Talk:Mourning dove

As of 26 July 2012, this article is a very good article. (compare to current). This means the community feels this article is written very well. You may see the vote that promoted the article here.

First para, refs &c

The first para is swamped by the alternative names, which do not all need to be in bold, nor do they need to be in the intro. My preference would be to put the lot in a footnote. Incidentally, one can see from this page just why Linnaeus' binomial nomenclature was such an advance. More important would be to put the estimated total population size in the first para. It's tucked away in a later section. It is important to put things in the intro which are essential for readers to know once they choose to look at the page.

Refs are a bit scatty, and need to be in a more consistent format. I have done this with one or two, and added the ref to '70 million', which you did have later on the page. You need to expand refs 6 and 14. Regards, Macdonald-ross (talk) 12:06, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Macdonald-ross! Your review was extremely helpful! :) I could never thank you enough. I wonder why I didn't see those mistakes. I put the names in a footnote (I hope I did that right...) and put the estimated total population size in the first para, like you suggested. I do agree it's an essential part. I'm not sure how to make the refs more consistent, but I did expand ref 6 and the website link in ref 14 didn't seem to work so I just took it out. Also, I don't really get what you said about Linnaeus' binomial nomenclature, so I just left it as it is. Anyway, once again, thanks, and please tell me if I still have anything else to fix! ♥ingly, Bella ^{tête-à-tête} 10:13, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Hunting

The sentence "It is hunted often, with up to 70 million birds shot in the United States, both for sport and for meat." is a bit off in both length and clarity of facts. Fact wise, what time frame are we talking about with the 70 million? yearly or all time? And is there a ref for that fact? Structurally, its on the long side and could actually be 3 separate sentences.

"The mourning dove is hunted often. It is hunted for both sport and meat. Up to 70 million birds are shot in the United States <in this timeframe>. <ref>"

That would deal with the size as well as all the non SE words involved in that sentence (except "often".. that word is annoying to replace at times and is usually just ignored). 70.184.171.16 (talk) 10:34, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Did finally notice the ref and time frame down at almost the bottom of the page. The difference in the two statements though brings up another question. The statement in the intro says "for sport and for meat" while the later one (the ref'd one) states for game (food) ie. the meat part but not the sport. Does the reference cover just game hunting or sport and game hunting? 70.184.171.16 (talk) 10:42, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

I think it covers sport and game hunting. I'll try to clarify it. And I think I'll just take out the word "often" to make the sentence shorter and less abrupt, if that's okay. :) Thanks for your comments! ♥ingly, Bella ^{tête-à-tête} 08:11, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Referencing, VGA comments

The references are a mess. When using accessdates, use one style throughout the article (i.e Retrieved 2012-01-30 or 2 February 2012, but not both). The [last update] at the end of the date parameter could be removed, because if the site is updated later than the template itself isn't updated. The title in reference one looks like it's missing, reference four is unreliable because about.com takes information from Wikipedia. The work parameter shouldn't be the website but the organization that publishes the website (for example mdc.mo.gov would be Missouri Department of Conservation). All external links should use {{cite web}}, and I'll need convincing that reference 31 or 34 is reliable. For poor reference formatting, I'm opposing the article's promotion for the time being. Albacore (talk · changes) 23:43, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

I've fixed up the formatting for you Bel. Some of them are self-published websites though so I agree that they will need replacing. Osiris (talk) 03:38, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Oh, thank you, Albacore, for commenting! And many thanks to Osiris for fixing the format. I'll try to replace the self-published websites, but I might miss some of them so let me know if I do. Bella ^{tête-à-tête} 05:11, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Oh, and I'm going to check on reference 31 and 34. :) Bella ^{tête-à-tête} 05:12, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Comments:

• Watch double period in ref 29

Fixed

• Ref 25 needs some sort of a cite template, and a url would be helpful although not required

Fixed

• Ref 30 needs cite template

Fixed

• Ref 11 needs cite template

Fixed

• Ref 2 is a note, should be in a separate "notes" section.

Fixed

• Ref 3 needs cite template

I'm not sure what you mean about Ref 3. It seems to have a cite template already... :S

• Ref 5 needs cite template

I'm not sure what you mean here either. It had a cite template in the first place.

• Ref 7 and 14 should be page and not pages

Fixed

• For as many times as it's used I'm unsure of what ref 8 is...

You may check the links connected to the ISBN number to see what it is. :) I think it's a fairly reliable book.

And so on. Look for others and clean up the references. Albacore (talk · changes) 15:37, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks so much, Albacore! Your comments are really great. :D I'm awfully sorry to have the references so messy, but I'm not good at catching those parts. I'll try to find more things to clean up. Bella ^{tête-à-tête} 01:27, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

'Closest relative'

Under 'Taxonomy' are now two different claims of close relationship. One is between living species and the other with the extinct passenger pigeon. Of course, 'close relation' is an elastic term. The passenger pigeon is actually in a different genus, so I'm not sure the Smithsonian (collectively) would back their own website if pushed. Their sentence is not even grammatical! Mmmm... not too happy with this.

Another issue. We have usually put the taxonomy section lower on the page, no doubt because it tends to be more nerdy, and less interesting than how the animal lives, its reproduction, ecology etc.

I wouldn't normally worry about such things, but the proposer has put it up for VGA, so everything must be looked at. Macdonald-ross (talk) 10:45, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Moving the taxonomy section isn't much of a problem; but about the passenger pigeon, I agree I'm not so sure if it's reliable enough to put. It just claims to be thought as closely related, but... Still, if it's necessary, I'm willing to remove the section. :) Thanks, Macdonald-ross! Bella ^{tête-à-tête} 13:22, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

page #s in refs

Just to make an obvious point: page numbers in refs are only needed when referring to a long document or book where it might be difficult to find the source. The reference 'NRCS' turned out to have only eight pages, and almost everything was in the first four pages. There was no need to have separate references for each separate page, and you got into a mess by doing that. One should ask oneself "Can someone with the source find the right place to look?". One must assume elementary common sense on the part of the reader. Macdonald-ross (talk) 15:35, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

You're right, Macdonald-ross. I'm sorry for the inconvenience... :P As I was simplifying the page from en, I thought it was supposed to be separated. I'll keep it in mind in the future. Bella ^{tête-à-tête} 05:03, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

chickens in line

Now you must go through and make sure that multiple refs after punctuation are in numerical order, e.g. "birds have feathers.refs #3#17#9" to refs #3#9#17 It's required for VGA. Macdonald-ross (talk) 06:22, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Oh wow, thank you /so/ much! I don't know what I'd do without you. Since it's my first time working on bringing an article up to VGA, I'm still not really familiar with these requirements... You're the best! :) Bella ^{tête-à-tête} 12:26, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Comments from Osiris

• The lead needs some work, as some major points of the article aren't featured there. You should mention that the bird is found in North America, and maybe how many subspecies there are. The last sentence of the lead is a fact not found anywhere in the body, so that information needs to be copied or moved down into the section it best fits into.

Fixed

• Several of the wiktionary links lead to non-existant entries.

Fixed - hopefully I haven't missed any.

• Unless you're going to expand it, I would personally merge the bit on "Habitat" into the "Distribution" section. It looks too small to be its own section. Up to you though.

Merged! :) I had to remove a picture, though, because I thought it looked messy.

Anubis ^[Osiris] 01:55, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Thank you so much, Osiris! I'm sorry for the late reply, I've been quite busy for a few days. Kindly, Bella ^{tête-à-tête} 02:04, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Spoken Article Uploaded

I added a spoken article recording for this article. Let me know if there are issues.

Some maintenance needed

Like many of the GAs and VGAs on the wiki, this one is in need of some TLC. I've made minor changes to simplify language and tighten things up a bit each time it comes around on the front page, but it needs concentrated attention. Thirteen, or almost half, of the references are now dead links. I've tagged them all for a bird lover who is good at formatting citations and wants to track them down. --Gotanda (talk) 09:16, 5 November 2019 (UTC)