Wikipedia:Peer review/Black mamba/archive1

Black mamba[edit]

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A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for November 2008.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I want to know how I can make improvements for a possible GA article.

Thanks, Brain Dead 7 (talk) 23:18, 17 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Finetooth comments: Briefly, here are a few suggestions for improvement.

The first thing to do is to respond to the clean-up tags, particularly the big one above "Cultural references". Most of the references are to pop culture and so remote from the snake itself that I'd suggest removing them from the article. It would probably be possible to turn the best few into a paragraph or two of prose.

The other clean-up tag notes the lack of sources for the pest-regulation claim. Actually, the whole "Lifestyle" section lacks a source and needs one. A good rule of thumb is to source every paragraph, every statistic, every claim that might be challenged, and every direct quote. The in-line citation for a direct quote such as “Sudden movements will cause them to strike”, should appear directly after the quote.

The lead should be a summary or abstract of the whole article. Ideally, it includes at least a mention of the main ideas in the text sections, but it doesn't include ideas that are undeveloped in those sections. The existing lead has physical descriptions of the snake, but the main text has no description section. On the other hand, the main text has a "Breeding" section, but the lead doesn't mention it. Please see WP:LEAD.

Citations should include author name (if available), title, publisher, date of publication (if available), url (if a web source), and access date (if a web source). Some of the citations are complete, but many are not. The family of cite templates is handy for doing citations. Please see WP:CITE for a general explanation and WP:CIT for templates.

I'd suggest looking at the biology sublist of Featured Articles WP:FA for models to imitate. I don't see a snake on the FA list, but just looking at the section heads for Blue Iguana, for example, makes me wonder about "Taxonomy", "Distribution and habitat", and "Conservation" for the black mamba. These might give you some ideas for expansion.

If I were working on the article, I'd look for more sources, particularly scientific ones. A trip to the library might help.

You should deal with the complications discussed on the talk page of the Mamba article.

I hope these brief suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 04:28, 24 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]