# Talk:Wanda Wesołowska

This review is transcluded from Talk:Wanda Wesołowska/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: David Eppstein (talk · contribs) 01:22, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

 
1. Prose quality and style:

Lead "Her subsequent doctoral thesis described 44 new species, and joined the staff at the university.": her thesis became a professor? How is that possible?
That would be odd. Fixed.
Lead "subsequent ... subsequently" overuse of word
Good spot. Fixed.
Lead paragraph seems a bit jumbled up; maybe it can be better organized as more than one paragraph?
I have rewritten much of it. Please tell me how you think it is now.
Career "took a role": this is unnecessarily vague
Changed.
Career "with a thesis looking at the genus Heliophanus": maybe say a little more about this genus to give a little context?
Good idea. I have added a bit about it.
"successively an Assistant, Assistant Professor and Associate Professor at the University. She was awarded Habilitation": when were these four events? Also there is no reason to capitalize the job titles and habilitation.
Capitalisation removed and date of her habilitation added.
Career "was a member of": why past tense?
Changed.
Career + Taxa described: the third paragraph of "career" is entirely about her research contributions, not about her career. And her research contributions are not merely listing taxa. Maybe it would be better to combine the career research paragraph and the taxa section into a broader section covering her research?
Good idea. I have created a new section.
Career + Taxa named: Similarly, both the last sentence of career, on the certificate of merit, and the "taxa names" section, are about recognition other scientists have given to her. Again, maybe they could be merged into a single section focused on that topic.
Another good idea. I have renamed and expanded the section.
Taxa named: "in the names other spiders" missing preposition.
Added.
2. Source check

Still to do.
3. Broad and not overdetailed coverage

I don't think this goes into unnecessary detail anywhere.
It's not a particularly important part of the article, but it's common to say a little bit about the subject's personal life, when it can be sourced. In this case, it's also relevant: the "over 40 years" source not only discusses her marriage to Tomasz Wesołowski, it discusses their joint research, and the academic career of their daughter. So I think a brief section summarizing this would be an improvement.
Added.
4. Neutrality

No issues found
5. Stability

Other than the recent-ish expansion, this has been very stable. No edit-warring found.
6. Image use, relevance, captions, and licensing:

The photo of the subject is very relevant, properly captioned, and appears to be properly licenced.
It might be worthwhile finding a good image of a jumping spider of a species particularly relevant to Wesołowska's work and using it to add more illustration to the article.
Added.
—David Eppstein (talk) 01:37, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

@David Eppstein: Thank you. Please take a look at my edits. simongraham (talk) 11:59, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
@Simongraham: Thanks for the changes. Here is the missing source analysis:

Most references appear to be in reliable sources. I don't seem to have subscription access to Zootaxa (although I did find a working link for "Over 40 years with jumping spiders"), so taking the individual spider species sources in footnotes 11-28 on good faith.
Thank you.
[1] Wiśniewski 2020, p. 5: used to source "the highest accolade in Polish academia", but the source says "the highest academic degree". These are not the same thing. It's more a qualification than a prize, I think? For instance, is it a higher accolade than receiving the Order of the White Eagle, which some academics have done? Or being elected to PAN? We should obviously not copy the exact wording of the source but I think more care is needed here.
It seems that in Poland there are two types of professor, one a function and the other a title. I have clarified this, with a source which explains the difference.
"successively a senior research assistant, assistant professor and associate professor": the source skips over these details, stating only her initial senior research assistant and final full professor positions. How do we know she didn't skip some of these?
Added source.
[2] "prof. dr. Wanda Wesołowska". Uniwersytet Wrocalski is getting a 404 error, so her master's thesis and its publication are not properly sourced. I didn't find it on archive.org either.
The URL had broken. Fixed.
[3],[8] this is just the main entry page for some kind of web page on spider species. It may count as a reliable source, but this specific page definitely does not source the claimed facts that her first paper on jumping spiders was published in 1981, that she published it from Siedlce, that it included nine species, what three of these species were, or that three of them were later moved. Or that she named 572 species and 40 genera. Is there a more specific page where this can be sourced? And why do we have two footnotes with the same reference?
I have updated the links so that they direct to the search pages.
[4] Wesołowska 2003, p. 249: this is the title page of a journal article. That page does not source anything from the second paragraph of "career".
It provides the information on the genus Heliophanus. Clarified.
[5] Proszynski: link did not work for me. I got an infinite redirect-loop.
The link seems redundant so removed.
[6] Used only to source memberships in some academic societies. We don't usually include these unless it is a society for which membership is a high honor (PAN) or the membership is at a special honorary level (usually indicated by being called a Fellow). Otherwise it is unnecessary detail (WP:GACR #3b), the sort of thing one includes on a cv but not an encyclopedia article.
Removed.
[7] Wiśniewski 2020, p. 7: Ok for the factual content, but "She was particularly noted for her collaborations" seems dubious to me. Do arachnologists collaborate so little that 24 coauthors is a big number? (I have 10x that in a totally different field, but the physicists with even more for a single paper have us all beat.)
I took the fact that it was mentioned, even down to the nationalities of her collaborators, to be noteworthy. Removed.
[9] Wiśniewski 2020, p. 6: Several places the writing looks like close paraphrasing from Wiśniewski, but the second paragraph of the new "research" section, from this source, particularly stood out to me as problematic in this respect.
My aim in this paragraph is to demonstrate both the breadth of her interest and her impact on the study of African spiders. Would you like me reference her publications in the areas noted, like her 2018 revision of Pochytoides or write more about the studies, such as the beetle-like Pachyballus and Peplometus? I generally prefer secondary sources like Wiśniewski 2020 but am happy to add more. Please can you give me some direction on what you would like.
[10] I found a link to this one at https://www.arc.agric.za/Lists/Newsletters/Attachments/17/SANSA%20NEWS%20Vol%2037,%20March%202021.pdf which appears to be the web site of its publisher rather than a pirate link. So the link should probably be included in the citation. Much more than just the Lawrence Certificate can be sourced to here. Mostly this duplicates existing sourced material but adding it as a second source would significantly reduce the appearance that our article is based only on a single source, Wiśniewski. The existence of a festschrift published in her honor should probably be mentioned in the legacy section.
Link and festschrift added.
—David Eppstein (talk) 06:28, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

@David Eppstein: Thank you for the rigour of your review and your insightful comments. Please take a look at my edits and see if this is close to what you would like. I have also a query and would be grateful for clarification. simongraham (talk) 23:09, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
A little more on sources:

[3]: This is a list of taxa in one of Wesołowska's publications. It does not say that nine of them are new species. It does not say two of them were later moved to another genus.
In the table, the capital letter D in the column Pages / Figure designates that this is the first description (i.e. they are new species) and by comparing the columns Published as and Species, it is possible to find which species were subsequently moved to a different genus. The article gives a sample rather than an exhaustive list.
[4]: Has been moved so that it now appears to source fewer claims: (1) that she achieved a doctorate in 1984, (2) that her thesis studied Heliophanus, (3) that Helophanus "is one of the largest and most species-rich genera in the family". "The family" is never specified, and [4] sources none of these claims.
This source is there to provide support for the claim (3). It was added in response to your request for more information on the genus Heliophanus.
[5]: Link http://www.policy.hu/kwiek/AcademicProfessionPoland.pdf appears to work. But it says nothing specific about Wesołowska. What claim is it indended as a source for?
It clarifies the status of professor in Poland.
[9]: Re close paraphrasing from Wiśniewski 2020, p. 6: It's somewhat improved but still seems to be present. Here A=Wikipedia, B=source
A "Her work initial work was in spiders in Palearctic and Central Asia"
B "Wanda’s first taxonomic works were devoted to the salticids of the Eastern Palaearctics and Central Asia"
A "pioneering work in the fauna of the Middle East"
B "pioneering publications dealing with the Middle Eastern fauna"
A "revisions of the taxonomy of African species in various jumping spider genera, including Heliophanus, in 1986, Menemerus, in 1999, Mexcala, in 2009, Pochytoides, in 2018, and Pachyballus and Peplometus in 2020."
B "revisions of selected genera, such as Heliophanus (1986), Menemerus (1999a), Mexcala Peckham & Peckham, 1902 (2009a), Pochytoides Wesołowska, 2020 (2018), Pachyballus Simon, 1900 and Peplometus Simon, 1900 (Wesołowska et al. 2020)"
I am not sure how I can avoid using the same words as some of it is very specific (like genus names) but I have amended the text where it feels sensible and added another source so that her list of achievements is even larger.
@David Eppstein: Thank you. I hope my edits meet your needs. simongraham (talk) 13:53, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Putting the nomination on hold temporarily while I check elsewhere whether the World Spider Catalog can be used as a reliable source for the claims it is used for. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:07, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
Update: I asked on WP:RSN whether the spider database was reliable for the material it was used to source here, and nobody had any objection, so that's not a problem. As all remaining concerns have been addressed, I'll pass this for GA now. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:34, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for your excellent review and helpful suggestions for improvements. simongraham (talk) 01:13, 21 April 2023 (UTC)