Talk:Doubled haploidy

Trying to clear things up

I think the first sentence is confusing. We are actually starting with diploid plants, no? Because only a diploid plant would have a haploid gamete. If I am wrong here please let me know. Otherwise I will change it.Rose bartram (talk) 15:00, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Hi Rose, actually no. Only a diploid plant would have a monoploid gamete, with one set of chromosomes. Tetraploids, hexaploids, etc. have haploid gametes (haploid means halved), but they are diploid, triploid, etc. I hope that is a bit clearer than mud. Nadiatalent (talk) 14:31, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I just rewrote the lead (I am crawling through the backlog of articles tagged as being not understandable / too technical) to make the subject clearer for the average reader. I would like someone with a biology background to double check the lead paragraph for accuracy. Feel free to just go ahead and fix it, or to point out the error here so I can fix it. Thanks! Guy Macon 08:28, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

When I rewrote the lead paragraph, I added the comment "Please review and modify as needed; I am not a biologist." Nadiatalent Reverted the change with the comment "Sorry, but the confusion of monoploid with haploid is too great in that change" - which was, of course, just what I wanted; someone with more expertise in biology checking the edit. Thanks!

Alas, we can't just leave a page tagged as being too technical / too hard to understand forever, and in it's current form it is hard to understand. This is currently the oldest listing in Category:Wikipedia articles that are too technical. Articles that fail to meet Wikipedia standards need to be improved until they do meet Wikipedia standards or deleted if no such improvement is possible. Clearly I lack the expertise needed to rewrite the lead without adding further confusion, but I suspect that any first-year biology student could fix it in about five minutes. Is anyone willing to step up to the plate and fix this? Wikipedia:Make technical articles understandable gives some excellent guidelines. Guy Macon 02:35, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi, I tried to fix what you wrote but it was too much of a challenge. One point is that I think the page should start with a description of the subject matter of the page, rather than a general exposition of polyploidy, human reproduction, or other matter. I'll look at it more as I have time (don't have much), but unfortunately this is part of a more general problem, that the basic material that supposedly everyone studies in high school has been dreadful all over the popular online sources, and what is there has been proliferating (I was amazed to see recently that some text I put into wikipedia's ploidy page has been copied to "webster's online dictionary", unfortunately with no observable date stamp on the latter). Unfortunately, there are few people with sufficient understanding to fix all this mess, but we are doing our best. This material was taught as a serious subject better before about 1950, and unfortunately has largely been dumbed down since, to the point where misinformation abounds. This is one of the most specialized pages, so it hasn't had much attention. Sorry, but it will probably take a while to tweak it enough to improve it significantly. Nadiatalent (talk) 13:33, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I have asked Project Genetics for assistance in bringing this article up to Wikipedia standards. Guy Macon 13:31, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Inherently specialized

I've added more links in the lede, but I don't see any way to make this an instantly understandable subject area to someone who doesn't know what polyploidy, chromosomes, and plant breeding are. I don't think the lede rewrite tag is justified. The article should also serve as a quick reminder to people who have much of the necessary background, so expanding it with basic explanations would defeat that purpose. I think it's fine as is. Nadiatalent (talk) 13:15, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I have no problem with agreeing that it is fine as it is, if there is also consensus that I can remove all of the tags that generate the boxes ("the introduction of this article may need to be rewritten", "This article needs attention from an expert on the subject", "This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards", "This article may be too technical for most readers to understand"). If the tags are to remain, then I want to fix whatever problems need to be fixed so that I can remove them.

I just added "For a non-technical introduction to the topic, see Introduction to genetics" at the top. The editors of DNA seem to be happy with that as a solution to the lead paragraph being highly technical.

I am going to be bold and remove all the tags now. If anyone thinks they still apply, please revert the change and discuss how we can fix the problem(s). Thanks! Guy Macon 18:25, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I for one prefer it without those tags. As I get time I'll go through the rest of the article, but can't immediately foresee when I'll have enough time. Nadiatalent (talk) 18:32, 20 February 2011 (UTC)