Talk:Ouyang Xiu

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.	Biography Portal
B	This article has been rated as B-Class on the project's quality scale. [FAQ]

	This article is part of WikiProject China, a project to improve all China-related articles. If you would like to help improve this and other China-related articles, please join the project. All interested editors are welcome.
B	This article has been rated as B-Class on the quality scale. (add comments)
More information about this article... High This article has been rated as High-importance on the importance scale.

	Middle Ages Portal Ouyang Xiu is part of WikiProject Middle Ages, a project for the community of Wikipedians who are interested in the Middle Ages. For more information, see the project page and the newest articles.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.
Article Grading: The article has not been rated for quality and/or importance yet. Please rate the article and then leave comments here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.
WikiProject Middle Ages To do:

	Ouyang Xiu was a nominee for good article, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
October 9, 2007 Good article nominee Not listed

The following user(s) are actively contributing to this article and may be able to help with questions about verification and sources: Ludahai This in no way implies article ownership; all editors are encouraged to contribute.

Contents 1 GA Review 1.1 GA Update 2 Footnotes 3 Footnote common sense 4 Definitive Ouyang 5 Footnote consolidation

[edit] GA Review

GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS):

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   a (fair representation): b (all significant views):

5. It is stable.

   

6. It contains images, where possible, to illustrate the topic.

   a (tagged and captioned): b lack of images (does not in itself exclude GA): c (non-free images have fair use rationales):

7. Overall:

   a Pass/Fail:

Well, I think it's a very good article, especially given the nature of the subject, but there are some problems that prevent me from promoting this to GA status at the moment, although nothing that I believe can't be done in seven days.

To begin with, the lead needs some work. Most importantly, it needs to be expanded so that it at least touches upon/covers/somewhat summarizes every major aspect of the article itself. Right now it's only two sentences long; it should a through summary would expand to one, maybe two full paragraphs. In addition, the list of his names is very awkward as it's sort of plunked down in the middle of the first sentence. I would suggest either making his list of names its own sentence in the lead (ie. "In his time, he would have also been known by the courtesy name...") or, if you feel up to it, try and expand and integrate it into the body of the article itself.

The image in the infobox requires a caption that explains the context of the picture to someone who is just reading the article and doesn't click on the picture itself. Is it a contemporary drawing of subject? Was it drawn several centuries after by artists interpreting his story? Is it a modern artists' rendition of the subject? Also, is it known who drew it or not? If so, who was the artist?

You seem to have access to a lot of good, reliable sources, but a lot of things remain without in-line citations in this article. Since this is a historical figure, it cannot be assumed that anything in the article is common knowledge (I mean of course, anything about the subject of the article) so everything has the potential to be challenged and thus everything should have an inline citation. For example, in "Early life" you stop citing after the citation for his father dying. Since known history of this period and figure are by no means complete, things like the year he passed his degree exam or that he was largely self-taught need be directly pointed to in the works that you're citing so that they can be verified (well, at least by someone who has the books...). Also, because of the lack of citations, it's hard to tell if there's any original research here. I suspect that since you're an established editor, there's not, but I have no way of verifying that without citations. Also, a non-established editor could easily slip something in that sounds convincing but is completely false - without citations its impossible to tell. This is a problem in all of the main sections, although apparentely the lead does not need to be fully cited (although it can if you choose to do so). Also, all citations need to abide by the standards set out in WP:CITET.

I think the prose is excellent, baring a few tiny things I fixed myself, but one thing I noticed is that the job of a "collator of texts" should either be briefly explained or wikilinked so that uncultured slobs like myself people who are unfamiliar with the term can get an idea of what it is. Also, all the ref tags should touch the punctuation/word that comes before it... I think I caught a lot, but not all of that.

The legacy section could use some expansion, if possible. He seems like an important figure - what other lasting impacts on contemporary and future culture did he have? Who else cites him as an influence or an important figure in history? You say that his poetry dealt with new themes never before touched on - did his dealing of these themes encourage others to do so or no? Did his themes last a long time or was it a passing fad? Was he chastised for these new themes, lauded or was it generally ignored at the time? You don't have to answer all of these questions, of course, but these are the types of things that could be used to expand the legacy section. An expanded legacy section would also help ensure the neutrality of the article - specifically that all significant views are represented.

I think this is enough to deal with for now. I am putting the article on hold for a period of up to seven days, after which it may be failed without any further notice. Once you've dealt with all of these things, I'll go over it again and make any more suggestions that I feel are necessary before passing the article. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask and thank you for your work so far! Cheers, CP 21:37, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I have started working on the comments. Number six has been done. The image is now captioned. ludahai 魯大海 02:16, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I have just expanded the intro and rewrote part to make it smoother. I did it without removing content placed there by previous editors, but there are a couple of things that I feel may not belong, but would like your opinion - that regarding the nickname discussion - before moving it. ludahai 魯大海 02:44, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Sure, ask away here or on my talk page (if I've missed the actual question, apologies, just getting over being sick and my mind is a bit cloudy) Cheers, CP 16:28, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I have expanded the Early Life section and added complete references. I also expanded the reference for the Mote book, but I can't for the other book or articles as I do not have them in my possession. ludahai 魯大海 03:08, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Hey, I just checked, and my university library has copies of all of the remaining books and articles that we need available. (That is, the ones listed under the "references" section, besides Mote) I might be too busy today, but I will do my best to pick them up as soon as possible and see how they fit into the article.--Danaman5 15:57, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

No rush at all. It was my own mistake for not alerting Ludahai earlier about the review, and I have no problem extending a hold if comments are being actively addressed, as they are in this case. Cheers, CP 16:28, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, both of you. The teamwork exhibited here is an example of the best of the ideals of Wikipedia. ludahai 魯大海 22:31, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

CP, where are we at right now in your opinion? ludahai 魯大海 14:15, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Much, much closer than when I first reviewed the article, I'll re-read it tomorrow and update my GA checklist above to give you a better idea of exactly what's left to be done. Also, though it's not mandatory for GA, the below comment on footnotes (and only the one on footnotes) has a point. Combining similar references under the ref name tag would clean up the page a lot, and would be essential to A Class or FA Class. Cheers, CP 01:54, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Just to give everyone an update, I have acquired the remaining sources from my university library, and I will probably use them to cite all remaining material tomorrow. At that point, the article can just have one section, "Notes and references", that will contain all bibliographic information, and the current, rather unhelpful "references" section can be removed. I will condense the Mote references at the same time.--Danaman5 04:03, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA Update

OK, I have updated the GA checklist above, but will put my comments here to give a section break from previous comments.

1. The lead still needs expansion per WP:LEAD. It needs to touch upon a little bit more detail and expand its broadness slightly to accurately cover the article. One of the proposed plans for the Wikipedia CD was that it only contain the leads of articles - so keep that in mind when working on it, write it as if that were going to be the only thing people would read in this article. What would you want/need covered? You wouldn't want too much detail, but you wouldn't want to leave things out either.
2. The citations are progressing very nicely. The second paragraph in the Historian section, as well as the final bit in the Legacy section need citations, but otherwise everything seems pretty good.
3. The legacy section still needs expansion, per my original comments.

So you're much closer now! Once the above points have been met, I'll go through it once more to fix up any minor things that I find, but that should be pretty much it. Good luck! Cheers, CP 01:55, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, the article has been on hold for seven days plus the time of the original hold, and it seems to have grown stale. Unless I can be convinced otherwise, I might have to fail this nomination for now. If I do choose to do that, remember that it can be re-nominated at any time once my concerns have been addressed. Cheers, CP 15:05, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I got some of the references from my library, but unfortunately, I grabbed only the first volume of Sung Biographies, and it turned out that there were two. Then, when I looked at the references that I had, it seemed that none of the unreferenced info was really covered by these refs anyway. I've been really busy recently, and probably won't be able to do much more until the weekend, at least.--Danaman5 20:22, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to fail this article at the moment. Please do not take this as a discouragement. Once these last three concerns have been addressed, it may be renominated for GA status. To expedite the process, please let me know when/if you re-nominate this article and I will re-review it so that a) You don't get a reviewer unfamiliar with the work so far and b) I can review it quickly when it is re-nominated.

Good luck with the article! Cheers, CP 04:55, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Footnotes

Too many footnotes in this article. Footnotes in places not really needn't. The article should be about Ou-yang and not Freddie Mote.--210.128.172.66 05:54, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Some footnotes may be able to be combined, a project I intend to work on when I have a little more time, but all information in Wikipedia articles is expected to be backed up by reliable sources (see WP:RS), so nothing can go without a footnote.--Danaman5 06:20, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Footnote common sense

If you write an article on the Tower of London you needn't insert a footnote that it is really in London. The fact that it is there is common knowledge. Likewise most of the facts re. Ouyang are common knowledge found in a variety of sources. Fred Mote's book is hardly a definitive source. Wiki rules on footnotes is "This page is a guideline, not a policy." A good location to quote the Mote book is footnote 33 where you can include all the Mote page numbers, which are about six or more. The facts of Ouyang's life are concludeed at that point. Also the box to the right hand side with the Chinese needs to go as well. It is useless to English readers. You need to　unclutter the article and make it more appealing to the eye.--Iwanafish 00:14, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Initially, there weren't so many footnotes. I added them as the request of the GA review. I agree that most facts of Ouyang Xiu's life are not contested by those of us who study Chinese history, but there aren't many in the English speaking world. Again, I am willing to go with either way of doing the footnotes, so long as their is consistency. Why isn't Professor Mote's book considered a definitive source? Do you have any counter sources? His book is well researched and well referenced. As for the infobox, it was there before I came to work on this article and is commonly used for Chinese historical personages. ludahai 魯大海 02:18, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Definitive Ouyang

The best (and perhaps the only) is Ou-Yang Hsiu: An Eleventh-Century Neo-Confucianist by James T. Liu, Stanford, 1967? Also get rid of the Chinese on the right hand side. Useless for English readers. Clutter, clutter!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.194.2.197 (talk) 10:52, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Footnote consolidation

I have reviewed good articles before, and too many footnotes is a reason to fail an article. There is no reason to have consecutive footnotes with the same page number unless they are in separate paragraphs. I have taken the liberty of removing the extras. Zeus1234 20:29, 5 October 2007 (UTC)