Stevia edit
This article has undergone many improvements over the past few months, and is now fairly stable, receiving only a minor edit now and then. Please comment on anything that might prevent it from qualifying as a Wikipedia good article. Eventually I would like to see it reach Featured Article status. Thanks. -Amatulic 21:05, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
Some sentences don't flow. "It has recently seen greater attention with the rise in demand for low-carbohydrate, low-sugar food alternatives, and is widely used as a sweetener in Japan, and is available in the US and Canada as a food supplement." It's hard to see what the main focus of that sentence is - it's sort of pieced together with double use of 'and is'. The first section is entitled "uses" but seems also to be a mix of history and science, jumping about different countries and dates. The facts are there but aren't presented very logically, in my opinion. Are the "health concerns" worthy of half the article (I'm not saying they aren't - I've never heard of the plant before and health concerns may be the main reason it's notable). The lead should reflect the whole article (and attempt to touch upon each section, however briefly) yet does not mention anything about the health concerns which is the majority of the article. Trebor 23:05, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
- Trebor, I addressed some of your concerns above, indicated by striking them out. The lead should be much better now; I moved some sentences from "Uses" into it and renamed the "Uses" section to "History and use". Stevia has been the subject of much controversy as a sweetener, with FDA actions suspected to be motivated by sweetener industry interests, so the health concerns section is indeed worthy of a good portion of the article (just look up stevia on google and you will find hundreds of inflammatory anti-government anti-industry articles about it; I tried to cite only the ones with scientific basis). There's so much information on that topic that I can't figure out how to make it any more concise! -Amatulic 01:38, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
- Okay, fair enough. The lead is definitely better. The article as a whole is written quite well, but there are quite a few 2 sentence paragraphs which possibly could be expanded or linked. The health concerns section is referenced well, but the history could do with a couple of cites.
The order of sections at the bottom doesn't conform to WP:LAYOUT (just look at another featured article and copy how they do it).And it could probably do with a couple more pictures.But it's looking pretty good. Trebor 07:28, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
- Okay, fair enough. The lead is definitely better. The article as a whole is written quite well, but there are quite a few 2 sentence paragraphs which possibly could be expanded or linked. The health concerns section is referenced well, but the history could do with a couple of cites.