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Talk:Norman C. Deno

Latest comment: 2 years ago by Premeditated Chaos in topic GA Review
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Did you know nomination

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Latest comment: 3 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:55, 2 March 2021 (UTC)Reply

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  • ... that plant scientist Norman C. Deno's research on seed germination techniques resulted in him writing a book with germination methods for thousands of different species? Source: "The book's very inclusiveness (the second edition listed germination information on 2,500 species, the first supplement added 1,080 more) also sometimes leads to unrealistic expectations, because you begin to expect every plant you look up to be included and it's not." ("Exposing The Secret Life Of Seeds", Richmond Times-Dispatch)
    • ALT1:... that plant scientist Norman C. Deno developed a low-tech method of germinating plants that mimics lab conditions by using paper towels and a sandwich baggie? Source: "Gardeners who use the seed germination procedures described by Deno often refer to "The Deno Method." It is worth noting that Deno's method is simply a yet lower-tech version of the low- tech albeit scientific procedure long used in seed-testing laboratories (see Chapter 7 in the book by Hartmann and Kester listed under the heading Useful Information Sources). In laboratory tests for seed viability and germination rates, seeds are sown on specially made paper blotters or specially made paper toweling, and then incubated in germinator chambers that control light, moisture and temperature. Deno's approach is the same, but his paper germinating medium is not specially made; it is just high-grade paper toweling. His germinator chambers are plastic sandwich bags." ("Seeds, Dr. Deno, And Me" - The Trillium)

Created by Thriley (talk) and Silver seren (talk). Nominated by Silver seren (talk) at 19:23, 15 February 2021 (UTC).Reply

General: Article is new enough and long enough
Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
  • Cited:  
  • Interesting:  
QPQ: Done.
Overall:   Looks great! I prefer the first hook listed. I couldn't access the article the hook is cited from, so AGF on that. Interesting article -- I enjoyed learning about Deno. Philepitta (talk) 22:59, 22 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

GA Review

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Latest comment: 2 years ago48 comments2 people in discussion
Passed. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 02:32, 26 August 2022 (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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This review is transcluded from Talk:Norman C. Deno/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Premeditated Chaos (talk · contribs) 01:20, 31 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

I'll take this. I usually review within a week; if I let it slip, please ping mg. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 01:20, 31 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

I tend to review GAs like FAC in that I make comments as I read through. Unless otherwise noted suggested changes are not necessarily a dealbreaker; if you disagree with them, I'm happy to discuss.

Hatting - all looks good ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:47, 11 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
Lead and first section
  • Lead should mention his notable chemistry accomplishments as well since it should summarize the entire article
  • The source mentions that it was the Great Depression that made horticulture a bad pick money-wise, might be worth mentioning here
  • "During his research for his doctoral degree, he focused on studying the chemistry of explosives in relation to munitions used in World War II." I'm not sure the source supports this.
  • The source says "he worked during the war on explosives research before getting his doctoral degree in chemistry". It doesn't explicitly say he was researching the munitions used in WW2 (for all we know he was researching explosives for guano mining).
  • It also doesn't explicitly say that the work he did on explosives was the focus of his doctoral degree; in fact, it says that happened before he got the doctorate.
Career
  • It's odd to go from him becoming a professor of chemistry in 1950 to him retiring in 1980 with nothing in between. I would mention retirement chronologically, after the paragraph about his chemistry work.
  • Several issues with the last two sentences of para 1 under Career
  • I would trim "His studies into germinating plants resulted in him wanting to" - an intelligent reader is going to conclude that a guy studying plants probably wrote a book about plants because he's studying plants, we don't need to spell that out
  • Who is Harkness and why does his book matter? (Don't need a huge amount of context here, but compare for example your concise introduction of Hall earlier as "daylily hybrid expert" - something like that.)
  • "work called the" is redundant
  • "While the focus of Harkness' book was on explaining seed growing to non-horticulturalists" - this is completely incorrect. The Newspapers.com citation says it's a handbook for non-dabblers - ie, experts. The entire book is available on Internet Archive, and you can see that it's actually not an explanatory text, it's just a list of plants with some basic stats about them and where to find more information about them. It does not explain seed growing at all. Our article needs to be fixed.
  • With all that, I suggest revising this whole bit to something like: "Deno decided to write a companion book to The Seedlist Handbook, a reference book for seed exchange by botanist [or whatever he is] Bernard E. Harkness. Deno focused on providing seed germination techniques tailored for various species, as he felt many popular works lacked such information."
  • I would probably also split this section into two subheaders - Chemistry and Horticulture (header titles at your discretion)
Yeah, it's not a big deal, you're limited by the amount of information in the sources after all. He was clearly more known for the horticulture than the chemistry once it all shook out. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 02:19, 26 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
Research
  • Sentence 2 uses two different tenses. "This process uses" - present tense and "reduced the time" - past tense.
  • "Thanks to a research grant...a large amount of excess grant money allowed Deno to focus on other chemistry and biological research" - repetitive. Try something like, "A large research grant from Blah Blah Company allowed Deno to..."
  • Ref 7 indicates that he published on horticulture even during his active chemistry professorship. That should be mentioned somewhere, because at present the article gives the impression that there were two fairly separate phases of his career, pre and post-retirement.
  • "Later in his life..." This paragraph makes it really unclear when he returned to horticulture. I thought it was post-retirement, but the source mentioned above seems to suggest otherwise. Is there a source that clarifies?
  • I've actually noticed three separate errors just in this paragraph, which is really concerning given the others I've already noticed. I've rewritten the latter half of the paragraph so as to not have the errors stick around longer than necessary, but it's not a good look for an article at GA.
  • "He determined that around 95% of plants" - incorrect. The source says "95% of plants that he studied".
  • Where our article says gibberellic acid is made by symbiotic microorganisms, the cited source does not say anything about symbiosis, just that the hormone is made by both plants and microorganisms.
  • Another possible error - cited source doesn't say that Deno "disliked the methods of scarification", only that he preferred to call it "puncturing".
  • Errors aside, para 2 of this section needed to be trimmed/clarified/reorganized a lot. I've done so in order to remove the errors anyway.
  • "Therefore" unnecessary fluff word
  • Para 3 should be split as it's two separate ideas - drainage and dormancy; "additionally" is not necessary
  • "These ideas and methodologies" redundant, pick one
  • "discussed and reproduced" redundant
  • Who is Ken Druse?
  • Para 4 could also use a trim/rewrite, it's almost instructional. I don't think we need as much detail about the paper towel method, particularly about Deno "stressing" the boiled water thing. The rest of the sentence after "pathogenic fungi" is unnecessary.
  • "Low-tech" is informal
  • "Additionally" is another fluff word.
  • I feel like maybe the trimmed information about the paper towel method could be put into para 2, and then para 4 could be focused on public reception of his techniques - Druse using them in his book, the public using the paper towel method, and finally companies reaching out to him.
  • Done except that I combined the Rock Garden Society promotion of his method just after that first paragraph. I feel like it flows better, along with the explanation of what the method actually is. SilverserenC 22:52, 21 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
  • "Multiple" is unnecessary as "seed companies" is already plural. "Over the years" is also not really necessary. Honestly I might rework the whole sentence: "Seed companies sought his expertise in finding germination techniques for their products; Thompson & Morgan incorporated his methods into their customer directions."
Books
  • I wonder if the prose in this section should be merged with the above section, leaving Bibliography as a separate section that should be moved to the end (per MOS:BIB)
  • The USNAL thing should probably go after the details about the books being written, as presumably it happened after
  • Worth mentioning that the books are self-published; you could probably combine that with the sentence about him selling the books
  • We go directly to book 1, edition 2, with no information about the original edition
  • It's weird that the books aren't named in-text until later in the paragraph
Awards and personal life
  • Awards is just a single sentence and could probably be safely merged with the "horticultural research" portion of the article
  • Why the italics for the Rock Garden Society?
  • What's a "Carleton R. Worth Award"?
  • "Deno first married to his wife Ginny" - poorly written
  • "Later, he would meet his second wife" - more redundancy. "He met his second wife" is crisper.
It's still awkward, and the whole sentence still has so much unnecessary wording. "Later" is redundant - obviously he married the next wife later. "Remarry to" is weird phrasing. I've reworded it and added his marriage year to Janet since that was in the obit. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 02:28, 26 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
  • Is the thing about bridge really encyclopedic? If it must remain, Life Master should be capitalized as a proper noun, and linked.
  • You say he's a life member of multiple organizations, including 3. The source gives only those 3. For the sake of accuracy and concision, it should just say "he was a life member of X Y and Z".

Overall I have concerns about the prose and the factual accuracy of this article. I'm not going to quickfail as I feel it is salvageable, but it is going to need significant work to pass. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 10:01, 2 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the review! I don't have too much time to address this during the work week, but I'll put my main focus on it this upcoming weekend. SilverserenC 03:02, 3 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
Sorry for the long wait. Can you come take another look, @Premeditated Chaos:? SilverserenC 22:54, 21 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
My apologies back - post-COVID symptoms have been playing havoc with my ability to focus on in-depth projects like GA reviewing. I'm satisfied that my major issues have been sorted, so this is now a pass. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 02:29, 26 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
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.
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