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Revision as of 18:44, 30 November 2006

Sei whale received a peer review by Misplaced Pages editors, which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

Sei whale has been listed as one of the good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it. Review: No date specified. To provide a date use: {{GA|insert date in any format here}}. (Reviewed version).

Cetaceans

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Cetaceans, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of cetaceans on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.CetaceansWikipedia:WikiProject CetaceansTemplate:WikiProject CetaceansCetaceans Cetaceans To do: edit history watch purge Here are some Cetaceans WikiProject tasks you can do. Patrol: Look through the Category:Cetaceans for recent changes Assessment: Unassessed cetacea articles and unknown-importance cetacea articles. Copyedit/Formatting: Bottlenose dolphin, Beached whale, Cetacea Expand: Hector's beaked whale, Ginkgo-toothed beaked whale, Shepherd's beaked whale, Archaeoceti, Cumberland Sound beluga, Blubber, Baiji, Humpback dolphin, Amazon river dolphin Verify: Spinner dolphin, Whale, Dolphin, Cetacea Stubs: Bolivian river dolphin (new species), Cephalorhynchus Images: Pictures of the baiji are wanted.

{{FAC}} should be substituted at the top of the article talk page

Map issues

The map: I think a lot of what I've put at Talk:Blue Whale also applies here too (e.g. does Sei Whale ever occur in the North Sea and Baltic Sea, I'm not aware of any records) - anyone care to comment? - MPF 00:30, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Dive sequence

What does "The whale's dive sequence is more regular than its close relative." in the ==Behaviour== section mean? What close relative? Gene Thomas 11:43, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Physical Description

The beginning of the Physical Description section contained duplicated and slightly contradictory weights for adults. Also, the weights were given variously in tons and tonnes; I've settled on tonnes, which is quite possibly wrong. I'll try to find a source for correct weights. I always thought a ton was 2000lb, and a tonne 1000kg, shows what I know. Kfor 11:28, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

GA passed

This is definitely a Good Article. The prose is well-written and easily understandable by a non-specialist reader, well-referenced with many peer-reviewed journals as sources, broad enough and nicely illustrated with diagrams (I especially like the physical characteristic figure). It is really like reading an encyclopaedic book. Great job and well done for the hard works of the editors. This article has a very good prospect for featured article, but there are still many things needed to improve this article for the FA-level. I have put some comments below for further improvements:

• You don't need to wikilink everythings. Especially for metrics, you don't have to ask readers to point so many times of what is kilograms, lb, metres, etc. Please find some terms/jargons that are in the context of the subject.
• The section name of "Historic and current abundance" is not good. What is the meaning of historic abundance? Also avoid "current", because the term can be inaccurate in the future.
• Per WP:MOS, only list items that are not yet wikilinked in the See Also section. Whaling and International Whaling Commission haven been linked so many times, so you don't need to put it again there. Please check also the other items.
• To help better verifiability of the article, please include also URL links of certain articles. In many journals, articles have been identified with DOI and you can use url= parameter in the {{cite ...}} template. For example, in this citation:
  • Yablokov, A.V. (1994). "Validity of whaling data". Nature. 367: 108.

  You can use url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/367108a0 to write:

  • Yablokov, A.V. (1994). "Validity of whaling data". Nature. 367: 108.

Good luck for further improvements. — Indon (reply) — 14:53, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

• I have responded on the peer review page. Neil916 (Talk) 20:52, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Other comments

I have looked reponses of my comments in the above thread at the PR page. Since this article has been submitted to FAC, I'd rather to make other comments here in the talk page. Below are just small writing comments for a better encyclopaedic article:

• Please replace "the most current (YYYY) ....." phrases into "As of YYYY, ...". The word "current" is vague in time, because there would be another data in the future that "the most current" becomes obsolete.
• Also with "Current whaling" section name. I would suggest "Post ICW protection whaling condition" or something like that.
• The "Abundance" section name is better than previous one, but it is still an awkward section name. How about: "Population distribution" ?
• There is one citation from LoveToKnow Classic Encyclopedia. This is not a reliable source as authors are anonymous. Please find more reliable one.

— Indon (reply) — 08:57, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

• Ok, I've taken care of all but the last one for now. I'll come back later and replace the text cited by the LoveToKnow encyclopedia. Neil916 (Talk) 00:21, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
  • I've replaced the reference for the Rudolphi's Rorqual. Couldn't find anything other than that one reference that indicated that the name was only used in old texts, so I removed that part. Neil916 (Talk) 16:16, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Featured article candidate

The Sei Whale (pronounced: or ), Balaenoptera borealis, is a baleen whale, the third largest member of the Balaenopteridae family after the Blue Whale and the Fin Whale.

Why not use Rorqual since you used the vernacular for 'ballen whale?' While many will have not heard of either, 'rorqual' is a word used in whaling communities.

The Sei Whale can be found worldwide in a band stretching from about 60 degrees south latitude to 60 degrees north latitude, preferring deep off-shore waters and tending to avoid tropical waters and semi-enclosed bodies of water such as the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Hudson Bay, the North Sea, and the Mediterranean Sea. In general, the Sei Whale migrates annually from cool and subpolar waters in summer to temperate and tropical waters for winter, although in some areas the exact migration routes are not known.

This doesn't make sense to me. Your latitudes have almost excluded it from subpolar waters, and you say it avoids tropical waters, then it winters in tropical waters. Huh?

Following large-scale commercial hunting of the species between the late-nineteenth and late-twentieth centuries when over 238,000 individuals were caught, the Sei Whale is now an internationally protected species,

"Over 238,000" were caught total? Caught or killed? Taken is sometimes used, but whales aren't generally catch-and-release. "During large-scale commercial hunting of the species from the late-nineteenth to the late-twentieth centuries over 238,000 individuals were killed. The Sei Whale is now an internationally...."

All in all the choice of content of the lead section is superb, can whoever did this write an example for one of the botany plant family articles? (I'm not kidding.)

The species was first described by René-Primevère Lesson in 1828, but a further description was given by Karl Asmund Rudolphi and the species is often referred to as Rudolphi's Rorqual in older texts.

I'm a little unclear about "but a further description." What did that lead to? Is that why it's called Rudolphi's Rorqual, also because you didn't use this word, 'rorqual' in the lead paragraph, and you didn't link to it, it needs defined. Oh, I see, you do define it in the next sentence. I think the word needs introduced earlier.

Other common names for the species include the Pollack Whale and Coalfish Whale.

"Pollack Whale" already defined in lead, but why "Coalfish Whale?" Etymology needed.

latin needs capitalized "Latin." Other comments:

Mention general trend in size dimorphism northern and southern species of marine mammals, the pectoral fins in the picture look long like a humpback's but are described as "short," short compared to what, for its family?, mention that paired blowholes are characteristic of Mysticeti, 'deep' used excessively in habitat section. Still more things, will look more. Overall, the content choice is superb, the article's pretty good and, imo, will be successfully tweaked into a FA without much serious work, but quite a bit of piddling. KP Botany 23:25, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Response: Addressing your comments in order:

• Done.
• I removed the latitudes and used geographic references instead, and the wintering in tropical waters should have been subtropical waters. I have made that correction.
• That is an example of my trying to avoid overuse of the words "hunted" and "killed". I thought that catching a whale was fairly equivalent, because as you say, whales aren't generally catch-and-release, especially in the context of commercial hunting. I've scanned the article for "caught" and "catch" and replaced all instances with "taken", except for reference names and direct quotes. And as far as botany articles, I admit that botany wasn't my strongest (or favorite) subject in school due to botanists' love of coming up with new and unique words for virtually everything they possibly can put a label on, and thus far have steered well clear of botany articles. But simple copyediting is a different story.
• Expanded the naming section, and in the process discovered a 1911 National Geographic article with a lot of interesting information that can be integrated into other whale articles.
• Capitalized Latin.

I'm out of time for now, will address the last section and the other issue with repetitiveness you raised on the FAC page when I get a chance later. Neil916 (Talk) 17:32, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

• I don't understand your comment, "Mention general trend in size dimorphism northern and southern species of marine mammals". The first paragraph of the "Physical description and behaviour" section does mention that the Southern Sei Whales are larger than the Northern Sei Whales. Or are you referring to a comment like, "similar to other species of marine mammals, the populations in the southern hemisphere are larger than their northern hemisphere counterparts" ?
• The anatomy diagram is a generalized picture of a baleen whale, not specifically of a Sei Whale. I didn't produce it, it may have been based upon a humpback whale, hence the very long pectoral fins.

• I don't think they're quite long enough to be a humpback's, but it may be, they do look long in the picture, to me. However, the sentence says, "The snout is pointed and the pectoral fins are short." This should include something about how they're short, are they short like most Baleen whales, short for the size of the animal, what. Also, clicking on the link, this is an exact quote from the website and must be in quotation marks--as all exact quotes should be. I think this sentence needs an additional source, or specific research.

• I have clarified this section.

• Mentioned paired blowholes being distinctive of baleen whales.
• I think I must have removed the redundant references to "deep" in one of my earlier edits, because the word is only used once now.
• Let me know if you find more.

-- Neil916 (Talk) 16:28, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh, the comment about the sexual dimorphism, Sei Whales are given as an example of some specific exception to sexual dimorphism in relation to their social structure in biology texts. I'll have to research it, as I was hoping the comment would jar your memory from your readings, rather than require research. Oh, I see, since I lumped that in with a question about whether or not there was north/south difference, then deleted that due to something in the article, but deleted the wrong part--so, apologies, the question as written is incomprehensible. It's just about sexual dimorphism of Sei Whales, not about north/south trends.

I'll print it out, go through it entirely, and get back to you asap, as I really like the article and would love to see it get featured. KP Botany 17:44, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

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