User:TonyMacZ/sandbox

Article Evaluation

The article that is being evaluated is Earth System Science.

Evaluating Content

Everything in the article is on topic. There are a few topics that explore beyond the topic of Earth Systems science, such as the relationship of Earth Systems and the Gaia Hypothesis. No information in the article seems out of date.

One thing that can be improved is the lack of detail specifying the scientific fields that incorporate or are related to Earth Systems science. Wikipedia articles usually link readers to articles that are part of or related to the article, if not go in depth into related articles. Not many links are given to readers if they want to learn more about the specific topics, such as groundwater hydrology or interactions between the atmosphere and the biosphere.

The article is neutral, especially in controversial topics such as the Gaia Hypothesis. Both sides of the argument are presented and provide references.

All links are working, and each reference is a peer-reviewed academic journal. No reference is from a website or online article.

Talk Page

Fascinatingly enough, the talk page is absolutely teeming with drama and passive aggressive arguments on the validity of adding in the Gaia Hypothesis. There are editors who have violated the editing policy and taken out entire sections of the Gaia Hypothesis subsection without talking with other editors. There are also conversations going on debating how much information should even be in the article regarding the Gaia Hypothesis.

The article is part of WikiProject Environment and WikiProject Systems. It is rated C-Class and of Mid-importance on the importance scale.

Question

There are many different journals and pieces of evidence that are aimed towards proving or disproving Gaia Theory. Since these opinions are related heavily to Earth Systems, why are they not put on here?

Article Selection

Survivorship Curve

The content on survivorship curves are already excellent and are written from a neutral perspective. However, not many claims have citations, with the article only having 2 citations throughout. Another minor issue with the article is the lack of reference to survivorship curve theories. They are briefly mentioned, but not expanded on.

After reading the Talk page, diagrams are also needed, specifically showing the actual data behind the different types of survivorship curves.

Articles to Explore

Khurram Nadeem, Entao Chen and Ying Zhang, A Novel Hierarchical Multinomial Approach to Modeling Age-Specific Harvest Data, Quantitative Methods in Environmental and Climate Research, 10.1007/978-3-030-01584-8_2, (29-48), (2018).

Murai, M. Res Popul Ecol (1967) 9: 75. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02514915

Underground Lake

The content on this article is lacking in the area of how it may relate to the water cycle or earth processes such as groundwater. It is also lacking a small amount of citations for the claims it made.

The talk page has nothing on it, so far.

Articles to Explore

Actinobacteria isolated from an underground lake and moonmilk speleothem from the biggest conglomeratic karstic cave in Siberia as sources of novel biologically active compounds Axenov-Gribanov D.V., Voytsekhovskaya I.V., Tokovenko B.T., Protasov E.S., Gamaiunov S.V., Rebets Y.V., Luzhetskyy A.N., Timofeyev M.A. (2016) PLoS ONE, 11 (2) , art. no. e0149216

Copley, Jon. "Ecology goes underground." (2000): 452.

Population Fragmentation

The content on this article may be a little lacking, but it is hard to say how much research is available to back up further advancements in the page's content. One major issue the page is suffering from is the lack of citations - especially in the subsection "Fragmentation Causes." Each point made in the subsection is lacking a citation or a general reference. Improvements that could be made to the page may include adding additional content and adding citations. Additional content may include links to well-known topics or case studies such as collared lizards or the effect of fragmentation on population (population is mentioned in the article but I feel like it needs to be touched upon on a deeper level due to population having a large part of population fragmentation). The Talk page is also missing any discussion related to the editing of the page.

Articles to Explore

Disrupting evolutionary processes: The effect of habitat fragmentation on collared lizards in the Missouri Ozarks Alan R. Templeton, Robert J. Robertson, Jennifer Brisson, Jared Strasburg Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences May 2001, 98 (10) 5426-5432; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.091093098

Andrén, Henrik. “Population Responses to Habitat Fragmentation: Statistical Power and the Random Sample Hypothesis.” Oikos, vol. 76, no. 2, 1996, pp. 235–242. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3546195.

Week 5 - Citation Edit

I added a citation to the wikipedia page Population fragmentation, as well as a reference. The citation was added to the following line:

Fragmentation can be natural or caused by human actions. In modern times, human activity is the most common cause.

Peer Review

Liaod18 Peer-Review

"Hey!

I saw that you haven't started your article yet. I have a few suggestions for you that may help!

For the article Plastic Soup, you already mentioned that most of the information already written is neutral, and well organized. However, it may help if you decide to structure the article a little better by writing more on how plastic soup tends to form, as most of the article is already fixated on the term and definition of plastic soup.

Another recommendation I can make is the organization of the paragraphs in the article. There are many instances where the article is written about the term, switching to other information, and then back to terms. This is unorganized, and can be structured better.

Good luck."

Kthay1997 Peer-Review

"Hey!

You've done quite a lot for your article already, and it's looking good.

I have some recommendations for you that may help in further writing your article. Adding some citations, such as your claim of different "types of glacial refugia," may help establish a tone of legitimacy. In addition to this, I think adding a few illustrations to further the information presented may definitely help improve the quality of the article."

Reflective Essay

Critiquing Articles

During the article evaluation, I learned many technical skills that occurs and operates behind the scenes in Wikipedia articles. From first glance, it may seem that anyone can edit Wikipedia whether their intention is malicious or good, but I learned that there are many preventative measures and active protection from article vandalization. For example, editing an article is not simply clicking edit and changing details as you please – it involves technicalities such as signing your name, discussion about changes, proper formatting and writing summaries of your changes. Because of the ability to view discussions on what to do with incomplete articles, I approached the article critique by reading what others have contributed already, and their reasons on why details were removed or added. This ensured that mistakes were not repeated, and editing etiquette was kept. Finally, I decided what to add to the article by looking at what was missing from a reader’s point of view; the Underground Lakes article was lacking in visuals as well as in minor details, and I decided that by adding these elements in, the article would be more complete.

Summarizing your contributions:

First edit: Included additional information on how extra-terrestrial planets could have underwater lakes/subterranean lakes too. This was a valuable addition to make the point that underwater lakes are not exclusive to Earth and occur due to natural and systematic laws that govern not only our planet, but other planets too.

Second edit: Included information on how it is primarily earth processes such as groundwater and/or the water cycle that is helping in creating these underground lakes. This was a valuable addition to my article because unlike the previous edit, it expanded on the idea that it is primarily Earth’s various systems that are responsible for underground lakes.

Third edit: I added citations explaining my points in the first edit and second edit. This is important as it provides proof of how legitimate my information was.

My article compares to earlier versions by being more detailed and having more citations. Overall, it provides more information to readers that need context on how underground lakes are formed, rather than what underground lakes are.

Peer Review:

In our class, the peer review process involved us taking a look at our classmate’s articles in order to critique and improve them. In my peer review to Liaod18, I wrote that their article (Plastic soup) was already very good, but needed a bit of work on detailing how it formed and other aspects of the concept, as the article already had a lot of detail on the definition of plastic soup. In my peer review to Kthay1997, I wrote that their article needed more citations regarding their statements on important details, such as the different types of glacial refugia to establish a better tone of legitimacy. I also suggested some illustrations to further improve the quality of their article.

Feedback:

My first edit regarding Underground Lakes was reverted (stated as good faith edits) due to lack of solid information regarding extraterrestrial underground lakes. I handled the feedback by sending a thank you message – the editor was right in that case and I do think that my statement regarding extraterrestrial underground lakes did not have enough evidence (especially from speculation from peer reviewed articles) to be put on a Wikipedia article.

Wikipedia generally:

I learned that Wikipedia is an intricate system of editing and revising, not just random editing. It also has a lot of measures of defence against vandalization. I also learned that to obtain information for Wikipedia, it is necessary to find the right sources – they must be reputable and peer-reviewed. Finding the right information to put in Wikipedia is much harder than it looks, and is good practice for searching for specific information online through online journals and articles. A Wikipedia assignment is significantly more abstract and “diy” than other assignments – this assignment requires a considerable amount of research, trial and error, and learning about something that is taken for granted every day. Finally, Wikipedia can be used to improve public understanding of our field by being a platform for information that is discovered through science. To elaborate, Wikipedia, especially in our field of Earth Systems, is a collection of information from scientific journals and articles. Because of Wikipedia, the public does not have to scour the web in order to find specific pieces of information. Wikipedia collects this information and provides it to us via unique statements and summaries. This is important as new information is being found every day, and it is essential that new (and old) information is made accessible through a platform that can be collaborated on and viewed by everyone.

Wikipedia Final Assignment - Underground Lakes

An underground lake or subterranean lake is a lake under the surface of the Earth. Such lakes may be associated with caves, aquifers, or springs. They are typically very low in salinity.

Subterranean lakes are entirely natural systems that are known to contain organisms that have completely adapted to the lack of resources inside a cave system. Cavefish are an example of these organisms, with others ranging from troglobites to amphibians such as the Olm.

Due to the difficulty navigating around cave systems, most subterranean lakes are not fully explored.

Subterranean isle in one of the 22 lakes in Cross Cave in Slovenia

Lake examples

There are many known examples of subterranean lakes. Some of the most notable ones include:

• The largest non-subglacial lake in the world is in Dragon's Breath Cave in Namibia, with an area of almost 2 hectares (5 acres). Human divers have not explored the entirety of the cave due to its immense size.

• The second largest subterranean lake is in Craighead Caverns in Tennessee, United States. It is known for its abundance of anthodites, stalactites, stalagmites, and biogenic fossils.
• Bisaro Anima, a subterranean lake found in the province British Colombia. The lake is 3.3 miles long (5.3 kilometres) and 670 metres deep.

See also

• Subglacial lake
• Subterranean river
• Subterranean waterfall