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Fin Whale

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Previous peer review: Wikipedia:Peer review/Fin Whale/archive1.

A link to this article appeared on Wikipedia's main page on October 23 in the current events section. It has been cleaned up significantly and in-line citations added since its last peer review. I'd like to get an idea of what it would need to push it into good or featured article quality. An older version of this article was listed as a featured article candidate and time hasn't run out on that yet even though I don't think it's getting many eyeballs any more, so I'm not sure if I'm doing things out of order by requesting another peer review at this point. Neil916 (Talk) 07:51, 23 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Cetaceans project or not, "fin whale" is a sufficiently common-sounding term that it looks awkward capitalized. What's the reasoning behind that standard?
    It's a long debate, and I agree that it looks awkward. See some of the historical discussions at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (fauna), Talk:Spinifex Hopping Mouse, and other places. It's not a standard that I support, but for now it's the community consensus and I have not been able to generate any consensus to change it yet.
  • The phylogenetic tree and Image:Fin whale.jpg clash on my screen, so that the lower image is pushed to the right, leaving an unslightly leftmost gap.
    When I view the article at 800x600 resolution, I see that the taxobox and the phylogenetic tree get squished together, so I get several one-word lines mashed between the images, but I don't see the problem with the Image:Fin whale.jpg image, which is in the next section. What browser are you using and at what screen resolution?
    1920x1200, Firefox under Windows. I still see the problem at 1600x1200 though. Opabinia regalis 00:32, 28 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    Hmmm...I don't think I have a system available with the horsepower to handle 1920x1200 to test it myself, but it would explain the problem since the paragraphs would be very wide and shallow. In HTML markup, there is a way to add a tag to say "don't insert this picture until the left/right/both margin(s) are clear" or something to that effect, so I'll try to figure out how to implement that in Wikipedia. I had been assuming the problem you were describing was a result of your screen resolution being too low. Neil916 (Talk) 07:30, 28 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    Ok, I've experimented with inserting breaks between sections and repositioning the images. Can you check if this is still a problem on your browser? I don't have a system that can display greater than 1280x1024, and it looks ok on that resolution and lower resolutions. Neil916 (Talk) 16:58, 1 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Do you know what exactly the branch lengths on the phylogenetic tree represent? (Genetic distance or assumed time to coalescence, or nothing in particular?)
    As I understand it, the lengths of the branches do not mean anything. The branches represent evolutionary divergences, not timelines. So, for example, the Rorqual phylogenetic tree shows that the Bryde's Whale has a closer evolutionary relationship to the Sei Whale than the Southern Minke Whale.
    OK - sometimes these are plotted with an explicit axis; just wanted to make sure it was correct. Opabinia regalis 00:32, 28 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Why the size difference between hemispheres? Is the magnitude of that difference statistically significant?
    I'm not sure I understand your question. Are you saying size in terms of the size of the North Atlantic Fin Whale vs. the size of the Antarctic Fin Whale? Are you referring to the size of the existing population? The size of the habitat range? The primary reason why the three main groups of Fin Whales (North Pacific, North Atlantic, and Antarctic) are described is because they are generally recognized as different subspecies that do not interact or interbreed.
    I was referring to this sentence: "It reaches lengths of up to 24 meters (79 ft) in the northern hemisphere and 26.8 meters (88 ft) in the southern hemisphere". If that's referring to the northern and antarctic species, it would be clearer to name the species rather than the location; I read it as implying regional variations. Opabinia regalis 00:32, 28 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    I believe it's an inconsistency resulting from different sources that referred to the regional variations in terms of location rather than subspecies. I'll work on that section. Neil916 (Talk) 07:30, 28 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The whale has a series of 56-100 pleats or grooves along the bottom of the body...." - any chance of an up-close image of this?
    I doubt it, due to the difficulty of photographing this fast whale. The image of the whale shown on the stamp does depict the grooves, and the diagram on Baleen whale also shows the grooves, but I'm not sure if including that diagram would be too redundant on this article. What do you think?
    That's fine - I think the other diagram might be extraneous considering this has quite a few images already, but I don't have a strong opinion. Opabinia regalis 00:32, 28 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • The prose could use some minor work; in particular there's a lot of switching between singular "the fin whale..." and plural "they..." (eg "The Fin Whale was relatively safe from most whalers due to its quick speed and the fact that they prefer the open sea")
    Thanks, I've been hunting down such inconsistencies.
  • "most hunted cetacean in history" is a big claim without a footnote, even if it may be implicitly supported by the next sentences.
    Agreed. I have removed it until a source can be found.
  • I don't know anything about whaling, but 10 whales per year for a widely distributed species doesn't sound like a lot. Some sense of scale (eg, a corresponding number of some non-endangered and plentiful species) would be useful here.
    I'm not sure that the article is trying to imply that 10 whales per year is a lot and I've taken care not to imply whether it is good or bad per se, it's simply providing information of the current status of whaling for Fin Whales.
    There doesn't have to be any implication one way or another; it's just hard to have a sense of scale on the subject. Compared to the earlier numbers (750,000 in 74 years? wow.) it seems like a miniscule "why bother" kind of number. Opabinia regalis 00:32, 28 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    I think the relevance is that this whale is still listed as "endangered" by several international agencies, so any commercial hunting of the animal is still very controversial. I've uncovered more sources containing information about different causes of mortality for this whale, natural and not, so I'm hoping to expand/rewrite this section in the next few days.Neil916 (Talk) 07:30, 28 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Why is there a redlink in See also for Restaurants in Iceland?
    It was a nonsense addition from an anonymous user last night who has a history of adding nonsense to that article. I removed it an left a note on the user's talk page.

Opabinia regalis 06:24, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your feedback. Neil916 (Talk) 16:16, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, sorry, I forgot to come back to this. The image conflict problem is resolved now. Looks very good! Some of the recent material, ie in the abundance section and the lead, could use a quick prose run-through (for example, "This shows a substantial recovery compared to a survey in 1976 showing..."). IIRC naked years don't need wikilinks, and somewhere there's a mention of the "2007-2008 season" where only one of the two years is linked. The abundance section has a lot of great data - maybe a table would help to keep track of which trends are in which places? Opabinia regalis 03:06, 2 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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