Wikipedia:Peer review/Huo Long Jing/archive1

Huo Long Jing

This article describes one of the most important books of medieval literature from China. Compiled and edited by Jiao Yu and Liu Ji in the 14th century (with Jiao's preface added in a publication of 1412 AD), this military treatise outlines, describes, and illustrates in many different drawings the various 'fire-weapons' employing gunpowder in their time. This includes 'fire arrows', flamethrower/firearm 'fire lances', early guns, bombards, cannons, exploding cannonballs, land mines, naval mines, rocket launchers, two stage rockets, winged rockets, and more. Although the article is mostly sufficient and meets criteria for at least B-class status (in my opinion), it could be improved in many places, such as in organization, clarity, etc. I am aiming for Good Article status, although the eventual Featured Article is always a possibility. Since I created the article (and Jiao Yu's), I would be grateful of anyone's suggestions and additions to it. Thank you.--PericlesofAthens 18:50, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Good article. I enjoyed reading it.

I would suggest that the article title be moved to "Huolongjing" per pinyin grammar rules on word formation - i.e. that multi-syllabic words expressing one concept should be written as one word. Ditto "Tian Gong Kai Wu" and "Wu jing zong yao" (also note inconsistent capitalisation in those two examples).

It could just be me but I don't like insertions of Chinese text in an English article without some indication as to it being Chinese text or its meaning. I would suggest that "元大德二年 (1298 AD)" be re-formatted as "2nd year of the Dade era, Yuan Dynasty (1298 AD)", since the Chinese text by itself is likely to be meaningless and perhaps confusing for a non-Sinophone reader.

The lengthy quote under "Land mines and naval mines" could benefite from the Template:cquote template.

The vast majority of information seems to be sourced from Needham, Volume 5, Part 7. Perhaps a greater variety of sources would improve the article further.

Thanks, Sumple (Talk) 01:06, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

• Reply First off, thank you for contributing to the peer review, great suggestions!

First point - I realize my mistake now, and I will go through the long and dreadful process of changing that to one long word in this wiki article and dozens of others. Ouch. Lol.

Second point - I'll fix that in a moment.

Third point - Actually, the Template:cquote page says cquote is only appropriate for short quotes given at the beginning or very end of a section to provide context for the rest of the text material. For large quotes (like that one) it says simply to use the blockquote method.

Fourth point - a good point! Lol. But I don't have any books (besides Needham's) lying around my house that are focused solely on the history of gunpowder. There's only so much web material I could muster and find out there on the internet. Google scholar is of little help (only sporadic content in a sparse amount of books here and there will provide anything good on the history of gunpowder in China...I was lucky even to find Partington's book...what little I was allowed to see of his book). My school's library has the Needham collection of volumes, but when it comes to gunpowder history, they are sorely lacking, I was lucky to find Khan's book to be honest. I do have an online library of information thanks to the university I am attending, but they have a limited amount of books to choose from. If anyone could help contribute to this article with further book sources at hand, I would be very grateful. Peace. --PericlesofAthens 16:09, 27 May 2007 (UTC)