Talk:Helan Shan pika/GA1

GA review

Passed. —Kusma (talk) 18:17, 6 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Nominator: Reconrabbit (talk · contribs) 20:59, 24 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: Kusma (talk · contribs) 16:52, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think I have reviewed a species article before, but 鼠兔 (mouse-rabbit?) looks interesting. Thank you for your pledge! Please consider reviewing other articles with pledges if any of them are interesting to you. —Kusma (talk) 16:52, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! I will start some other reviews once I am done with Muscatine Mall. This species is also called 宁夏鼠兔 (Ningxia pika) but I wasn't sure if it would be useful to include this name with the Chinese characters since it's much more infrequently used, as is the direct translation of "silver pika". -- Recon rabbit 17:03, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Content and prose review

I will comment on anything I notice, but not all of my comments will be strictly related to the GA criteria, so not everything needs to be actioned. Feel free to push back if you think I am asking too much, and please tell me when I am wrong.

Lead: I think we have sufficient alternative names here, especially in Chinese. If you want to add the Ningxia variant (I see that it is used e.g. in Mammals of China), I would suggest a footnote, but I would not complicate the lead further. Or perhaps add the 宁夏鼠兔 variant to the Etymology section.
It would be nice to have a short definition of "pika" for those who have not heard of the animal before. (I can read Chinese so 鼠兔 makes sense to me, but "pika" doesn't). "small mammals bearing some external resemblance to rodents"??
- I added "it is a small mammal that resembles and is closely related to rodents". Should I go more in depth on Glires here? -RR
"potentially active during the night" I am not quite sure what you mean here: do we not know when it is active, and it might be active at night in addition to day, or only at night, or is it usually not active at night, but can be when circumstances demand it?
- It has only been observed as nocturnal since 2022, so our only evidence for it being nocturnal is one study. I was trying to figure out a way to better word this in the second paragraph but can't figure it out. -RR
Will comment on whether anything is missing from the lead later.
Taxonomy and etymology: Janet Elliott Wulsin sounds cool. Maybe give her a one-word description ("explorer") so we know she is cool? Or tell us they were exploring together so her husband's relevance is clearer?
- Presumably they were exploring together, but I don't have the book that explicitly states that (the one her daughter published) and there's no credit to her in the original works I'm citing.
"Ninghsia [Yinchuan], northern Kansu, China" mention/link the places with modern transliterations? Ningxia, Yinchuan, Gansu? (One issue here is that Ningxia was part of Gansu Province at the time, see the map at Administrative divisions of the Republic of China (1912–1949)).
- I added links. The explanation for Ningxia's provincial status could be added if I had a source for it (which I don't have off hand and there isn't an obvious one on any of the linked articles). -RR
Description: is "alpina pika" a typo for "alpine pika"?
- Yes, I confused the specific name for the common name there. -RR

More soon! —Kusma (talk) 20:20, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Distribution and habitat: "the Helan Mountains in the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region" I am a bit confused; the border between modern day Ningxia and Inner Mongolia goes right through the Helan Mountains, and in the lead you described them as part of Ningxia. here we have a dude from Inner Mongolia who photographed some of the pika in the Helan Mountain National Forest Park in Ningxia in 2017.
Conservation status: The information about the habitat is a bit of a repetition of the habitat section; could you consolidate these a bit?
Do we know anything specific that people would like to study about the Helan shan pika ("uncover its sparsely-known natural history" is a bit generic)?

A nice article, not a lot to complain about. A map of the Helanshan area would be nice (the IUCN one is pretty good), and maybe some pictures. Apparently the pika has been seen in the wild only five times between 2017 and 2023, and there were no photos between 2017 and 2023? Not sure that needs to be mentioned, but linking to these articles would provide a few more pictures. —Kusma (talk) 21:09, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to find a good relief map that I can use to superimpose the IUCN range on top of. I used it to create the super zoomed out map with the blank world map SVG I have readily available but have had trouble finding nice maps of China. I removed the discussion of the previous estimated range from the distribution section as it is far more relevant to the Conservation section, where it is also present. Vagueries of "natural history" have been hopefully dispelled. I have yet to clarify the political borders. Li and Smith 2018 refer to it as being present in Nei Mongol which I didn't realize referred to Inner Mongolia. -- Recon rabbit 14:54, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You could cut out the Helanshan parts of File:Txu-pclmaps-oclc-22834566 g-9a.jpg, but it isn't ideal. Or OpenStreetMap [1] if you don't mind that Yinchuan is 银川. (Perhaps this version is more useful for overlaying? —Kusma (talk) 20:35, 1 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Source spotchecks

Numbering from Special:PermanentLink/1303532822.

1c: yes
4: ok. This reminds me that I had made plans to improve Peter Simon Pallas a while back when I wrote Anna Blackburne and completely forgotten about these plans. Always too much to do on here :)
6: ok
7a: Link does not work, should go to [2]. Content fine.
13a: The link goes to a version last updated in 2025 that does not mention the Helan Shan pika, as far as I can see. And anyway, I am sure you can find a better source than tertiary Britannica for this.
16: ok
18: ok

All clear except for a question mark over Britannica, which I would suggest to replace anyway. —Kusma (talk) 21:00, 1 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

General comments and GA criteria

Minor prose points fixed already.
MoS: no issues. Lead adequately covers major points.
Referencing is fine outside perhaps Britannica as above.
I didn't detect copyvio, and neither does Mr. Earwig.
Scope is reasonable, no issues with neutrality or stability.
Image is CC-BY. Pity there are no higher quality ones like those in the Chinese newspapers I linked.

I think we have just Britannica, then we're done. —Kusma (talk) 21:05, 1 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I added a map (not the best, but better than what we had). The first use of the Brittanica source is gone, and I will review sources to find behavioral/ecology information that can supplement the second use as it just describes characteristics of all pikas. I recall finding a source that stated O. argentata did not have as prominent haying behavior but can't find it again. Li and Smith 2018 just state "The Helan Shan pika, like all pikas, appears to be a generalized herbivore. It constructs a typical pika haypile (cache of vegetation)." Is that worth putting in pending rediscovery of the other source I was thinking of? -- Recon rabbit 20:59, 4 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Reconrabbit, yes, I think that would be an improvement. The current Britannica source needs to go, then I think we're done here. The new map helps a lot, thank you for making it! —Kusma (talk) 21:33, 5 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have updated with this source as well as Handbook of the Mammals of the World (though I have to double check the page number later since I took a photo of the text I'm referencing but am out right now). -- Recon rabbit 16:09, 6 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'll let you check the page number in your own time and will promote this now. A nice little article. —Kusma (talk) 18:15, 6 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Good Article review progress box

Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV ()

3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant ()

Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.