Talk:Angraecum sesquipedale/GA2

GA Review

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Hi, I will be doing this review. To save us both time, I'll do a shallow copyedit and "fix" any things I think are non-contentious, but feel free to revert or discuss if you don't agree with the changes. Then I'll leave an initial set of comments, give you time to respond, and then do a second read-through, focusing more on citations. Sasata (talk) 05:54, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

OK a copyedit was performed, which resulted in the following:

• replaced most Angcm. with A. as the standard abbreviation for genus names; note that the full binomial name is always used when it appears at the beginning of a paragraph. There's still some instances of Angcm. usage remaining in the "Hybrids" section, but I understand there might be ambiguity in using "A." in that case.
• added convert templates for most measurements. Not strictly necessary for GA I believe, but a courtesy to readers with different unit preferences, and one of my favorite templates :)
• replaced hyphens with ndashes for number ranges.
• added some needed wikilinks
• spelled out contractions (discouraged in formal writing)
• added fact tags to a couple of places that need a citation
• fixed various typos and made other MOS compliance tweaks, some of which aren't strictly a GA requirement, but make the article "neater" (imho)

Comments

• lead needs to be more fully developed, as it currently doesn't adequately summarize the contents of the article
• several figures need description captions.
• Language is not encyclopedic in some places. All occurrences of "One can understand", "One can then envision", "One could then imagine" and similar should be refactored.
• The "Related species" section is currently 2 sentences and a cladogram. More information please requested. What does it mean? What are the numbers? What's a Bayesian tree? Do we need to know it's clade 2?
• The cultivation section also needs some prose work, as it also has a slightly unencyclopedic voice, eg. "A. sesquipedale should be grown under warm to intermediate conditions and given as much light as possible without burning the leaves. One can expect a slow growth habit..."
• The Hybrids section is just a list of names and crosses... how about at least an introductory sentence or three to explain the list? Any chance of a picture of one of the hybrids?

I'll give the editors a chance to address these topics, and come back for a second read later. Sasata (talk) 07:51, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

I've a couple concerns, but I only have a enough time right now to talk about one. I'll respond to your comments above more thoroughly later today or tomorrow if I have time. With regards to changing Angcm. sesquipedale to A. sesquipedale I was a little unsure if this was the right thing to do. Originally I had the article so that it was in the form A. sesquipedale, but when I chose to add the hybrid section it became clear that it would run into conflict since many orchid breeders would know A. to stand for Aceras and not Angraecum and would probably be confused; and so I changed everything over to Angcm. throughout the article. The only problem with this was that it kind of disrupted the unwritten convention in wikipedia of abbreviating every genus with its first letter. There has been problems with this convention when naming hybrids since there are tons of orchid genera starting with the same letter that are bred together. And so The International Orchid Register assigned Angcm. to Angraecum. I have been attempting to see if there is a standard convention in wikipedia for dealing with this problem, but I haven't yet been able to find one illustrated in any article. I think though that keeping the hybrid section listed as A. sesquipedale would be a problem though since many orchid hybridists might be interested in the article just for this section and might skip straight down to it. If this were the case then they would definitely be confused since A. stands for Aceras. The other problem is that having A. sitting next to Dtps., Eugcm., Echn. etc. seems a little strange since one would be using The International Orchid Register's system of abbreviation in one place and wikipedias right next to it. I think the best solution is just to change everything in the article to Angcm. and to address wikiproject plants to attempt to establish this as a convention for orchids. I think the second best solution would be to keep everything in the bulk of the article as A. and to change everything in the hybrid section back to Angcm. and leave a foot note somewhere explaining briefly why Angcm. is used there instead of A..Chhe (talk) 16:54, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough, it will be easy to change back with find and replace. Just a note, the use of the single letter as an abbreviation for the genus name is not just Wikipedia convention, but standard convention in biology; that said, an explanatory footnote explaining why that convention is not used for orchids (and the article) would probably do the trick. Sasata (talk) 17:42, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Ok, sorry for the delay but here goes. I think most of the changes you made improve the article. As to the fact tags you added I've been attempting to go through all of the sources to see if any of them could be used as citations in their place. The first citation needed tag in the Flower section, I think can be cited using Wasserthal's 1997 paper and should be changed to 1-5 flowers. On page 344 of the paper he states the following, "The panicles of epilithic plants near Fort Dauphin consist of 1-5 flowers. Most of the circa 100 plants checked had 2-3 flowers.". His wording is a little unclear and I interpreted it to mean that the average number of flowers on a plant was between 2-3 and that it ranged from 1-5. I may be interpreting this wrong though. The second citation needed tag in the pollinator shift section I think can be replaced by the same Wasserthal citation too. Although I've been having trouble finding a direct mention by Wasserthal in that paper that the subject is a matter of debate, in the section of his paper titled "Evolution of long-spurred orchids to fit the long tongues of preadapted hawkmoths" he does directly talk about the competing opinions and attempts to argue that his new perspective is better. I think that and the fact that I haven't been able to find any post 1997 articles on this topic that resoundly confirms his predictions is good enough reason to use that citation. Also, no one has studied or observed, too my knowledge (and I've tried to search for it), the occurence by which spiders sit near Angraecum sesquipedale flowers to prey on moths. That might be another good reason why this citation could be listed there.PS. I think these sentences added might be grammatically problematic, "The moth then repeats this process at another A. sesquipedale orchid and in simultaneously fertilizes it."(Coevolution model) and "A reply to the challenge was first that same year by Hermann Müller."(Coevolution model).

Now to address your comments. I agree the lead needs to be longer and it doesn't summarize the article properly. I'm not sure how to fix it. I'll try to write something up shortly and post it on the talk page for review. As for image captions, the first uncaptioned picture was previously a gallery picture. Its of it's flowers and is rather pertinent since it illustrates the color differences in the flower. You can see that these flowers are more mint green as oppossed to the flowers shown in the image above that is darker green. Maybe the caption could read, "A. sesquipedale flowers" or something to that affect. The second uncaptioned picture below was one of Thouars original drawings of the specimen from his the first ever publication. I think its useful for that purpose. Maybe the caption could read "Original drawing included in first publication of A. sesquipedale by Thoars". The third uncaptioned picture is of the same thing, but from a different perspective. If it would go against good article criteria perhaps the same caption could be used. The fourth uncaptioned picture is of A. sesquipedale's very unusual buds. The caption could read "Flower bud". The last uncaptioned picture I'm not sure why its there since its a duplicate. I may have put it there by mistake. It should have been replaced with File:Angraecum sesquipedale04.jpg. This is a closeup of one of the flowers and whose caption could read "Closeup of flower.". As to the "One can stuff" etc. I'll try to think of a way to change them while keeping the same meaning and post the suggested change here. As to the Related Species section the reason why its so short is because there simply hasn't been much of any research done on the subject matter that I could find. That was the only article I could find that talked about genetic relationships with A. sesquipedale. There are a few though that talk in general though about Angraecum, but this was the only one that mentioned this particular species and how it falls into the evolutionary history of this genera. Even so it doesn't say much about it. Its main contribution was to include that cladogram which I thought would be useful to post. I know very little about cladistics, but I do know that the numbers shown on the cladogram are the bootstraps, which is the percentage of the time that a particular clade is maintained. They must determine this using bayesian statistics explained in the link. The truth is I don't know much more beyond that since this isn't my field of study and is just what I know from freetime reading. PS. The paper used fractions instead of percentages, wasn't sure if this was typical notation in the field. Also, they called it a Bayesian tree instead of cladogram. I assumed that this was due to the fact that they used bayesian analysis to create it. Most of the nodes are below 95% so I wasn't sure if this would be a problem, also I wasn't precisely sure if the numbers on the nodes were bootstraps or jacknifes. I defer to your opinion on any changes to this since according to your user page your a microbioligist. Hopefully you could help me in my understanding of cladistics. I put that section there primarily because despite my lack of knowledge I hoped that the info would be more useful to the reader more informed than me. I'll try to change the wording of the cultivation section and post it here. As to the hybrid section the only reason why I didn't put a sentence or two above the listing was because I couldn't find any additional information on them. I mentioned some information in the cultivation section about hybrids and I was thinking about moving it down to the hybrids section, but then I thought better of it. I think another good option would be to make hybrids a subsection of the cultivation section. Its just really tough to get info on these hybrids they are just too obscure. As for pictures thats really tough too. The two most common hybrids are the veitchii and the crestwood one and even those are extremely obscure. I don't know where I can find pictures of them. I'll keep searching though and let you know if I find one. I'm going to look at some of the orchid nurseries and see if any of them sell it; and if so I'll email them and ask them if they could provide a public domain image for wikipedia of it. I'm not sure I'll be succesful though. Tell me what you think of my suggestions so far and if you like any of them I'll post them to the article and keep you apprised of further alterations.Chhe (talk) 01:19, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Wow! You're not a fan of paragraphs, eh? :) Ok, about the lead, what I do is try to summarize each section of the article in a sentence (I'd use 2 or 3 sentences for the reproduction section) and massage the prose so it flows together. About the captions, put in your suggestions and we can tweak them on the way. Regarding the related species section, I'd be inclined to take out the cladogram completely, and explain what it means in words, leaving out details like Bayesian analysis, bootstraps and jacknifes. (Sounds like a scene in a biker bar) Remember to write for a "bright grade 10 student". I'll look through my sources and see if I can find anything to help fill out a few sentences to introduce the Hybrids section. Sasata (talk) 06:33, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

I suspect most of the Angcm. should be changed to Angraecum, and definitely avoid Dtps., Eugcm., Echn., etc. Although orchid breeders will be very familiar with the International Orchid Register abbreviations, plenty of readers will not and most readers in either category can deal with the full names. Whether abbreviated or full, the names should be linked on first occurrence (even if just to a redlink). (P.S. to say that the convention of abbreviating based on the first letter is not used for orchids would be an oversimplification; see Comparative structure of the labellum in Ophrys fusca and O. lutea (Orchidaceae) for example in which O. means Ophrys, not the International Orchid Register answer of Odontiodonia). Kingdon (talk) 22:58, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree with your reasoning to use full naming in this case, to make it easier for non-specialists (like myself!) to read. Sasata (talk) 06:33, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

I concur. These horticultural abbreviations should be avoided, except to note that it exists and is commonly used in the orchid trade. It's also common practice not to abbreviate any genus name when it starts a sentence. One other comment from me - I wondered why the images in the cultivation section are set to "frameless" instead of "thumb"; the alt-text exists, but it would be nice to see the text below the image. Cheers, Rkitko ^(talk) 00:28, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

I changed it over to thumb.Chhe (talk) 01:27, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Hi, what's our status with this review? Sasata (talk) 15:09, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

No response from the nom, who has been inactive for a while. Am failing the GAR for now but feel free to renominate after the suggested improvements are completed. Sasata (talk) 21:13, 21 October 2009 (UTC)