Talk:Neottia confusa

GA review

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:Neottia confusa/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Wikipedian12512 (talk · contribs) 00:26, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

Reviewer: Generalissima (talk · contribs) 02:29, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

Hmm. Good work covering such an obscure species, but this article is extremely short and I am unsure if it can meet the Good Article criteria (in its current form at the very least). I've written about an obscure plant species before so I might be able to offer some insight. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 02:29, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

A couple issues:

• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout advises against both sections consisting of only a short paragraph, and single-sentence paragraphs. The current body of the article can probably be combined into two sections at most (description and distribution).
  • Done. -W
• For very short species articles like this, you can give context by talking about the taxonomy a bit. Give a sentence defining Neottia. Are there taxonomical subgroupings within Neottia? If so, describe what species N. confusa is related to and how it differs from them.
  • Done. -W
  • At the end of the description paper, it gives info about the historic classification of Neottia and Listera, and how they were eventually combined, with N. confusa as a middle ground between them. This is great context and means you should be prepared to describe when each of these genera were circumscribed. This is useful context for understanding the species and its taxonomical role.-G
    • Done to the best of my ability. -W
• Looking at the description paper, pp. 385-386 has an extensive table comparing the features of N. confusa to related Neottia. Summarize this! You don't have to list all the other species' features, but you can at least describe each feature about the plant.
  • Most of the information about confusa is already in the description. I’ve added a sentence about height variation. -W
• You should name the discoverer and the species it was described alongside.
  • Done. -W
• Description paper explicitly says that it is far from human habitation and that there are no immediate threats; this should be included alongside other conservation info.
  • Done. -W

Since this article is so small, I won't quickfail, since I think these can all be fixed within a week. Let me know if you have questions, or when you want me to take another look! Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 02:29, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

Thanks! I’ll start on the comments today. Cheers, _{In solidarity} Wikipedian12512 (Talking is fine | contribs) 14:40, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

Note: I’m doing this mainly for WP:Bilorv's Challenges#minimalist, so when I say I’m “done” with a comment, it means I’ve addressed it here, and I’ll add it all in when I’m finished. Cheers, _{In solidarity} Wikipedian12512 (Talking is fine | contribs) 15:31, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

@Generalissima: I’ve done your notes as well as I could. Cheers, _{In solidarity} Wikipedian12512 (Talking is fine | contribs) 16:33, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

@Wikipedian12512: Apologies for adding quite a bit to the article, but I realized that by making the changes I could make a more effective template for you to apply to your other orchid articles. With a species this obscure, you really gotta milk every word you can out of the sources, and especially note at length the key features which distinguish it from other species of the genus. The species description includes details on every parts of the plant's anatomy, so you might as well include them. If this and the IUCN are the only lengthy reliable sources, everything that include sort of ends up being due weight by default.

I also added some clarifying statements in parenthesis, since the botanical terminology can be confusing for non-specialists. I am not a botanist myself, so if any of those descriptions are misleading, please feel free to correct them! Anyhow, I think we're good to go here. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 08:32, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

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.

Did you know nomination

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

• ... that a species of orchid was named for having a smaller lip than others of its genus?

• Source: https://journals.rbge.org.uk/ejb/article/download/1488/1379

• • ALT1: ... that Neottia confusa was originally considered least concern despite there being fewer than 45 specimens observed? Source: https://journals.rbge.org.uk/ejb/article/download/1488/1379 and https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/186300668/186805829
  • Reviewed:
  • Comment: My first DYK, so not really sure how to do it. Tell me if I did something wrong.

Improved to Good Article status by Wikipedian12512 (talk). Number of QPQs required: 0. Nominator has fewer than 5 past nominations.

Cheers, In solidarity Wikipedian12512 (Talking is fine | contribs) 00:07, 12 September 2026 (UTC).

• New enough (promoted to GA on 8 September), long enough, well-written and within policy. No image and no QPQ required. The hooks are both cited to reliable inline sources that confirm the claims in the hook. I like the ALT hook, and would go for that. The first one is fine as a hook as well, but I don't understand (also after reading the original source) what the word confusa means or refers to, so the hook leaves me a bit confused [sic]. Nice work for your first DYK nomination! It should be good to for for ALT 1. Yakikaki (talk) 11:25, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

@Yakikaki:: Anything else I need to do? Cheers, _{In solidarity} Wikipedian12512 (Talking is fine | contribs) 13:33, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

No, you're all set. Yakikaki (talk) 19:13, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

@Yakikaki: @Wikipedian12512: I'm not sure that the source supports ALT 1 as written. Least-concern species is an IUCN classification, and the IUCN never classified Neottia confusa as LC; the classification was proposed in the original species description, which is a common practice but does not carry any policy weight as far as I'm aware. This is why I edited the article a few days ago to clarify that LC was a proposed classification, not an official classification by a conservation agency. Correct me if I'm wrong, though. HolyEgg (talk) 22:28, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

@Wikipedian12512: @HolyEgg: All right, that sounds plausible to me, and the original source supporting the hook claim is also by the discoverer of the species, not by IUCN. But what if we make the ALT hook like this: ALT1a: "... that Neottia confusa was originally proposed as least concern despite there only being less than 45 specimens observed?" Would everyone be OK with that? Yakikaki (talk) 13:57, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

@Yakikaki: When addressing the problem, I did that originally, but I think “considered” is better; it doesn’t claim to be official, is technically correct (it must have been considered so if the describer put that it seemed so), and doesn’t feel as “yielding” as “proposed”. Cheers, _{In solidarity} Wikipedian12512 (Talking is fine | contribs) 14:03, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

@Yakikaki: @Wikipedian12512: "Proposed" and "considered" are both reasonable, in my opinion. Since we're getting in the weeds with word choice, "less than" should be "fewer than" (as orchids are not a mass noun). What about replacing "despite there only being less than 45 specimens observed" with "despite fewer than 45 mature individuals ever having been documented"? HolyEgg (talk) 15:37, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

Fine by me. Yakikaki (talk) 16:41, 13 September 2026 (UTC)