Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Dolphin drive hunting/archive1

Dolphin drive hunting

Self-nomination. The article has had a peer review, all issues mentioned in which have been adressed, and has recently been promoted to good article status after correcting a few minor issues. I feel the article is as neutral as possible, especially considering the controversial nature of the subject. Further, it is a subject I suspect many people will find interesting yet do not know much about. BabyNuke 15:36, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

• Comment In the lead sentence "...method of hunting dolphins and occasionally other small whale species by..." shouldn't "other whale species" be replaced with "other cetaceans"? Dolphins aren't usually considered whales but both dolphins and whales are considered cetaceans. Joelito (talk) 15:44, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I'll change it, though I do not believe it matters much. A Sperm Whale is also a cetacean, and dolphins are definatly whales, toothed whales to be exact, but in popular usage the word whale is usually only applied to the larger species so I can understand the possiblity of confusion, but then again, the exact defintion of cetacean is probably also not clear to many. An other option would be saying "other small toothed whales". I'll replace it with "small cetaceans" for now. BabyNuke 16:05, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

• Object Several concerns:

• The article needs sources in several key places.
  • "Exactly how many dolphins are killed in Japan this way each year isn't known, but the number is believed to be several thousand each year." by whom is this number believed?
  • "In ancient Hawaii fishermen used to hunt dolphins for their meat, driving them onto the beach and killing them. In their ancient legal system, dolphin meat was considered to be kapu (forbidden) for women together with several other kinds of food." Needs a source.
  • "About a thousand pilot whales are killed this way each year on the Faroe Islands, but numbers vary greatly per year. The amount of pilot whales killed each year is not believed to be a threath to the sustainability of the population, but the brutality of the hunt has resulted in international criticism especially from animal welfare organisations." Source?

Referenced now. BabyNuke 21:17, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

• The prose needs a copyedit.

I suppose I'm not the best judge of that, but in the GA review it was stated that the article had compelling prose (see talk page). BabyNuke 21:17, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

• I would prefer the removal of inline external jumps.

I see no other option. I only do this twice and only because these organisations have no article here at wikipedia nor are they really notable enough for them to be expeceted to get one. So linking to their websites I find a very reasonable and also the most reader friendly alternative. BabyNuke 21:17, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

• Does criticsm only apply to Japan? Joelito (talk) 17:43, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Strangely enough, it does. There is some criticism in all cases, but it all pales in comparison to the criticism the Japanese hunts receive for some reason. Just go look at some of the websites of animal welfare organisations, only a few if any mention any of the other drive hunts and even then, the main focus is always Japan. BabyNuke 21:17, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

• Object—1a and 2a. As soon as I saw the comment above that at GA it was regarded as being compelling prose, I thought "uh-oh, better take a look at this".
  • "Dolphin drive hunting, also called dolphin drive fishing, is a method of hunting dolphins and occasionally other small cetaceans by driving them together with boats and then usually in to a bay or on to a beach, preventing their escape by closing off the route to the open sea or ocean with boats and nets." This very first sentence is on the long side; why not split it with a semicolon or full-stop. "Into" and "onto" should be single words.
  • The second sentence, which is tiny by comparison, contains "hunted this way", and this phrase appears again a line later.
  • "The largest number of dolphins hunted this way is in Japan, but the practice also occurs on the Solomon Islands, the Faroe Islands and Peru." "But" is a false contrast here.
  • "In most cases, dolphins are hunted for their meat, however, some dolphins captured in drive hunts end up in dolphinariums." The "however" contrast may be OK, but would be smoother as "Dolphins are mostly hunted for their meat; some are captured and end up in dolphinariums."
  • The lead doesn't prepare me for the article.

Needs considerable work. Tony 13:19, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Could you clarify as to what the lead is missing? Fixed the other issues you mentioned, though that was only the lead so I assume you could write an A4 with similar problems. BabyNuke 15:19, 18 October 2006 (UTC)