Talk:Economic history of China before 1912/GA1

GA Review

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Starting review sub-page.--Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 17:44, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

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First off, kudos to the hard work that's been done on this article - it's much better than when I first saw it! That being said, the length of the article might be problematic. Not in the sense that it's too long, but that there's a lot of information to verify and could prove difficult for something so huge to fit all the criteria.

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose quality:

   Prose throughout is generally good, but the tone can be a tad unencyclopedic at times. Not a huge issue for GA though.

   B. MoS compliance:

   MoS is fine, and not an issue here. Many key concepts and figures need to be linked, however.

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. References to sources:

   Update1 - Footnotes are now shortened and concise with publication dates, references in alphabetical order.

   No serious problems here, but some of the citations in the footnotes don't really need the entire bibliographical information in there every time, just author and publishing date.

   B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary: Update -

   Update1 - Article has been edited to reflect a more diverse range of sources, citations are now used more frequently. Reliance on single source has been adequately reduced. One questionable source removed. This article now passes this criteria.

   This is where most of my problems lie.

   - This article has a good number of citations, but one must keep its length in mind. With so much information, there needs to be more citations in the article is to keep some of its statements. It is not always clear whether the citation at the end of a paragraph accounts for the entire paragraph, or just the final sentence. Consider citing the same page(s) more than once if something is sensitive/debatable.

   - Another major issue here is that the article is overly dependent on a single book (Li Bo; Zheng Yin (2001)). It would seem that many subsections are directly sourced from it and that the entire article seemed to be centered around it, with additional cites from other sources as mere supplement. The verification issues for something that is not in English might prove too difficult, especially when it is used for so much of the article. Please consider some additional secondary sources. To save time, ask other editors involved in the same field for sources and citations.

   - Finally, I am not sure if <Jia Qing. "On the reasons why China fell behind the west". http://gz-hanfu.cn/doc/The-Truth-of-History.pdf> is really a good source. It seems to be a rather unbalanced and self-researched article stemming from a somewhat ethnocentric site, and has no publishing info. However, I see that it has not been used as citation to some of the more sensitive claims, and therefore could probably be easily replaced by a better secondary source. This will prevent arguments in the future over that particular source.

   C. No original research: Update -

   Update1 - Primary source removed. This article passes this criteria.

   Only a few small adjustments is needed here to pass. Please do not interpret directly from primary sources, as was done with Sima Guang's Zizhi Tongjian. There are only two cites from it though, and could likely also be easily replaced with secondary sources.

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Main aspects:

   As broad as they come, fantastically done.

   B. Focus on topic:

   Well, there are certainly a lot of subtopics here, but generally focus is not a problem. I see there are already sub-articles dealing with larger topics within the article.

4. Is it neutral?

   By and large not a problem. May need to introduce some scholarly, contrasting opinions for possible FA nomination.

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, few controversial edits.

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:

   B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:

   A wide array of excellent images here, and I see the alt text was not forgotten :)

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail: Update - (Pass)

   Overall, this is a pretty good article. The bad news is the issues with sources I've outlined above. The good news is, those issues could be easily resolved. In essence, it is only a hair's breadth away from passing, in my opinion. If a few members of the Chinese-portal community were to look it over, add a diverse amount of facts from different sources, this article could well be on its way to FA. I hope this review will help the editors involved. Keep up the great work!

   Update1 - Issues have been addressed, and the article is now more than qualified for GA. I pass this article on the grounds that it ably meets all necessary criteria. Excellent work by User:Teeninvestor and other involved editors! ~ AMorozov (talk) 05:56, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

I willl keep AMorozov's suggestions in mind. I will be removing some of the unreliable/primary sources mentioned by AMorozov very soon and adding more citations. I hope these changes will be able to promote the article to GA(and then hopefully FA, after a second copyedit).Teeninvestor (talk) 12:06, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

The overly reliance on Li Bo and Zheng Yin (2001) is mostly for some eras(e.g., the 220-589 era of division) that are ill covered by acadmeic publications, which tend to focus on the unified dynasties (e.g. Song, Ming, and Tang, which have many citations from other sources). I have removed the source of Jia Qing and Zizhi Tongjian from the article in concurance of AMorozov's comments above. In addition, I have added citaitons from new sources and I have reduced the number of citations from Li and Zheng's source from 60% of the total (123 out of 220) to about 49 percent of the total (106 out of 216) I have removed 17 citations from Li and Zheng's source and replaced them with 13 citations from scholarly sources. I hope this resolves the problem of over-dependence on one source.Teeninvestor (talk) 12:22, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

In addition, I calculated the amount of citations per kilobyte for this article is about 1.96(about 216 citations per 110 kb), while the featured article Economy of the Han Dynasty has about 1.95(about 137 citations for 70kb), So I believe the number of citations is sufficient(for now) though I am working to get more scholarly citations and reducing the number of citations from Li and Zheng's source.Teeninvestor (talk) 17:18, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

In addition, I've also revamped the entire system of citations to include inline citations, as well as adding the appropriate dates for every citation.Teeninvestor (talk) 23:57, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Conclusion by User:AMorozov: PASS

Improvements needed for FA

• 2nd copyedit(Hopefully will bring prose up to standard of FA)
• Replace Yuan Dynasty Li/Zheng citations with Cambridge history of China(This will bring Li and Zheng's total to below 40 percent).

Add more as you see fit.Teeninvestor (talk) 13:51, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Li and Zheng citations have dropped from 106(last time) to 83, reduced by 23, while the total number of citations has gone up by 13 to 233. I have thus added 36 new citations from various sources while reducing Li and Zheng's citations, which now make up only about 35 percent of the total content of the article.Teeninvestor (talk) 19:27, 23 July 2009 (UTC)