Talk:Carlos Scharff

Latest comment: 4 months ago by AirshipJungleman29 in topic Did you know nomination
Good articleCarlos Scharff has been listed as one of the History good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
November 21, 2023Good article nomineeListed
November 21, 2023Peer reviewNot reviewed
Did You Know
A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on December 29, 2023.
The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that rubber barons like Carlos Scharff enslaved indigenous populations in the Upper Amazon region during the rubber boom as a workforce for latex collection?
Current status: Good article

GA Review edit

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


This review is transcluded from Talk:Carlos Scharff/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Frzzl (talk · contribs) 12:56, 19 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Hello, thank you for taking the time to do this!
==Prose==
I have fixed the surname issue I believe, and there has also been clarification added to the Spanish terms via notes.
==Points==
  • Upper River capitalization has been fixed
  • The border conflict between Brazil and Peru occurred near the end of the Acre War however they are not related events besides the fact that military resources were divided between the two conflicts.
  • Information regarding the guerrilla war has been changed.
  • The beginning paragraph for the 1904–1905: At Curanja section has been changed, I hope that reads a lot better.
==Refs==
These are mostly fixed by now,
==Images==
I meant to reply yesterday however I am not familiar with the process of changing the licensing to public domain! Arawoke (talk) 18:40, 20 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
No problem at all, there's no rush. I checked through some of the points, so I just need to finish looking over the prose and check the refs. I think after I go through and copyedit a little it should be "reasonably well written", but I'd reccomend booking the article in for a glowup at the WP:Guild of Copyeditors. Frzzltalk;contribs 22:38, 20 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
Okay, I've gotten through the rest of the article, and randomly checked through some of the refs - I'm happy that it's well referenced, so that's checked off. The article should definitely be put into the Guild of Copyeditors, but I think that it's passable. Frzzltalk;contribs 22:59, 21 November 2023 (UTC)Reply


Hey Arawoke! I did say that I'd give some feedback on the article, so I guess this kind of fulfils that? Frzzltalk;contribs 12:56, 19 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)
  1. It is reasonably well written.
    a (prose, spelling, and grammar):   b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):  
    See below
  2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.
    a (reference section):   b (inline citations to reliable sources):   c (OR):   d (copyvio and plagiarism):  
    Earwig comes up with ~15%, which looks to be quotations. See below
  3. It is broad in its coverage.
    a (major aspects):   b (focused):  
  4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.
    Fair representation without bias:  
  5. It is stable.
    No edit wars, etc.:  
    Can't see any edit wars etc.
  6. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.
    a (images are tagged and non-free content have non-free use rationales):   b (appropriate use with suitable captions):  
    All images are relevant, captions seem fine to me. For licensing, see below.
  7. Overall:
    Pass/Fail:  

Points edit

Prose edit

It'll take me a bit to work through all of this, so I'll do 1a below later. Regarding 1b - the article is almost entirely fine, but I think it could do with a run through to remove our words to watch - I noticed a fair few examples of words like "claim" or "reportedly" being used where they shouldn't be etc. I'm going to do a minor copy edit on the article to fix minor punctuation grammar &c, so I'll remove the entirely superfluous ones, and I'll point out any you've missed after you've gone over it.

Some general observations:

  • When referring to figures for a second or further time, only use their surname (unless multiple figures are related and have the same surname).
  • Close to all of the Spanish terminology in the article needs English definitions - I've added tags.
Points edit
  • The "Aftermath" section should be renamed to "Legacy".
  • The response towards the Piro inquiry regarding who had initially started the fighting on the Purus River, the answer is disputed between "Scharff or Cardoso da Rosa to 'the Peruvians' or 'the Brazilians,' - I'm honestly not sure what you mean. Can you rewrite it? Also, what's the Piro inquiry? Why the quotation marks?
  • Be consistent in the capitalisation of "upper/Upper Purus"
  • is " conflict between Peru and Brazil" referring to the Acre War? if so, wikilink
  • I think that In response to perceived Peruvian aggression in the Purus and Yurua area, five hundred Brazilian soldiers were sent to the region. The Brazilian government also decided to restrict access to steamships heading towards Loreto and Iquitos. According to Hecht, Brazil had "closed the upper Amazon to trade, especially munitions destined for Peru," and two steamships that were filled with ammunition and weapons were seized by Brazilian authorities around that time. There was a guerrilla war waged throughout the region, which brought about the destruction of rubber stations, outposts that collect firewood, and domiciles in the area. The conflict also instigated crimes within the area such as rape, torture and murder against the inhabitants of the opposing side's rubber stations. is a bit tangential to the information specifically about Scharff, I would remove it and combine the next paragraph. Perhaps add a single phrase to sum up the conflict as guerilla warfare, but I think that that this paragraph for simple context is excessive.
  • A 1904 census found that there was a population of 10,852 inhabitants distributed throughout 150 rubber barracas along the upper Purus. The year before, there was an estimate of around one thousand caucheros along the Curanja River. At the time of the census, there were four hundred Peruvians documented as working in the region.Most of these Peruvians were spread throughout the area in small outposts. feels a bit off, since the comparisons don't seem equal. Which area is "the area" - the upper Purus or the Curanja? Same applies to "the region". Can you rephrase it so that we're comparing Purus-Purus, or Curanja-Curanja, or something else that is consistent.

Refs edit

Refs are well formatted, I tend to do spotchecks last. One thing that stuck out to me is that several of the explanatory notes aren't referenced; they need to be.

Images edit

All the images are relevant to the article, but they don't all have the correct licensing tags. To me, it looks like they should all be public domain (too early to be CC haha) - can you add the tags, and perhaps the lifespans of the photographers for the non anonymous ones? Also, I saw that you've got a peer review open, so this isn't needed for GA, but if you're looking to get the article to FA, then you should add alt-text to all the images.

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Did you know nomination edit

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by AirshipJungleman29 talk 04:02, 21 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

  • ... that rubber barons like Carlos Scharff enslaved indigenous populations in the Upper Amazon region during the rubber boom as a workforce for latex collection? Source: Quote published by Peruvian anthropologist Beatriz Huertas Castillo in her 2004 publication "Indigenous peoples in isolation in the Peruvian Amazon", page 53.
    "“Our grandfathers came to work with the masters of this area. Around 500 families came with Carlos Scharff. Manchineri, Cushitineri, Etene, Kudpaneri and Nachineri came. They lived around Las Piedras. The master grouped them together at Curiyacu. They lived some distance from each other in groups. They mixed with other natives who were brought by the master and later they were put to work on the rubber"
Source:"Indigenous peoples in isolation in the Peruvian Amazon", page 58.
"There are various hypotheses as to the origins of the Mashco Piro. Some Dominican missionaries such as Álvarez (1996) state that they are the descendants of indigenous Yine from the Urubamba River. The Yine of the Monte Salvado native community, with whom they have had brief conversations, confirm this belief, maintaining that they are the descendants of their forefathers who were brought to the area from the Urubamba as slaves by the rubber baron Carlos Scharff in the early 20th century, as mentioned above. After killing him in 1918, these people chose to seek refuge in remote areas for fear of reprisals"
Source:The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides Da Cunha, by professor Susanna B. Hecht.
"da Cunha was at pains to let us know, as two of the ethnicities of the thousands of native slaves who were lured by Carlos Scharff and the Fitzcarraldos". Page 482
    • Comment: There are alternative ways to write this hook and relay the same information.

Created by Arawoke (talk). Self-nominated at 23:09, 8 November 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Carlos Scharff; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.Reply

  • Comment: @Arawoke: It might be helpful for others if you add page 58 from Castillo (2004) to the citation up above, as it adds additional support for your hook, rather than just page 53 alone. I think the potential hook material in the legacy section, particularly the account of Scharff's extended family continuing to practice slavery, is the most interesting material in the entire article and would make an exceptional hook, perhaps as an ALT1. Also, I think there is some confusion about dates in this section. Hvalkof made his discovery sometime between 1986 and 1987, but the last quote in the section places the context in 1975. Of course, that doesn't make sense, so if you go back to the source text, it looks like the date comes from p. 119, which refers to Hvalkof reminiscing about his first field studies in the region, which occurred in 1975. As such, I removed it.[1] If you disagree, feel free to add it back. Viriditas (talk) 20:38, 11 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment: @Viriditas: Thank you for both of those recommendations, that bit about Scharff's family would be a great piece of information for the hook. I have added that bit of context onto Carlos Fitzcarrald's legacy as well, with a blockquote from Hvalkof. Huertas Castillo also elaborates further on the continuation of slave raids into the 1960's, however I am not yet familiar enough with Hvalkof or Huertas work expand upon that information, this is a huge topic to say the least. I did not catch that bit about the date at first, and I appreciate that you took the time to get familiar with the subject! This is my first DYK attempt, and I am not really sure how to make an alternative hook, I may have put one together by now if I did. I will look into it soon
  • If you propose a new hook (or a few, depends entirely on you), I can help add them up above. Otherwise, I can go ahead and review the hook you have now. But, I still think proposing a new hook about how the slavery continued would be amazing. I'm not entirely sure how to word it, however, so I'll leave that up to you. Viriditas (talk) 21:33, 11 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
  •   Procedural note: nomination was made on November 8 before the GA review was passed on November 21. I am not knowledgeable enough about process to know whether this is a common approach, but I assume it was done because of the queue length and waitlist time, with the nominator anticipating that the passing review would occur before the DYK review, which is exactly what happened. Because this is entirely reasonable, I will assume this is acceptable. Article passed as a GA; it is long enough, well-sourced, neutral, BLP-compliant, and copyvio-free. QPQ not needed. The hook is 157 characters. There are a large number of blockquotes, which could be perceived as excessive, but I think it is acceptable for the moment. I would recommend the nominator cutting down on the blockquotes and moving them to Wikiquote, which is best practice. The only problem I have with the entire article is the unusual use of citations in the bibliography section, which link to the publisher page instead of the ISBN and/or OCLC numbers, which I find far more useful. However, I don't think this unusual style should have any bearing on the DYK. The hook looks good, although I have recommended alternates at the nominator's discretion. Although the hook is cited in various places throughout the article, I cited it explicitly in the lead to avoid any issues going forward.[2] I also recommended adding additional page numbers to the hook for stronger support, which the nom did.[3] DYK is good to go. Viriditas (talk) 22:03, 11 December 2023 (UTC)Reply