Talk:Chen Guangcheng/GA2

GA Review

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Reviewer: Thedropsoffire (talk · contribs) 07:17, 19 November 2012 (UTC) I will review this article within the next couple days.--Thedropsoffire (talk) 07:17, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As a note, I have skimmed through the initial review talk page, where the review Thaddeus went m.i.a., and will take this into consideration in my review. At first run, the article looks pretty good, but I will due diligence and scan the article thoroughly, and provide sufficient comments soon.--Thedropsoffire (talk) 08:12, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Nearly finished a thorough read-through. I have been making verbage touch-ups and grammar edits as I've gone along. I am enjoying the article; it is generall pretty well-written and well-sourced, and great testament to a guy who really took on Goliath.

A couple notes:

So far, I have listed one citation needed (on the article).

Citation added.

The second last paragraph in the "Negotiations and exit from U.S. embassy" really needs to be reworked; I wasn't able to rephrase this satisfactorily

I took a pass at it; let me know what you think.

A couple of in-wiki links not working (i.e. red)(maybe you can do a quick look-in/correction of this)

The Beijing Daily redlink should probably stay per WP:REDLINK; it's apparently a big newspaper and referenced hundreds of times in Wikipedia. We just don't have an article on it yet. Dongshigu is a more borderline case. I've got no objections if anyone wants to remove that one.

Regarding the "Beijing Daily," I just did a little research. Since a google search turned up little, I looked into the Reuters article referenced. The article refers to the Beijing Daily as the "main mouthpiece of the Beijing city Communist Party authorities". But according to the website of the People's Daily :"Launched in January 1998, People's Daily Online is a website built by People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China." The People's Daily is based in Beijing. So is it possible the newspapers are one and the same?--Thedropsoffire (talk) 03:38, 20 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think there's a good chance they're the same, but am not sure. The description does sound the same. Perhaps we could create a redirect for now and leave a note at WikiProject China that we've done so? -- Khazar2 (talk) 12:27, 20 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

My guess is that the Beijing Daily is overseen by municipal-level party authorities in Beijing, whereas the People's Daily is overseen at the national level under the auspices of the CCP central committee (which also just happens to be in Beijing). In either case, they would run much of the same content produced by Xinhua News Agency. It would be a good project for someone to create a page on the Beijing Daily. Homunculus (duihua) 20:42, 20 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think we can remove most instances of the word "reportedly"; this is a redundancy when you reference a news article.

In most instances here (I can't speak for all), it's used to show that the news source is saying that someone else is making this claim, for example here: [1]. Radio Free Asia hasn't verified these claims itself and isn't ready to report them as fact, but is still attributing them to Chen. This article is a tricky one to write because so much of it does boil down to Chen's word against that of local authorities (who rarely comment on the case). So there's a lot of hedging in the text--it's notable that Chen and his family made these claims, but no news agency can really verify one way or another.

All that said, I'm fine with finding alternate phrasings where you think it's called for; I'm just laying out what I suspect to be the original rationale.

--Thedropsoffire (talk) 14:22, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks much for taking on this review, especially for the prose tweaks! I'll work on your other points after I go make myself some more coffee... -- Khazar2 (talk) 14:28, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

My pleasure; sounds good :)

Was there a rationale for placing family at the end (usually bios have family near the top, and it does seem a little strange at the bottom, especially after all the preceding comments about his family throughout the article...)? --Thedropsoffire (talk) 14:50, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

After reading through the end of the family section, I believe the reason family is at the bottom is because many of these events relating to Chen's family happened near the end of the whole saga, or are still ongoing (i.e. still up for arrest). But I really think this section can be separated - the first paragraph could still be part of the "family" section, but moved near the top, and the last two paragraphs could either be merged into other sections, or made into their own section (i.e. "aftermath", or something like that). Let me know what you think. --Thedropsoffire (talk) 14:51, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Honestly, I can't tell you off the top of my head how that one evolved. It would probably be best to integrate that information throughout the article since, as you say, his family plays such a major role in events (both as hostages and helping him escape). Looking at the overall structure here, I'm also not a fan of having one massive "Biography" section that contains almost the entire article. I wonder if this might be a better structure:

1. Early life and activism

2. Trial and house arrest

3. Escape and emigration

4. In the U.S.

5. International recognition

The current subsections could be maintained, just within the above structure. What do you think? -- Khazar2 (talk) 15:00, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Khazar, the family section evolved at the end of the article during the expansion a couple months ago. I think I had recently been looking at a few FA-class biographies that do similar, putting family and personal life at the end of the page (eg. Barack Obama), so I did likewise. But I agree it's not the most intuitive or natural order of things. His relationship with his wife, and the fact that the couple had two children (possibly in violation of the one-child policy), is valuable as background to some of his later activism. And the material about the harassment of family members can also be folded into the chronological narrative. Here's a slight tweak to that proposed structure, one that would allow us to more naturally integrate the family section in rough chronological order:

1.Early life and family

2. Activism

3. Trial and house arrest

4. Escape and emigration

4.1 Harassment of family and associates

5. In the United States

6. Awards and recognition

Thoughts? Homunculus (duihua) 15:46, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That looks great to me. -- Khazar2 (talk) 16:00, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, let's go with this then :)--Thedropsoffire (talk) 01:54, 20 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Done. I made a few more tweaks and rearrangements to the text (actually changes to content kept to a minimum). Hopefully these were improvements, but if not, feel free to revert. Was there anything else? Homunculus (duihua) 05:20, 20 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this article is looking quite good and in my mind up to GA standard. I will answer all the formal GA bullet points within the next day or two, and then approve it to GA. Good job guys. Also, as a side, please see my comment above on Beijing Daily. I'm not positive my deductions are accurate, but I think they are. If they are the same thing, we could just add a redirect link to the People's Daily.--Thedropsoffire (talk) 07:45, 20 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Overall Review

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

Is it reasonably well written?
A. Prose quality:

B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:
Is it factually accurate and verifiable?
A. References to sources:

B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:

C. No original research:
Is it broad in its coverage?
A. Major aspects:

B. Focused:
Is it neutral?
Fair representation without bias:
Is it stable?
No edit wars, etc:
Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?
A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:

B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:
Overall:
Pass or Fail:

Good work guys. This article is fairly comprehensive, and I'd even say its almost FA ready. To make it FA ready there are a couple minor things that could be improved: the timeline pic would need a caption, the two red link articles may need to be addressed (not sure of FA policy on this one, but to me this still stands out), and the activism section, which is rather long overall (understandibly since that is really what he's known for), and could be divided into subsections under activism(perhaps something like disability petitioning, environmental work, class-action lawsuit - that is very off the top, but you get the idea). Also, the Zhang Yaojie article is referenced rather heavily.--Thedropsoffire (talk) 02:21, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your help and thorough review! I was also thinking we might take a run at FA with this one. Homonculus, what do you think? Cheers to all, -- Khazar2 (talk) 02:56, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, thanks much for conducting the review. I've never attempted to take an article to FA status, so I'll defer to your judgement on whether it's ready. Thedropsoffire's suggestions for further improvement sound reasonable, and I would also suggest that we try to find some more retrospective literature that we can reference, and see if we need to provide any additional updates. I've also added a couple photos, though what I'd really like is to convince the copyright holder of these images to release them under a Creative Commons license.[2][3][4][5]

A quick note: there's a discrepancy in the sources as to which day Chen left the embassy. Images furnished by the U.S. government give the date of May 1, but the New York Times says the 2nd. Does anyone know how to reconcile this? Homunculus (duihua) 05:18, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Reuters also reported Wednesday, May 2 in very unambiguous terms.[6] Perhaps it's just a typo or error by the US gov employee putting up the images? -- Khazar2 (talk) 13:38, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think you're probably right. All the sources say May 2. I also looked up the same handouts as they appear on Getty Images, and the correct date of May 2 is given on those.Homunculus (duihua) 13:55, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm away for a little while and - wow - well done everybody! Spectacular! Fayedizard (talk) 19:39, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]