little busy now (vacation in three days until the 21st, finishing drawing for Lourinha Formation, completing User:Reid,iain james/Draft:Parasaurolophus) but expect this review to be done by early September. IJReid (talk) 02:35, 8 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for taking on this review, we will make a start on the two points you mention above. There is no urgency about the timescale of the review, but please be ultra-critical of the article as we may be taking it on to FAC. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 05:04, 8 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

More comments:

  1. "Rodents first appear in the fossil record on the supercontinent of Laurasia in the Paleocene." implies that they evolved elsewhere earlier.
Changed. LittleJerry (talk) 17:12, 8 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  1. "They diversified in the Eocene, and different groups migrated repeatedly from continent to continent, sometimes by crossing oceans." reads strangely, recommend changing to "They greatly diversified in the early/middle/late Eocene, causing different groups to migrate across continents, sometimes even breaching oceans."
Changed. LittleJerry (talk) 17:12, 8 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  1. "Unlike most other placental mammals, one subfamily of rodents, the Murinae (rats and mice), reached and colonized Australia." This reads strangely, I suggest changing it to "Unique among almost all other placental mammals, a subfamily of rodents named the Murinae (including rats and mice), has come in contact with and colonized Australia" or something similar.
Changed. LittleJerry (talk) 17:14, 8 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  1. "The largest species, the capybara, can weigh as much as 66 kg (146 lb)." would add the prefix However, in front of this sentence.
Done. LittleJerry (talk) 17:12, 8 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  1. "including a sometimes vestigial thumb" not that bad, but laypeople might confuse it so > "including a thumb that is sometimes vestigial"
Changed. LittleJerry (talk) 17:12, 8 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  1. "Prairie dogs can also lead to regional and local biodiversity loss, increased seed depredation and the establishment and spread of invasive shrubs." add prefix However.
Overuse of "however" seems to be discouraged by FAC. LittleJerry (talk) 17:12, 8 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ok.
  1. "pouches till its face bulges out sideways" why the abbreviated until?
Fixed. LittleJerry (talk) 17:12, 8 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  1. "One of the few carnivorous rodents is the grasshopper mouse found in dry regions of North America. This mouse feeds on insects, scorpions, other small mice and a small proportion of plant material." if it will eat plants it is omnivorous. Also, the word "proportion" should be changed to "portion"
Fixed. LittleJerry (talk) 20:26, 8 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  1. "Rodents exhibit a wide range of types of social behavior ranging from the only known mammalian caste systems of some mole rats, the extensive "town" of the colonial prairie dog, through family groups to the independent, solitary life of the edible dormouse." no reference, change to "Rodents exhibit a wide range of social behaviours, from the only known mammalian caste of some mole rats, through to the independant, solitairy life of the edible dormouse."
Seems like an arbitrary change to me. I also don't think it needs a cite as it is general information supported in the rest of the subsection. LittleJerry (talk) 20:26, 8 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Eh, I am more accustomed to dinosaur FAs, though if you truly think this article could survive an fa review with that unsourced paragraph outside the lead, you can leave it as it is. IJReid (talk) 22:42, 8 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  1. "than though with larger litters" change "though" > "those"
Fixed. LittleJerry (talk) 20:26, 8 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  1. "The phylogeny of the rodents places them in the clades Glires, Euarchontoglires and Boreoeutheria:" where is the ref?
Added. LittleJerry (talk) 19:13, 10 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  1. There are no references in the "Alternate classifications" section
I removed this. LittleJerry (talk) 19:00, 10 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  1. Any phylogenies containing the inner classification of Rodentia? I there are I can easily add the most recent in.
Okay, go ahead. LittleJerry (talk) 19:40, 10 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  1. One last thing before I give this a final look-over, the pie chart in the classification section should be moved somewhere else, so that is does not interfere with the cladogram I just added. IJReid (talk) 23:49, 10 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Moved it but then moved it back. The pie chart doesn't seem to harm the cladogram and moving it elsewhere left a big white space that doesn't look good. LittleJerry (talk) 01:07, 11 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, must be my browser, but anyway, the space of text directly above the cladogram could be expanded, Oh, and it should be noted that for the longest time, lagomorphs were considered rodents. IJReid (talk) 02:06, 11 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I have expanded the text above the cladogram a bit and added the information on lagomorphs. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 05:37, 11 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

More to come, IJReid (talk) 16:23, 8 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Once the first two comments are completed I will provide more comments, but until then I am putting the review on hold, as the rest of the article is extremely well written and a good read. IJReid (talk) 19:13, 8 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The "Uses" section has been expanded/reorganized. What did you have in mind in connection with "Might be good to add a history of Classification section". None of us is much of an expert in classification matters. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:28, 9 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, just a paragraph or two discussing historical classifications of rodents. This would only be necessary if the historical classifications are different from modern ones. Also, the table listing some extinct rodents should probably be moved to List of extinct rodents, and the page should be created. IJReid (talk) 14:13, 9 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Many thanks for the clarification. We should collectively be able to rustle up a paragraph or two on the history of rodent classification.
Not sure that moving the table to a list article is appropriate here. The table gives examples of (a small number of) extinct rodents that are of special interest for their great size or other features, selected to give an idea of the range of rodents that have existed for the purposes of this general article. There are very many extinct rodents, and a list of them would be a very different kind of structure (most probably sorted into many tables of higher rodent taxa). Without a table we would want to provide the same set of examples in text, with the same references; it seemed good to have the information presented in table rather than text to provide variety and to handle the facts, figures and unit conversions more gracefully. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:01, 9 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I retract the latter suggestion. However, it still might be good to change the format of the table, which I can easily change if wanted. I would make the table like those in Hell Creek Formation which I personally think looks better (and suspect you will to), and rename the title and headers to better suite their content. IJReid (talk) 23:22, 9 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I have added a bit about the classification history. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 18:37, 10 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I have edited and renamed the table to be more like the suggested style. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:12, 10 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Final review:

  1. "the largest species" > "the largest living species"
Done. LittleJerry (talk) 16:58, 11 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  1. "males selected for larger females" remove "for"
Done. LittleJerry (talk) 16:58, 11 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  1. overuse of brackets is frowned upon by FA reviewers
Done. LittleJerry (talk) 16:58, 11 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  1. ref needed for last sentence of "Social behaviour" section
Done. LittleJerry (talk) 16:58, 11 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  1. "Social rodents living underground have a" just the ones that live underground, social rodents in general
Done. LittleJerry (talk) 16:58, 11 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  1. There are a large amount of links appearing later in the article that appear earlier (To find them I use User:Ucucha/duplinks script).
Done? LittleJerry (talk) 17:41, 11 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Removed several. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:08, 11 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

These are the last querries I have before I will award this article GA status. IJReid (talk) 15:49, 11 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Passed :) IJReid (talk) 18:16, 11 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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