Talk:Chenqiao Mutiny/GA1

GA Review

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Nominator: Lyn1644 (talk · contribs) 06:13, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: Kusma (talk · contribs) 15:51, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

Adding this one to my list of things to review (I know far too little about pre-Qing dynasty Chinese history). —Kusma (talk) 15:51, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

Content and prose review

I will comment on anything I notice, but not all of my comments will be strictly related to the GA criteria, so not everything needs to be actioned. Feel free to push back if you think I am asking too much, and please tell me when I am wrong.

• Title: I think "mutiny" should be lower case (like most other mutinies).
• Lead: will need to consider later whether everything is covered; it seems on the short side.
• 2 February 960 according to which calendar?
  • Added a note saying it is according to the Gregorian calendar — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lyn1644 (talk • contribs) 16:39, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
• "The newly founded Song dynasty would go on to reunify China and foster a golden age of economics, philosophy, and culture." this is not in the body as far as I can see and is also slightly unencyclopedic in tone.
• Background: a few more dates would be nice, especially for the Later Zhou dynasty so we know whether we are talking decades or centuries for some of these historical developments.
  • Added some dates
• What was the extent of the Later Zhou territory? It does not feature on the map. We also need to know that the capital is Kaifeng to understand later parts of the article.
  • Changed the map to that of the Later Zhou. Added that Kaifeng is the capital to Events Leading to the mutiny.
• Events leading to the mutiny: here the story seems to be that the five year old emperor is actually making the decisions. Is this how modern day historians describe this? The Cambridge History of China (btw you should cite the chapter authors, not the overall editor for content from the chapters) says "Chao [Zhao] was dispatched to head the counterattack." and does not claim this was the emperor's personal decision.
  • How do I cite specific authors while still keeping one book in the references? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lyn1644 (talk • contribs) 16:14, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
    • I would probably use individual entries like:
      • • • Nap-yin, Lau; K’uan-chung, Huang (2009). "Founding and Consolidation of the Sung Dynasty under T'ai-tsu (960–976), T'ai-tsung (976–997), and Chen-tsung (997–1022)". In Twitchett, Denis; Smith, Paul Jakov (eds.). The Cambridge History of China: Volume 5: The Sung Dynasty and its Precursors, 907–1279. The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 206–278. doi:10.1017/chol9780521812481.005. ISBN 978-0-521-81248-1.
    • If you want to stress that they are all from the same book series, perhaps you can try something like this:
      • • The Cambridge History of China:
          • Nap-yin, Lau; K’uan-chung, Huang (2009). "Founding and Consolidation of the Sung Dynasty under T'ai-tsu (960–976), T'ai-tsung (976–997), and Chen-tsung (997–1022)". In Twitchett, Denis; Smith, Paul Jakov (eds.). The Cambridge History of China: Volume 5: The Sung Dynasty and its Precursors, 907–1279. The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 206–278. doi:10.1017/chol9780521812481.005. ISBN 978-0-521-81248-1.
          • (some other chapter of some other volume).
    • If you have some smart formatting in mind and can't get the citation templates to do what you want, there is always the option to not use the citation templates. —Kusma (talk) 20:01, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
  • Done, finally
• Later additions: when were all these books written?
  • Added dates — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lyn1644 (talk • contribs) 16:20, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
• Consider adding Chinese characters (or interwikilinks) to red links about Chinese people or texts, for example 玉壺清話 for Yuhu qinghua, compare WP:HANZI.
  • Added the Chinese characters behind Yuhu Qinghua, which unfortunately does not have a zh:wiki page either. I could not find the Chinese characters for Miao Xun.
• Use italics for titles of books per MOS:ITALIC.
  • Done
• Mutiny: You linked to "the official history of the Song dynasty" already, under its title History of Song.
  • Fixed
• The "yellow gown" story is presented as fact here, while its veracity seems in doubt according to later sections (this is an issue with a lot of the things you cite to Hung 2014).
  • Clarified that the yellow gown was a later addition, and summarized some differing accounts of the mutiny. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lyn1644 (talk • contribs) 06:11, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
• Aftermath: "Han Tong [..] was killed by a Song loyalist". hmm, there was no Song dynasty yet, so this reads a bit anachronistic
  • Clarified to “commander loyal to Zhao”
• How certain are we about the story with his mother? It reads like something that might be better with attribution.
  • Attributed entire paragraph to the Songshi
• "The succession [..] was so peaceful that street markets continued to trade" where is this in the source? On p. 212 I find just "In anticipation of relentless plundering by uncontrollable troops set on king making, the citizens left K’ai-feng in droves".
  • Fixed to be p=213
• "Guo Chong, Yuan Yan, Li Yun, and Li Chongjin" who are these people? You only explain Li Yun; at least gloss the others?
  • Glossed over Guo and Yuan, Li Chongjin was already explained

More later! —Kusma (talk) 15:52, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

• Traditional interpretations: It would be nice to give a date for the Historical Records of the Five Dynasties.
  • Added, also for the Old History of the Five Dynasties
• Modern interpretations: "crack troops" seems a bit colloquial to me, better use a less informal expression.
  • Changed to “elite troops”
• "The Cambridge History of China argues" maybe attribute to the individual authors ("In the Cambridge History of China, Firstname Lastname argues...", unless you know that this is a joint editorial decision by the whole team of experts?
  • Done — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lyn1644 (talk • contribs) 17:52, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
• Legacy: "the Chenqiao Mutiny was initially considered an unremarkable coup" considered by whom?
  • Added that it was John Chaffee’s interpretation

First read through done! Generally a quite nice article, I have learned something interesting that I did not know before and feel informed about the beginnings of the Song dynasty now. I am a bit concerned about the reliance on Hung 2014; I have only looked at snippets (so I may be wrong), but that book seems to me to mostly paraphrase Song dynasty era texts and present their stories as historical facts, quite a contrast to the much more cautious approach used in the Cambridge History of China. I think ideally you would tell all these stories here with attribution to whatever thousand year old text they are from, unless modern day historians generally agree that they represent historical facts. —Kusma (talk) 21:49, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Source spotchecks

Numbering from special:permanentlink/1231054153. A few random checks for source-to-text faithfulness and close paraphrasing.

• 2: content ok. As said before, I suggest to cite the author (Naomi Standen) by name and reference the chapter.
  • Done
• 4: ok
• 9: ok, although a rephrasing of "personal loyalty of his troops" would reduce close paraphrasing concerns
• 10a: a bit too close to the source's "Despite early warnings from Han T’ung’s son and other officials that Chao K’uang-yin was already too influential to be trusted with the overall command of the armies": same structure, just a few words omitted. Better to fully rewrite, for example "Officials including Han Tong's son were concerned about Zhao Kuangyin's growing influence. They warned against ..., but Zhao was still given command ..."
• 18: as I said earlier, I'd be happier to see this with attribution to Hung's sources; in wikivoice it seems to contradict the view of modern historians. Perhaps you can augment this with the view of your other sources?
• 26: ok.
• 33: mostly ok. I see that "crack troops" is in the sources, so I withdraw my opposition in terms of prose above, but I wonder whether this is worth reformulating a bit anyway to avoid close paraphrasing.
• 37: I understand the source more as saying that these things brought stability than legitimacy.

The sources are generally good (with question marks on Hung 2014); while the Cambridge History of China is excellent, a little bit more variety would be a plus, but is not needed for GA status.

General comments and GA criteria

Good Article review progress box Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

• Prose is generally good, minor points see above.
• MoS: Overall layout is fine. Lead section could do with some expansion; "background/events leading to mutiny", "aftermath" and "assessment" could all be given an extra sentence at least.
• Ref layout is almost fine, but chapters should be cited to their authors.
• Good sources, but some content should perhaps not be presented in wikivoice.
• No original research. Sometimes the adherence to the source is so close as to veer into the wrong side of close paraphrasing.
• Scope of the article is well chosen. No neutrality or stability questions.
• There is something wrong with the copyright tags for File:Tang Kwong Ming.jpg. If the author is unknown, how do we know they died before 1954?
  • Removed the picture
• Other images seem fine, with excellent captions.

Done reviewing. @Lyn1644, thank you for this nice article! There are a few suggestions for improvement; I hope I am not asking for anything impossible (or anything that would make the article worse). —Kusma (talk) 09:30, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for your review @Kusma! I will use your suggestions to improve the article, and I have learned a lot already. Lyn1644 (talk) 09:56, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

@Lyn1644, good changes so far, this should not take much longer. I merged the two "Gregorian calendar" footnotes, hope you don't mind. Please ping me when you feel like you're done responding, especially if you have addressed my points without explicitly saying so. —Kusma (talk) 12:05, 27 June 2024 (UTC)