Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Astraeus hygrometricus/archive1

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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 promoted by Karanacs 22:23, 27 September 2011 [1].

Astraeus hygrometricus[edit]

Astraeus hygrometricus (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Sasata (talk) 22:47, 30 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The barometer earthstar is a star-shaped mushroom unrelated to the genus of earthstars known as Geastrum, about which I have written previously. In a recent mushroom-collecting foray a few weeks ago I was fortunate to find dozens of these earthstars growing on a sandy bank outside a mixed forest in the Saskatchewan north. Naturally, I had no choice but to buff up the article and submit it to here, for your consideration. Thanks for reading, Sasata (talk) 22:47, 30 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've never seen an earthstar. Thoughts from J Milburn-

  • "The mushroom has been used traditionally by Indian forest tribes and North American natives." It would be good to mention in what way it has been used (looking down, it wasn't really "used" by Native Americans)
  • "as Geastrum, an alternate spelling of Geastrum" They're the same spelling?
  • "The differences disappears" Sic?
  • The "story" in the taxonomy section feels incomplete- you mention that Cunningham sent it back to Geastrum, but it's placed in Astraeus today?
  • "to form irregular 4–20 "rays"." What does this mean?
  • "scurfy" A little jargony, I think
  • "rhizomorphs (small dark hairlike thread)" This gives the impression that that's always what rhizomorphs look like, rather than what they look like with this species.
  • "coalesce" Again, technical
  • "capillitium (a mass of thread-like sterile fibers dispersed among the spores) are branched" capillitum (singular, surely?) are
  • "They further noted that the fruit bodies" no people have been mentioned. Change to "the study's authors" or something akin?
  • I'm wondering about the declarion of inedibility in the mycomorphbox- that contradicts the categories, and, while we may want to dismiss many of those eaten as actually different species, elsewhere in the article, you note that the species is found in the countries where it/species like it are eaten
  • Do you have no sources talking about differentiating the species from A. asiaticus and A. thailandicus?
  • "Two primitive Indian forest tribes," Is that a PC term?
  • As the last one isn't a use as such, perhaps rename "Traditional uses" to "Traditional beliefs"?
  • There's no mention of the edibility issue in the lead

Looking very nice. I don't envy you having to sift through the sources to work out what was A. hygrometricus and what was something that looked like it. J Milburn (talk) 23:45, 30 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • I think I've dealt with all of your excellent points in these edits. Let me know of further issues. Sasata (talk) 04:45, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I made a couple of fixes myself- please make sure I've not got the wrong end of the stick. J Milburn (talk) 09:41, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Images are ok. Template:Information would be nice for File:Astraeus hygrometricus 001.jpg, and do we have death dates for the authors of File:Astraeus hygrometricus1928.jpg? J Milburn (talk) 23:45, 30 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • I've added this information as you requested. One of the authors died in 1941 ... cutting it close for 70-year PD :) Sasata (talk) 05:04, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Annoyingly, an issue remains- see the talk page of this FAC. J Milburn (talk) 09:41, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ok, I removed the image for now, and will replace in January 2012. I've added a MO image to replace it temporarily, but will look through my own collection and see if I can make something better for the article. I'll drop you a line if I make any more image changes. Thanks for checking. Sasata (talk) 15:39, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support. I was holding my support for similar reasons to Ucucha, but the fact he and Jim are happy with the section reassures me. Nice work, but it's an article that will probably need to be have some fairly large updates as more literature becomes available. J Milburn (talk) 10:16, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thanks JM; I agree that the complete story hasn't been told, but I'll keep updating as long as I'm around :) Sasata (talk) 14:52, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Source review - spotchecks not done. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:24, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Be consistent in how you notate page ranges - for example, "185–8" vs "178–79"
  • Be consistent in whether you notate editions as ordinals or simple numerals
  • FN 9: publisher?
  • Foreign-language sources should consistently be identified as such - for example, FN 17
  • Why specify UK for London but not Cambridge? Nikkimaria (talk) 04:24, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • If I may add one point to Nikkimaria's excellent source review, it would be that you should be consistent in whether you hyphenate ISBNs. --Eisfbnore • talk 09:49, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Have removed all the isbn hyphens, thanks for the note. Sasata (talk) 15:39, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support Comments from Ucucha:

  • I know I tend to link less than you do, but do you need links for temperate, tropical, humidity?
  • doi:10.1007/s10267-010-0039-6 seems relevant; it recognizes Astraeus koreanus as a variety of this species
  • "Until recently, the genus Astraeus was thought to contain only two species."—Apparently, Astraeus koreanus was proposed as a separate species in 1976.
  • Why are you including information from Thailand, when Phosri et al. (2007) have found that A. hygrometricus doesn't occur there?
  • I don't know if they explicitly say it doesn't occur there, but rather that all the samples they tested were not it. Regardless, point taken, I have removed the Thailand info and moved it to Astraeus odoratus. Sasata (talk) 23:09, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Phosri et al. (2007) and Fangfuk et al. (2010) suggest that not only are some Asian species distinct from A. hygrometricus, true A. hygrometricus from France may also be a different species from the one recorded in North America, the Mediterranean, and Japan (Fangfuk et al., 2010:298).
  • Yes, I don't know how I missed adding this, it's there now. Sasata (talk) 23:09, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • "(2.5–5 cm (1.0–2.0 in) long)"—it's better to avoid nested parentheses
  • Removed this bit, it got separated from its citation. Sasata (talk) 23:09, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Astraeus pteridis is also found on the Canary Islands (Fangfuk et al., 2010).
  • Be consistent in using title case or sentence case for common names.
  • Fixed the one instance I could find. Sasata (talk) 23:09, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Actually, I meant the tree names in "Habitat, distribution, and ecology" (now fixed myself; not sure why I didn't do that yesterday). No strong opinion on whether you should change the capitalization in the titles of source articles. Ucucha (talk) 23:39, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ucucha (talk) 13:27, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thanks kindly for the review and critical commentary. BTW, the link you kindly added for Morgan 1889 is "expired"; might you be able to fix this? Sasata (talk) 23:09, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I was afraid of that... that website seems rather fragile. Perhaps we could link [2] instead; that link is hopefully going to be stable, but people will need to find the actual article themselves. Ucucha (talk) 23:39, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ok, I replaced with the stable url; it's not ideal, but we could reasonably assume that the reader should be able to figure it out. Sasata (talk) 03:46, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I'm now switching to support. I'm somewhat concerned that the taxonomy of this species is so confused at the moment that it's not possible to write an accurate account of this species (I suspect that what you have on this species from India and Nepal is unlikely to be really A. hygrometricus, for example), but I doubt you can do much better in that regard than you have done, so I'm happy to support. Ucucha (talk) 05:18, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support and nitpicks just two infelicities struck me Jimfbleak - talk to me? 15:35, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • to the genus of true earthstars, Geastrum, although historically, it has been taxonomically confused with them. — "them" seems to refer back to singular "genus"
  • First described in 1801 as Geastrum hygrometricus by Christiaan Hendrik Persoon, in 1885 Andrew P. Morgan... — reads as if Andrew was described as such in the absence of a clearly defined subject. Perhaps This species was first described...?
  • Thanks for reading and the support. I tweaked those sentences. Sasata (talk) 03:54, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment a really interesting article. I have a couple of minor technical questions (which may be a result of the various ref templates) but why do you have "371–4" in ref 57 and then "40–41" in ref 32? Ref 44 has a "see pg." rather than just a "see p." which seems anomalous and is there a reason why the number in ref 48 (2115) isn't 2,115? The Rambling Man (talk) 16:27, 24 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thanks for your comments TRM. I fixed the first two inconsistencies you pointed out, but regarding the third, the MoS says: "Numbers with four digits to the left of the decimal point may or may not be delimited (e.g. 1250 or 1,250)." Sasata (talk) 04:01, 27 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
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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