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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Indon (talk | contribs) at 11:20, 22 January 2007 (→[[Triceratops]]: I'm okay now, close this discussion.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Triceratops

Triceratops has undergone two wikiproject dinosaur collaborations in the past year and I feel it is now ready for FA status. I have read it and adjusted the sentence flow so I feel it is easy to read (i.e. well written), comprehensive, and has a reference section comparable to other dinosaur FAs. It has never been part of an edit war and has been fairly stable and conforms in format (headings and subheadings) to other dino FA pages. It is of comparable length (30.8 kB (4439 words)) to other dino FAs - Stegosaurus (36.5 kB (5328 words)) and Diplodocus (30.5 kB (4474 words)). nominated by Cas Liber 05:24, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support - as co-author and nominator Cas Liber 05:26, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Comprehensive article on a well-known dinosaur genus. 50+ inline cites from reliable sources (nearly all primary references from professionals in the field). Excellent research from the Wikipedia:WikiProject Dinosaurs team. Prose not overly technical; any high school student should be able to understand the content. Length exceeds several other Featured Articles on dinosaurs. Current lead seems to summarize the article's contents. Illustrations give a sense of what the animal looked like both in life and as a fossil. Only one list (the list of species), so no "listcruft" feel. No objection here (for the record, I am a member of the WP:Dinosaurs team). Firsfron of Ronchester 14:32, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - as co-author. It covers all of the topics that have attached themselves to this distinctive and popular dinosaur in a readable way, with numerous good illustrations, and is heavily referenced. I also support the species list, because it otherwise transforms into a paragraph that is very difficult to follow. J. Spencer 15:33, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - as good as Dinosaur or Velociraptor. igordebraga ≠ 18:23, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: It looks good overall. I just have a few minor issues that I'd like to see addressed:
  • Units are not separated from their respective values by a non-breaking space (&nbsp;) as recommended in the MoS units of measurement. So the unite can get wrapped around to the following line. (thanks. done. picked up the last 2 (I think))
  • The following technical terms may be unfamiliar to some readers and could be linked: thorax, ichnological, cladistic, and Jurassic. (done)
  • centrosaurines and chasmosaurines might have been linked, although I see they are linked a sentence or two later. (they don't refer to the dinosaurs but subfamilies. will address this as it is a bit confusing)
  • "RFTRA analysis" is used but not defined. The reader is left wondering what is meant.
  • What is the "Hatcher-Marsh-Lull monograph"? Could this be clarified? (I've just added a couple of adjectives to clarify it a bit - best to link to a stub as it covers all horned dinosaurs and is a tale in itself)
  • In the sentence "amplify and\or receive low-frequency sounds," could the "and\or" be replaced by something a little more polished? (done)
  • In the last paragraph of "Functions of the horns and frill", please replace the hyphen with an &mdash; (done. commas probably better anyway)
Thank you. — RJH (talk) 21:50, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Looks good, but a number of things need to be fixed before it can reasonably contend for FA status:
    • please do away with years and decade links that are not parts of full dates, per WP:MOSNUM. (check)
    • Second paragraph of intro needs refs, since that content is not present in the article (it should probably be moved into "Depiction in popular media." (rewritten)
    • Intro does not properly summarize the "Paleobiology" section (rewritten)
    • The "Depiction in popular media" section is too short, and has no reference (that there is a "main article") is irrelevant to the section's status.
    • The name etymology is best integrated under "discoveries and species" (see comment below)
    • The "Origins" section suffers from a similar shortness. Additionally, placing evolutionary origins as a subsection of classification history leaves to be desired.
    • The lead states that "no full skeletons have been found," but there are several illustrations of apparently complete skeletons, or nearly so, in the article. Maybe the footnote should comment on that. (check?)
    • in "classification," it's not stated clearly and early enough in which subfamilies each of the two discussed classification put Triceratops. (check)
    • wordings:
      • "one of the last members of the Ceratopsidae" is ambiguous. Latest to go extinct? (check)
      • "In the first overview of horned dinosaurs in 1907"—this phrase is very poorly worded (check)
      • "two lineages, one of Monoclonius and Centrosaurus preceding Triceratops, the other with Ceratops and Torosaurus."—It's not clear that Triceratops is included in that first lineage. Sounds like three lineage, with the genus sandwiched in the middle. (check)
      • "not the only ceratopsian of its time at the end of the Cretaceous"—wordy and clumsy. (check)
      • "it was indeed an uncommon dinosaur"—It being which species? (check)
      • "The jaws were tipped with deep, narrow beaks"—I'd think a given animal could only have one beak... (check, although the idea was that there was a horny section to both upper and lower jaw)
      • "this beak may also have been used in self-defense."—Reference? (check [deleted])
      • "batteries of 36 to 40 columns"—This stumps me and invoke WP:JARGON. (check)
      • "vertical to near-vertical shearing configuration."—Same as previous (check)
      • "Like all ceratopsid teeth, the roots are split, making them very distinctive fossils."—Compared to what? They can't be that distinctive if all other species in the family have such split roots! (check)
      • "Their great size and massive teeth"—This needs to be re-written so that "their" clearly refers to Triceratops individuals/fossils instead of the teeth. (check)
      • "with some suggesting palms and cycads,[30][31] while others ferns in fern prairies."—Poor choice of conjunction. (check)
      • "Lull postulated that the frill may have served as anchor points for the jaw muscles to aid in chewing"—Why would that location be advantageous? (e.g. what arguments did he offer in avor of this theory) (check)
      • "the idea being discussed by C.H. Sternberg in 1917 and 70 years later by Robert Bakker."—Sounds like a "first" is missing here. (check)
      • "Related to combat with predators using horns, Triceratops are classically shown engaging each other in combat with horns locked."—The connection is at best unclear between the two parts of this sentence. (check)
      • "Additionally, although pitting, holes, lesions, and other damage on Triceratops skulls (and the skulls of other ceratopsids) is often attributed"—The subject of "is attributed" is "pitting, holes, lesions, and other damage," so the verb should be plural. (check)
      • "The large frill also may helped to amplify"—??? grammar? (check)
      • audacity references, more references, and ever more references:
        • "Instead, non-pathological bone resorption, or unknown bone disease, are suggested as causes." (check)
        • "This has also been proposed for the plates of Stegosaurus, although this use alone would not account for the bizarre and extravagant variation seen in different members of the Ceratopsidae. This observation is highly suggestive of what is now believed to be the primary function, display." (check)
        • "The large eyes and shortened features, a hallmark of "cute" baby mammals, also suggest that the parent Triceratops may have cared for its young."
      • "Evidence that display either in courtship or in other social behaviour can be seen in the fact that horned dinosaurs differ markedly in their adornments" Is "display" here a verb or a noun?? (check)
    • External links in the text should be put as notes, possibly content notes.
    • The second paragraph under "Paleobiology" is unreferenced. (check)
    • Two different Sternbergs are specifically mentioned in the article, but in numerous instances, only referred to via their family names. These should all be disambiguated. (check)
    • "The theory of their use in sexual display was first highlighted by Davitashvili"—If it was only "highlighted," then it had been "proposed" before. (check)
  • Circeus 00:12, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Traditionally, in dinosaur articles, the etymology comes in the introduction. J. Spencer 01:03, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • Sure. It just struck me that a much better location existed. Also, I took in mind the big debate over references or not in the lead, and name etymologies are a frequent causes of that. I am myself hardly better: my brainchild Verbascum thapsus has the same fault.Circeus 01:12, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        • Hey, no biggie. Anyway, I think I've gotten to a lot of your smaller comments. What do you think? J. Spencer 01:25, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        • For reference, fellow editors, since I'm knocking off for a while: Here are the concerns I've done nothing with yet.
          • The "Depiction in popular media" section is too short, and has no reference (that there is a "main article" is irrelevant to the section's status). (found ref for Wyoming on gov't site, still looking for SD - added a couple of pop cult appearances. Trick s to avoid it looking listy)(got SD for you, Cas)
          • The "Origins" section suffers from a similar shortness. Additionally, placing evolutionary origins as a subsection of classification history leaves to be desired. (tricky this. especially with cladistics origins and classification are closely linked. I've added a bit how relations relates to ancestry - question is - is it worth putting bit about ceratopsia and pachycephalosauria but I feel that is beyond the scope of the article really)
          • "The large eyes and shortened features, a hallmark of "cute" baby mammals, also suggest that the parent Triceratops may have cared for its young." (needs a reference)(I've looked in the original article and press releases, but I haven't found this yet)
          • External links in the text should be put as notes, possibly content notes.
        • J. Spencer 01:54, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I went through the entire article to fix the issue that the genus is frequently used in the singular, even though it contains more than one species. Even though 90% of dinosaurs are identified for the public only by their genus name, both singular and plural were used in the article.
I fixed a couple of phrasings in the process, but this closer reading brought forth a few extra sentences that could use improvement:

  • "These new finds have been vital in illustrating the origins of horned dinosaurs in general in Asia in the late Jurassic and early Cretaceous, and the lineage of Triceratops for at least 10 million years in North America."—too much "in"s! And the sentence just hardly makes sense. What does "the lineage of Triceratops for at least 10 million years in North America" means??(rewritten)
  • "However, progress in classification using such techniques has clarified some questions and raised new ones."—there are no "techniques" mentioned earlier that can be readily related to this comment. (deleted as nonsequitor)
  • "He had realized that there were horned dinosaurs by the next year and his publication of Ceratops, based on fragmentary skull material from the somewhat older (late Campanian) Judith River Formation of Montana, but he still believed B. alticornis to be a Pliocene mammal."—This is a garden path sentence: the phrasing makes it sound as if "and his publication of Ceratops" introduces a new idea. (rewritten)

Circeus 20:00, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose (for now)
  1. Remove external links from the main article (don't mix citation style).
  2. Please add links in the citations for easy source verification. For articles in journals, they have DOI number that you can use.
  3. I found several links to mailing list and one is used as reference. Per WP:RS, mailing list is not a reliable source.
  4. "How many species?" heading fails WP:MSH.
— Indon (reply) — 21:31, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Re 2: they don't always have DOIs, but I agree links should be provided whenever possible.
Re 4: It's used to show that "trike" is used as a nickname for the genus. The link should be to specific posts, though).
Circeus 21:42, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
To Circeus, I edited your posts (moved down) to avoid confusion. Please do not mix other comments with yours as people might confuse who said which.
Re. mailing list. The reason is not to link the mailing list or to a specific post, but source to an e-mail is not reliable. — Indon (reply) — 22:04, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I meant that this was probably the only reasonable way to source that statement. Of course, considering it seems to be in common use only within the dinosaur enthusiasts community, maybe it isn't worth of mention. The "three-horn" nick probably calls for a mention of The Land Before Time.Circeus 22:18, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Since it's an informal name, how else are we supposed to reference it other than by using a informal source? Also, the overwhelming majority of the articles lack DOIs, as they either predate PDFs or come from journals that don't use them (Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology) J. Spencer 22:24, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • My point is, if there are links/DOIs/things that can be provided, they should be. If there are none, there's no reason to gripe, but maybe JSTOR has some of these, for example?Circeus 22:53, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Just a snap comment while seeing links added here. Perhaps it's better to make a link only to its title, not the whole citation. You may want to look examples at WP:CITET. — Indon (reply) — 23:17, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. WP:RS is a guideline for determining whether a particular source can be relied upon to be accurate. In the case of the use of the word "Trike" to refer informally to Triceratops (similar to "T-rex"=Tyrannosaurus), the link to the Dinosaur Mailing List archives, which is hosted by the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, was used only to show that it is used informally by some; I'm not sure why any link (or cite) was truly necessary, and I see it has been removed. At the same time, I don't think a formal "Reliable source" is required for a statement which clearly states the usage is quite informal; it would be akin to requiring a citation from Webster's in discussing a specific slang term definitely not found in Webster's. If including the mention of the usage of this word is a true barrier to this article's FAC candidacy, by all means, remove it, but then the article will be (slightly) less comprehensive than it was before it was removed. As for the DOIs, J.Spencer isn't the only one who has never heard of them; I hadn't, either. None of the eight earlier Dinosaur Featured Articles required them, so this appears to be something new. C'est la vie, I suppose. :) Firsfron of Ronchester 05:58, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
My questions, as a layman reader looking to the source that goes to an email, are: is the informal name really used in the dinosaurus research community or just a slang by some teenagers in a forum? Is it only a trivia? If the name is used informally by the community, why is an email used as a source? Why not newspapers? popular magazines? or a website? And regarding DOI, now you know. :-) — Indon (reply) — 09:46, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The dinosaur mailing list is no ordinary email list , but in answer to the last sentence, newspapers, magazines and websites are all cited as sources all over wikipedia. Anyway, it leaves us with an interesting dilemma - leave in a theory posted on a mailing list populated with actual paleontologists or remove an interesting point from the Triceratops page? Cas Liber 09:55, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I believe that it is a special mailing list, so is morph-net, or ica-net, etc., but I wouldn't put a citation to a post there, even if the email came from a professor. I'm sure there are other sources and if there is a theory being developed and discussed over the expert-mailing list, I would wait for a publication for that. So, about your dilemma. If there is a website, even not a famous one, mentioning the fact in question, then it is preferrable. Here is the fact that we are discussing at: The large frill also may have helped to amplify and possibly receive low-frequency sounds,[40]..., and the [40]th citation states: ^ Anton, in prep. Acoustic amplification by the crest of Triceratops; as referenced in this Dinosaur Mailing List post with ext. link to [1]. Now, wouldn't you wait for the real publicatioin form Mr. Anton first? I'm sure he is an expert, but before a publication came, in preparation or unpublished source is still not reliable, simply because it is still subjected to change. — Indon (reply) — 10:09, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah when you put it like that...given it is a pretty minor point in the scheme of things I have removed it. My head is starting to swim in all this text - as at least three of us are trying to address these points. Can you update by striking out which ones you've felt we've dealt with? cheers (gettin' there) Cas Liber 11:06, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I strike my oppose vote, but not yet supporting it, and also my comments. I still want to see more DOI/http links in the references section to help verifiability, but don't worry about this. I'm going to help you later directly. Let's close this specific discussion first. No need to read this large chunk text again. ;-) — Indon (reply) — 11:20, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose due to all the information given above. Chickyfuzz123(user talk) 02:29, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry I don't follow - much of the above is ongoing dialogue and much of it has been addressed. Can you let us know which parts you feel are a barrier currently? cheers Cas Liber 05:08, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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