Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Phagocyte

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Karanacs 15:56, 7 April 2009 [1].

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Phagocyte

Nominator(s): Eulemur2008 (talk · contribs) and Graham Colm ^Talk 14:58, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

We are nominating this for featured article because, have you ever wondered why pus is green, or what is the fate of all those unfriendly bacteria that we encounter every second of every day, or even how we rid our bodies of used-up cells? We have been working on this article for six months. Last autumn, I, Eulemur, adopted a poor, neglected stub as part of my contribution to Wikipedia:WikiProject AP Biology 2008—an educational assignment, and I Graham offered Eulemur my help as a mentor. Working together on Eulemur's substantial research—which in his own right brought the article to GA—we have contributed an article that we consider is worthy of an FA star. We have been helped by in-depth peer reviews from Colin, Brian Boulton, Natural Cut and other members of the AP project, (but we do not presume their support). This collaboration has been overseen—distantly—by Eulemur's biology teacher Mr Butler. We thank all the other editors who have helped with this, but stress that any remaining errors are probably all our own work. Graham Colm ^Talk 14:58, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

• Support Graham asked me to review this article five weeks ago. I warned him I was slow. I finally reached the bottom of the references at midnight last night. Before, I couldn't have told you what a phagocyte was, but I've now got respect for these little guys who kill, eat and die to protect me. This is such a tough subject to achieve an FA-level of comprehensiveness combined with accessibility for the general reader. Eulemur and Graham have succeeded IMO. Well done. Colin°^Talk 15:54, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Colin, your intelligent, critical analysis—from a lay-persons perspective—was indispensable. Due to your patience, help and advice, this once opaque and very technical article can now, we hope, be appreciated by a wider readership. Graham Colm ^Talk 16:06, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your help and support Colin. --Eulemur2008 (talk) 22:32, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

• Technical Review -- Disambiguation and External links are up to standards based on the respective link checker tools, and the ref formatting based on the WP:REFTOOLS script is up to standards.--Best, ₮RUCӨ 22:31, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Comments by Sasata

• There shouldn't be any stuff in the lead that's not in the main article (etymology is not in article).

• Are there 6 billion (lead) or 5 billion (article) phags/L in blood? Just noticed the latter refers specifically to neutrophils. The lead number should also be mentioned in the article text. Sasata (talk) 23:47, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

• MOS fixes in references: Title of journals should be given in full; all page ranges should use endashes; species names in the journal article titles must be in italics.

• I had a quick read and overall was impressed by the accessibility; haven taken graduate level courses in immunology I realize how arcane some of this stuff can be. I promise to give it a thorough read-through later with more extensive comments. Sasata (talk) 23:00, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi Sasata, thank you for these comments. I have replaced the hyphens with endashes where needed. There was a long discussion about abbreviated journal titles here, but a consensus was not reached and the MoS, as far as I have searched, has nothing to say on this. I have used diberri's tool for many of the citations, as many medicine and biology FAs have done, which returns an accepted format for them. I will fix the "neutrophils" and "etymology" problem today. Thanks again. Graham Colm ^Talk 10:57, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

• Thanks for pointing me to that discussion, I wasn't aware. I was going by what I had read in Wikipedia:Scientific_citation_guidelines#Annotations, but I see now there isn't really a clear consensus. Still learning this MOS stuff. Sasata (talk) 15:51, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

As we all are :-) Thanks. Graham Colm ^Talk 16:07, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

• Support; good work on a very broad and tough topic. Tezkag72 (talk) 14:14, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your kind words and support. Graham Colm ^Talk 13:00, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

• Comments -
• Current refs 10, 11, 14 (Janeway, Chapter...) needs a publisher. If this is an online extract of a published book, should give all "book" details also. I see it's a book in the bibliography, suggest making it more explicit that it's got its bibliographical details at the bottom.

Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:44, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Ealdgyth, I'll do as you suggest. Graham Colm ^Talk 16:07, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid I was responsible for the abbreviated Janeway refs. I shortened the full citations to just the author and chapter name with a URL convenience link and moved the full citation to the bibliography section. Do the article authors have a paper copy? I note that the original citation had the ISBN of the 7th ed, but the online version is the 5th ed. If you have the paper, then we could replace this with a standard "Janeway, p 50–70" style ref. Then append a note that the text is available free online here (if necessary, pointing out that the edition is different). I dislike the new suffix of "This book is listed in Bibiliography section below." and would probably prefer a return to three full citations if the explanation needs to be that long. Would "see Bibliography" be enough? Colin°^Talk 17:24, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't have a paper copy of this one (I have for all the others) I think "see bibliography" would be suitable if Ealdgyth is happy with this. Graham Colm ^Talk 17:37, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

That'd work out fine, "see bibliography" works. Ealdgyth - Talk 19:32, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Colin and Graham. Sorry about the ISBN mix-up on the Janeway ref; when I clicked on a link for information on the book it went to the current 7th edition instead of the 5th. Thanks for your suggestions Ealdgyth. --Eulemur2008 (talk) 19:37, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Fixed. Graham Colm ^Talk 20:02, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

• Support Very comprehensive and well written - comments to come later. Ceranthor 23:23, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
• One nitpick - in the history section I suggest re-linking Starfish. Otherwise an awesome article. Ceranllama's chat post 22:54, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, and I have added the link. Graham Colm ^Talk 07:51, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

• You have my very much support - Only one nitpick to give you -
  • Phagocytes, in particular dendritic cells and macrophages, stimulate lymphocytes to produce antibodies by an important process called antigen presentation. - Source?

Otherwise, really good job, guys.Mitchazenia :  Chat  3 years and counting... 10:17, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your support and kind words. The purpose of the sentence you have quoted is to guide the reader gently into the next section on antigen presentation which is fully sourced. We can of course duplicate the appropriate reference if you wish. Graham Colm ^Talk 10:30, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I get nagged to do that, so I just make sure that all end-of-paragraph sentences are sourced. If you could fix it, Thanks.Mitchazenia :  Chat  3 years and counting... 10:48, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

OK, no problem. Graham Colm ^Talk 10:51, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

One image concern as follows:

• File:Metchnikof.jpg: where was this image published before 1923? Getty is managing Hulton Archives' copyright claim on this image,[2] which their client is likely eligible to; the author might not have died more than 70 years ago and the picture might have been published in that time but after 1923. How about File:Dr Metchnikoff in his Laboratory.jpg as a replacement? Alternatively, I have found File:Nature of Man - Elie Metchnikoff.jpg (although he is facing right).

I have verified the rest of the images to be in the public domain or appropriately licensed. Jappalang (talk) 13:19, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Jappalang, I have swapped the image as advised. It is a poorer portrait but his being in the laboratory compensates to some extent for this—I love all those tubes and bottles. Thank you for taking the time to find this. You could have simply objected to the previous one and left it at that—but you didn't, and this is much appreciated. Graham. Graham Colm ^Talk 13:32, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Aye, it was no problem; the searching was fun at times. Jappalang (talk) 13:48, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

• Comments A very good article I must say. In general, pixel sizes should not be specified for images so I removed them. My screen is very wide and I always seem to have whitespace issues so I tried to fix them. If they cause issues on your screen feel free to revert them. I'm also not a fan of sentence fragments in the photo captions. I know its not a requirement, but adding short bits of info in the captions will help improve the look of your article. A lot of people just look at the pictures and skip the words, so the captions should be as engaging as possible. One example: "Neutrophils move from the blood to the site of infection" could be changed to "Sensing proteolytic enzymes, neutrophils move from the blood, and envelop bacteria through phagocytosis." which is much more informative. Think of them as mini-summaries of the article which give the casual reader a quick and easy way to absorb the information. --ErgoSum88 (talk) 21:39, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Hi ErgoSum and thank you for your comments on the article. Yes I know these pages appear differently depending on the readers' screens, but I think the {{clear}} templates that you have added will cause more whitespace problems than you tried to solve. So I will remove them—I hope you don't mind. Your comments on fuller image legends are interesting, but of course are not an FA requirement. Actually, the example you kindly offered is not accurate. This is why we prefer the simpler legends—fuller, accurate descriptions would require numerous wikilinks in the legends which we have tried to avoid. I understand why you suggest this because I (Graham) do it myself when scanning popular science magazines, in that I look at the pictures first. Thanks for reading and reviewing this article your contribution to this FAc is very much appreciated. Best wishes. Graham Colm ^Talk 22:03, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Thats fine, the clear templates weren't a big deal, just a personal preference. Regardless of the accuracy of my caption suggestion, I still think it would be a good idea. Wikilinks are not required for captions, and actually terms shouldn't be linked after the first mention anyway. I realize cosmetic issues (such as captions and whitespace) are not FA requirements, but I try to help in whatever way I can. This is not really my area of expertise (I deal mainly with the transportation categories), so I'm sorry I can't give you any meaningful constructive criticism. For this reason I'm also going to refrain from casting a vote. But a good job nonetheless, and very informative! --ErgoSum88 (talk) 02:29, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

• Comment: is there something wrong with the wikitable code? On my browser (Firefox 2.0), the table title is offset to the left of the array, producing a case of ugly misalignment and whitespace. Jappalang (talk) 22:48, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

It looks OK on my screen Jappalang, but I haven't purged my cache yet. Was it okay at your end in earlier versions? Have recent edits caused this problem? We don't want a code problem at this crucial stage of the FAC. :-( Graham. Graham Colm ^Talk 22:59, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

It could just be a browser issue. It seems fine for "Non-professional Phagocytes" in this version, but "Professional Phagocytes" is displaced. The problem becomes worse for "Non-professional Phagocytes" in the current version when the table is brought to the centre, instead of being placed at the right. Jappalang (talk) 23:02, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

For me, it looks OK in Firefox ( version 3.08, my routine browser) and in Explorer and Safari, which I always treble-check with. So I am at a loss here. Sorry, perhaps some youngster can help me out? Graham Colm ^Talk 23:14, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

It looks fine for me too in Firefox and IE. I even checked with Netscape and it looked ok there too. --Yohmom (talk) 23:32, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

I use Internet Explorer and I am unable to find anything wrong with the tables. Thanks for your concerns Jappalang. --Eulemur2008 (talk) 23:54, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

You are all correct. I just tested on Opera and Internet Explorer, and the page looks fine. Looks like a bug with old Firefox (2.0.0.20). Sorry for the needless alarm. Jappalang (talk) 01:10, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Support interesting and informative; I can't see anything significant that needs fixing jimfbleak (talk) 19:23, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your kind words and support. Graham Colm ^Talk 13:00, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose
  • It's very centered on humans. It doesn't give an indication of how much of it is true for e.g. mouse, chicken, zebrafish, sea urchin, fly. Narayanese (talk) 08:15, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
  • The evolution section needs work. A problem is that it doesn't state if the slime mold (which it somewhat confusingly call amoeba) phagocytic cells are phagocytes or not, and whether they are related to white blood cells. Another that it never says when phagocytes appeared, and what they were. Narayanese (talk) 08:15, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for these comments. Yes, I agree that the article focuses on mammalian phagocytes and gives many examples from humans, but I do not think this is a problem. I think most readers will find our phagocytes the most interesting. The article does not completely ignore the phagocytes of other species and says, for example; Phagocytes occur throughout the animal kingdom, from marine sponges to insects and lower and higher vertebrates. — Animals' cells constantly die and are replaced by cell division and the third sentence of the Lead, Phagocytes are important throughout the animal kingdom, and are highly developed in vertebrates.

The section on evolutionary origins has been the subject of much discussion on the article's Talk Page. It was probably the most difficult to write because not that much is known, we do not have the advantage of fossil evidence. Dictyostelium discoideum is definitely a phagocytosing amoeba and, more interestingly, has become over recent years a useful experimental model in the study of phagocytes in that they share many mechanisms, and underlying genes, with macrophages. I have expanded the section this morning in light of your comments, but I can not fully answer your questions on when they first appeared, or what they were; I do not think anyone can yet.

Thanks again, for these useful comments. Graham Colm ^Talk 11:17, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

I see you sorted out the slime mold ambiguities. I still recommend adding species ranges to the discussions about the cell types, "higher animals" is hopelessly imprecise. A discussion on apaptive immunity by alternatively spliced receptors on phagocytes in invertebrates would also benefit the article. Narayanese (talk) 20:47, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

The Charles Hess source seems self-published, should be replacable. Narayanese (talk) 20:52, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Hess can be replaced with easily with Delves. Would you be happy with jawed vertebrates instead of "higher animals"? With regard to alternatively spliced receptors in invertebrates, could you elaborate? Graham Colm ^Talk 21:03, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Jawed vertebrates is nicely specific. By alt splicing I was thinking of Dscam... maybe too narrow for the article. But something along the lines of "Recent findings suggest that somatic mechanisms of receptor diversification analogous to those of the acquired system of jawed vertebrates may be a more widespread feature of animal immunity than previously supposed. Examples of these include a gene conversion–like process that diversifies variable leucine-rich repeat (LRR)–containing receptor (VLR) proteins in jawless vertebrates (9, 10), somatic mutation of fibrinogen-related protein (FREP) receptors in a mollusc (11), and extensive alternative splicing of the Down syndrome cell adhesion molecule (DSCAM), a molecule that principally guides neuronal patterning, to generate immune reactive isoforms in insects (12, 13)." (from PMID 17095692) but with a mention that these mechanism aid phagocytosis perhaps? Narayanese (talk) 21:30, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

OK, I am with you, but I need to turn this into Colin-proof and jargon-less prose. Thanks for your advice and review which has helped to improve the article. Graham. Graham Colm ^Talk 21:38, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

After some searching around, I saw some of it is not phagocytosis-related, so it might after all be better to skip the whole thing... don't know.

Having spent half an hour trying to write a line or two on this I have to agree. Graham.

I was a bit surprised to read that mesenchymal stem cells (says 'mesenchymal cells' which could be broader (not sure about the term), but the links goes to the stem cells) are phagocytes, possibly the link is not right and should be to Mesenchyme. Narayanese (talk) 23:00, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

You are probably right, but both are poor stubs IMHO. It's a good job that FACs do not have to take on the responsibility for the linked articles :-) PS. any chance of a "support" and making an old man's and a very hard working school student's day? Graham Colm ^Talk 23:33, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I'll probably get around to it soon, just feel like I need to read the article more. Narayanese (talk) 22:06, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Support- this article is well written and quite comprehensive. The content of the parts I'm familiar with is accurate and lay-person friendly (I know nothing about amoeba). I haven't extensively looked into the all references but what I've seen looks very reasonable, and I have no doubt Graham read each and every paper he referenced,... twice. I've listed my suggestions for improvement on the talk page, but they certainly shouldn't stand in the way here.--DO11.10 (talk) 04:35, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your kind words, support and very helpful suggestions. Graham Colm ^Talk 13:00, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Support: I knew nothing on phagocytes and now I know much more. Really comprenhensive and easy to read article.--Garrondo (talk) 07:48, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your kind words and support. Graham Colm ^Talk 13:00, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.