Wikipedia:Peer review/Nucleic acid design/archive1

Nucleic acid design

This peer review discussion has been closed.
This is my first attempt at promoting an article to featured status, and I'm interested in any feedback that will help improve the article. Feedback I'm especially interested in includes: What improvements do the article need to fulfill the Good article/Featured article criteria? Which level do you think it is closer to? Also, is the article comprehensive enough, or does it need to be expanded further?

Of course, any feedback is welcome and appreciated. Thanks! Antony–22 (^talk⁄_contribs) 01:13, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Comments

• My guess is that this one won't make it at FAC, not because there's anything wrong with the article, but because it's a bit short and a bit technical. Most of the frequent reviewers probably won't be attracted to it in its current form. Still, when you're finished with this review process, I'll be happy to copyedit it. - Dank (push to talk) 02:34, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. This article is more technical by its nature, and it would be hard to expand it without including even more technical detail. As it is, I've tried to keep it a succinct overview of the kinds of methods used by the field, but I'd be happy to get suggestions about any other aspects that it could be expanded to cover. Antony–22 (^talk⁄_contribs) 01:47, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Ruhrfisch comments: Thanks for your work on this article. I do not think this owuld have an easy time at WP:FAC because of MOS and other issues. With FAC in mind, here are some suggestions for improvement.

• A model article is useful for ideas and examples to follow. There are two FAs that I found that may be useful model articles: DNA and DNA repair
• I would make it clear in the lead that the tertiary structure involves the three-dimensional structure of the nucleic acid. The lead is supposed to be an especially accessible overview of the whole article, less technical than the body, so anything like this to make the lead more understandable helps.
• I think the article needs more references to pass at FAC. For example, in Fundamental concepts the three types of structure and this statement need refs: These goals can be achieved through the use of a number of approaches, including heuristic, thermodynamic, and geometrical ones. Almost all nucleic acid design tasks are aided by computers, and a number of software packages are available for many of these tasks.
• The first paragraphs of Heuristic methods and Thermodynamic models also need refs.
• My rule of thumb is that every quote, every statistic, every extraordinary claim and every paragraph needs a ref. See WP:CITE and WP:V
• Do not have external links in the body of the article - such as Software for thermodynamic modeling of nucleic acids includes Nupack,[6][7] mfold,[8] and Vienna[9]. These should be converted into references.
• The mfold external link URL is incorrect, by the way.
• There is a toolbox in the upper right corner of this PR page. The disambiguation link finder finds one dab link that needs to be fixed.
• I would avoid short (one or two sentence) paragraphs wherever possible - they make the narrative flow choppy.
• One of the FA crteria is comprehensiveness - when I see four interesting sounding articles listed as Further reading, I worry that the article is not comprehensive. Can these be converted into references and material from them incoproated into the article?
• In a related vein, the Applications section seems very short. Seems like more could be said there for all the information on approaches given.
• I also note that there is no historical information given that I noticed. When did this field begin? How? Who? Who are some of the better know names in each of the approaches described?
• Refs seem to be formatted properly and appear to all be from reliable sources.
• Images seem to be OK in terms of licenses
• Please make sure that the existing text includes no copyright violations, plagiarism, or close paraphrasing. For more information on this please see Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches. (This is a general warning given in all peer reviews, in view of previous problems that have risen over copyvios.)

Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). I do not watch peer reviews, so if you have questions or comments, please contact me on my talk page. Yours, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:44, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the extensive comments. The referencing and style issues can be dealt with fairly easily. Three of the four articles in Further Reading are already used as references, and the fourth isn't just because it is new and I haven't taken a closer look at it yet. I like to use the Further Reading section to highlight reviews and books that a reader would actually want to look at for a deeper understanding of the topic, even those that are already used as references. In other articles Further Reading is often used as a dump for random references that aren't integrated as inline citations, and I seek to avoid that here. I can also fill out the Applications section and add a History section, but that will take a bit more work. Antony–22 (^talk⁄_contribs) 20:23, 25 April 2011 (UTC)