Talk:Seychelles parakeet

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Seychelles parakeet/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Jens Lallensack (talk · contribs) 23:05, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Will read soon! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 23:05, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

• who procured the syntype specimens. – maybe too technical for the lead? What about "who procured the specimens that formed the bases for the description"?

Done. FunkMonk (talk) 23:34, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

• Swinburne Ward – in the lead, I would add "British civil commissioner" as well, as it provides context and helps with understanding.

Presented him and Newton in the intro for consistency. FunkMonk (talk) 23:34, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

• cateau vert – which language? European or local?

I know it's French, though the source doesn't state so, "vert" is green, but I don't know what "cateau" means, can't find meanings relating to birds when I search online. I do know the local name of the echo parakeet is also "cateau vert", and the Seychelles black parrot was "cateau noir", so I assume "cateau" meant some sort of parrot back then at least... FunkMonk (talk) 23:38, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

• The American ornithologist James L. Peters used the name Psitacula wardi – single "t" intended?

Yikes, no, fixed this in three (!) places. FunkMonk (talk) 23:34, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

• replacing the genus name Palaeornis with Psittacula. – Maybe give some context on Psittacula (reader needs to know that there are living species inside, and where they live).

Added "wherein he also classified other extant parakeets of Asia and Africa". FunkMonk (talk) 21:58, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

• The American ornithologist James Greenway stated in 1967 that while the Seychelles parakeet closely resembled the parrots of the Mascarene islands, it belonged in the Asiatic group that lacks a rosy collar. – Those parrots are all within Psittacula, I assume?

Yes, but he doesn't state this outright, unfortunately. FunkMonk (talk) 21:58, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

• found the Seychelles parakeet most similar to the Alexandrine parakeet, and therefore ruled out it had colonised from Asia rather than Madagascar or the Mascarenes. – But the Alexandrine parakeet is from Asia?

Yikes, not sure what happened there (late night editing?), replaced "ruled out" with "concluded". FunkMonk (talk) 21:58, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

• tail-feathers – I don't think we should have a "-" here?

Removed. FunkMonk (talk) 23:34, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

• That's everything, only very little issues! Very nice article, great read. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 16:07, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, fixed some, and will try to fix the last, more complex issues, soon. I also added a bit more context about the history of the Seychelles to the extinction section if you want to check it out: "The Seychelles islands were covered in thick forests when first described in 1609, and only inhabited by animals. They were settled in 1768, and native forest was subsequently destroyed, which coincided with the decline of endemic birds and the success of introduced species.". FunkMonk (talk) 23:34, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Addressed the rest. FunkMonk (talk) 21:58, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Reverted edits

	Alexandrine
	Seychelles
	Alexandrine

	Alexandrine Alexandrine
	Seychelles

• @FunkMonk: Noting my view since several of my edits have been reverted on the grounds that it has been comprehensively reviewed as GA. I note here that a statement like "In 2015, the British geneticist Hazel Jackson and colleagues found that the Seychelles parakeet was nested deeply within the Alexandrine parakeet group, and had diverged 3.83 million years ago" has multiple problems. First - it is a blatant contradiction if it diverged, it could not be nested "within" and then claimed to be diverged (see the two cladograms to see how the two would differ). Secondly, exactly how important is it that it was found by Hazel Jackson and the fact that she was British or a geneticist? I think encyclopaedic tone is definitely different from University-Campus-PR-style statements. The same can be said about several of the others which are in fact just not adding value since the primary author is not a parakeet specialist but is the main worker publishing it as part of their doctoral studies. The long term work on parakeets is actually being done by one of the senior/secondary authors. I am not going to contend with the revert but this is just to let editors and reviewers know. In medicine articles there is a guideline that goes like "use a review and not be a review" - unfortunately bird literature is rarely well reviewed in review-style journals but even a review of literature in a thesis will mention authors largely for citation traceability. A more detailed mention of a person would probably be only to examine something of significance, the kinds of methodology used and so on. Shyamal (talk) 15:18, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Hi, this should probably be moved to the article's talk page instead of being in the concluded GAN page. I can only repeat what I said in my edit summary: "it's how all other studies are presented in the article, no good reason for such internal inconsistency." And I don't see any good arguments for this inconsistency still. As for the wording, the study says "Assuming a calibration of 54 Mya, P. wardi clustered deep within the Alexandrine Parakeet P. eupatria clade and diverged 2.2 Mya... When the calibration age is extended to 80 Mya, the divergence dates also move further back in time. The P. wardi divergence increases to 3.54 Mya" This simply means that within this group, P. wardi was isolated at this time. It can be a member of the group and still have diverged from it, there is no contradiction, that's just how speciation works. FunkMonk (talk) 15:38, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

I think the nomenclatural implication of claiming that it is "nested" would be rather great. It would imply EITHER that eupatria is non-monophyletic or that wardi should be considered a subspecies P. eupatria wardi. The authors make neither proposal but note that there are differences in the subspecies of eupatria involved. They also note that they are using an incomplete cytochrome b locus sequence + there are tons of other parameter tweaks that can alter results in sequence matching and phylogenetic software. In this case, the conclusion is poorly worded in the original paper itself. As I said, FA and GA reviews do not be define the style and the reviewers certainly do not guarantee that they understood the methodology used. There is no real value to the reader to note one of the author's names in the text, any interested reader can go into the cited source and follow it up. There must be some value or notability of the authors to actually mention them in the actual text. That no reviewer pointed it out is not a particularly useful defence for inclusion. In most of our collaborative FA articles on bird taxa, the WP:BIRD participants have never gone with such a style of giving so much promotion to the names, nationalities and other descriptors of the authors of scientific articles. We focus on the findings. Shyamal (talk) 16:06, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

No opinion on the nesting terminology, but I agree that this emphasis on the authors is unusual and distracting. Rather than saying "this is now baked in as per GA", I would rather bring the phrasing in line with general usage by removing the up-front authorship throughout. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:40, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

But there is no general usage at all, there is simply consistency within articles, not across. You can find articles that do either, and there are no rules about this. I've included author names and introductions in all of my 60 plus FA nominations of animal articles without any complains, all went through many rounds of reviews. We can't demand such changes if they are not even based on guidelines, simply put, the writer decides, and there is more than plenty of precedent to not change anything here. It comes down to personal preference, and you're more than free to leave out author introductions when you write articles yourself. As for wording in regard to the specific paper, we simply summarise the literature, we shouldn't intepret it how we personally see fit. That's up for future researchers, if they found issues with earlier studies (and I've added plenty of such responses in other articles as they come around, see for example Mascarene parrot). FunkMonk (talk) 16:56, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Newton, E, 1867

Hi, Aa77zz, you recently added the initial to the authority based on IOC 13.2, but I somehow can't find the proper site. Could you link it here so I can have a look? I also wonder why it's E instead of E., which I thought would be the norm, but perhaps not in this context? FunkMonk (talk) 10:02, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

FunkMonk: The IOC 13.2 reference with a link is this: Gill, Frank; Donsker, David; Rasmussen, Pamela, eds. (July 2023). "Parrots, cockatoos". IOC World Bird List Version 13.2. International Ornithologists' Union. Retrieved 15 November 2023.

I just follow the IOC. An initial is added in cases where there might be ambiguity. There is a Newton E. and also a Newton, A. – see Newton's parakeet. Having an initial can help - I've come across authorities on wikipedia without an initial where the wrong person is linked. Whether one adds a period to the initial is a matter of style. A period might be better here for consistency with the references. - Aa77zz (talk) 13:45, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

I see they don't use the period, perhaps why it was removed[1] when i added it (but not from the synonyms). I guess there's nothing more to do here, then. FunkMonk (talk) 14:24, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Pinging Kweetal nl to find out why the initial shouldn't be followed by a period. FunkMonk (talk) 03:09, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Hi FunkMonk,

Me too, I just follow the IOC. We have to choose one way, be it with or without period, and my preference happens to be the way they do it, without periods. (Changing that format would also further complicate a testing bot that I wrote that compares our entry's taxobox binomial name's Authority to the one given by IOC. But conveniencing a bot is of course not a (good) argument; I'm just mentioning it in passing). - Kweetal nl (talk) 03:25, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

OK, to silence both you and my bot, I've changed the name back to 'Newton, E.' (as I suppose is your preference) and added a term to my bot to allow it. - Kweetal nl (talk) 04:16, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation, I wouldn't say it's my preference as such, just what I'm used to seeing. If that's how the relevant literature does it, I'm all for it, I was just wondering why that style is used. Do any of you know if that's the standard abbreviation in zoological contexts? FunkMonk (talk) 07:19, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't think there's a 'standard' really (and I find nothing in the code). The comparison is with printed matter where it's probably more common to have a period (and often a space) with each initial, just like in any other well-prepared printed text.

In the end the authorname citation is (just) a bibliographic reference; and it should make clear what underlying text is being referenced. Spaces, periods, initials and years are often dropped as nuisances, and the reference work is not in the reference list anymore when it is assumed to be well-known, cf Linnaeus, 1758.

One thing I like about the IOC approach is that they make the names unique, unlike some other lists (Clements, for instance). That's useful: IOC has 6 different Miller's, 5 Baker's, and 4 Peters's. - Kweetal nl (talk) 08:08, 17 November 2023 (UTC)