Talk:Suwon/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Toobigtokale (talk · contribs) 07:22, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

@Toobigtokale, are you able to close this review? -- asilvering (talk) 17:07, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

@Jpbarrass are you interested in continuing this? toobigtokale (talk) 17:19, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

@Toobigtokale Hi. Really sorry for the long silence. I'm in teaching, and our new semester has started, so it's been bonkers at work. I'm definitely interested, but I don't have as much time as during the holidays. I've totally put this on the back burner, but for too long, so I'll try to put in some effort over the weekend. Thanks for the kick-start, and sorry again for laying low for far too long. JPBarrass (talk) 05:51, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

No worries! Feel free to take at your pace. Although admittedly the need for the work of a Korean-language speaker in gathering new information for this article will be tricky. I may not have enough capacity to do so. If you can find someone to help that may be nice. Otherwise I can help you get as close as possible to GA, but without the extra information gathering I'm not sure it can pass; feel like the article needs more heft to it. toobigtokale (talk) 06:35, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Jpbarrass, one teacher to another, don't knock yourself out! It's fine to have the review fail for now and then come back to it later when you have more time. But of course if this reminder has lit the fires of inspiration don't let me get in your way. -- asilvering (talk) 18:32, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

@Asilvering Thanks for that. Luckily I'm not in a marking deluge at the moment, so I have a bit of time! Much appreciated. JPBarrass (talk) 22:36, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

@Toobigtokale Thanks for that pointer. I'll give general heft a think. It could be difficult to balance building heft with not getting bogged down in unnecessary detail, though. My Korean's good enough for some solid Navering, so I'll see what I can come up with. JPBarrass (talk) 22:39, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Agree. Still, looking at the Korean-language sources I link below, there's still some information that could make it into this document that I think most people would find interesting/useful. toobigtokale (talk) 22:42, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi Jpbarrass, I don't think any progress has been made, and as the reviewer has also stopped editing, perhaps it is best to fail this review? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 17:43, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Seeing as both the nominator and reviewer are inactive, I've closed the review. czar 22:37, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

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Hey, thanks for improving the article! I'll take up the review. See misc comments section below.

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (reference section): b (inline citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism):

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.:

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):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

Misc comments

• I'll make some copyedits myself to the article. Some things I'll leave for you:

1. On Wikipedia, virtually every non-obvious fact should have a reference. Statements like it is often featured in the city and province's promotional materials. are currently unsourced, and sourcing them is a must for GA standards.
   • This even applies to bullet points in lists, especially the insects section. Each individual item in the list should be sourced, because people can add to lists in the future. Putting a source in the beginning can mask the fact that a future addition is actually unsourced.
2. The use of coordinates is a bit non-standard and I think unnecessary; it contributes to a MOS:SEAOFBLUE problem.
3. I propose disabling repeated language labels via setting "labels=no" in Template:Korean. Repeated labels add clutter without adding much needed info.
4. Read through MOS:OVERLINK and apply here; repeat links is main culprit.

I'll hold back on more comments for now so you get a chance to work on these changes. toobigtokale (talk) 07:22, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Many thanks for these comments. I've started working on some of these. So far, I've removed the comment about promotional materials, and another uncited claim I found. I've also referenced each species individually. Unfortunately I'd already reverted 'specific city' to 'special case city' before noticing that it was you who'd changed that. Sorry about that. I'm curious, though, as the city council calls itself 'Suwon Special Case City', so I thought that would be the appropriate term. I wonder what you thought about this. Thanks again for your advice regarding the article.JPBarrass (talk) 12:52, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

toobigtokale the excessive subsectioning and bullet points of each species linked to the SAME source, which JPBarrass has embarked upon after your suggestuion is unsightly, counterproductive and unprecedented. Plain nuts. --Wuerzele (talk) 17:30, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

@Wuerzele. Your comment is out of line. It's unacceptable to call the well-intended actions of another editor "plain nuts" like that. They made edits partially on my suggestion, which implicates me in that insult as well. Please be more respectful in future. toobigtokale (talk) 21:02, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

you are not responding to the issue of excessive subsectioning. Wuerzele (talk) 19:36, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

You are free to do so yourself without pinning that on me. I already wrote that I am portioning out feedback so as to not overwhelm. toobigtokale (talk) 19:43, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

The irony of you commenting about incivility in your bio, meanwhile you behave like this here unprovoked. I have a handle on this review. It will go better without your input, please stop engaging. toobigtokale (talk) 19:53, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

@Jpbarrass, sorry this is partially on me. Before you had engaged in all that additional work I should have said something. I thought you were just going to copy+paste the references and leave it at that.

I do agree that the bulleted list of species is too long. I think a relevent policy is this: WP:INDISCRIMINATE. Whether or not the references contribute to the "unsightliness" is a different matter; lists should have references.

The indiscriminate lists should be replaced by either a condensed list or a WP:PROSE section of the most important species to be aware of in the city. Think whatever texts would frequently mention exist in the city. Despite this, I'm still a little skeptical that the section is needed, as the flora/fauna in Korea tends to be relatively uniform (small country). In other words, is there anything unique/really notable about the flora/fauna in Suwon? toobigtokale (talk) 21:07, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Many thanks for the feedback about this section. I agree that wildlife is fairly uniform. Since there are some differences in the country, though, e.g., Jeju, and mountainous areas, I've migrated this section to the Gyeonggi Province page, which I thought could be a reasonable halfway house. I've also changed it into prose rather than a list. Here, I've left just the two species worth noting specifically in terms of Suwon.JPBarrass (talk) 02:55, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Still some statements that are uncited, but I can provide more things to work in the meantime.

Overall:

• Prose needs some polishing.
  • In general, try to use simple sentence structures and to put the main idea or important context at the very beginning of each sentence. e.g. "x is y", "x is important because", "During x time period, y happened."
    • I always unconsciously try to minimize the amount of commas that I use in my writing.
  • Be on the guard for run-on sentences. "X, and y" is usually where run-ons happen. If X can be made a standalone sentence, you should consider making it one; situational though.
  • It'll probably be hard to internalize this in the space of a GA review, so try your best and I'll eventually give the prose a revision.
• History section is in rough shape.
  • It's not immediately clear what the significance of each paragraph is.
    • For example, second paragraph of the history section feels a bit out of place. The first sentence of the paragraph should also quickly inform the reader what the significance is, e.g. "During the blah, this Suwon was the site of blah important thing". There's no context provided for who Yi Gwang is and why the average reader who is not familiar with Korean history should be interested.
    • The minutia of reorganizing districts in "recent history" is a bit much. Think "what would the average person be interested in?" If there's something significant and relatable to the average person that happened as a result of the organization, that's worth including. Otherwise you can just handwave it away with "they reorganized administrative divisions" or something.
  • This applies to most of its paragraphs; the content in it doesn't really tell me substantial things about Suwon, feels like an assortment of minute details.

I may need to think through a strategy for revision. May need to go back to the drawing board to do some more research on what history readers might find useful.

toobigtokale (talk) 08:18, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Many thanks again: your advice is really useful. I've rehashed the history section this evening. Tomorrow, I'll try to look at the prose more generally throughout the article. JPBarrass (talk) 14:34, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

I really like the changes you've made to the history section! I think the pre-modern history needs to be fleshed out some more but it's definitely an improvement. toobigtokale (talk) 10:41, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Many thanks. :) Regarding ancient history, I've found it a little tough to find anything Suwon-specific that isn't about Jeongjo and related stuff, so it's rather heavily focused on one king's reign. I'll do a bit more sleuthing, though.

I've gone through the rest of the article now, referencing uncited claims when I could, deleting them when I couldn't, and rehashing the prose somewhat. JPBarrass (talk) 15:05, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Many thanks. I'm struggling to find non-Jeongjo-related ancient history. It's all rather focused on one King's reign, but everything we read about history in Suwon is always about him. I'll try to unearth something else that's Suwon-specific, though.

I've gone through the rest of the article trying to cite everything, removing claims that I couldn't reference, and working on flow.

Thanks again for your advice.JPBarrass (talk) 17:43, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Hmm. It said my comment hadn't been published, so I wrote more or less the same thing again, and now I see the original one! It's gone buggy!JPBarrass (talk) 17:45, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

I may give it a search in Korean and flesh it out myself at some point. toobigtokale (talk) 19:03, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Working on fleshing out history. Some more tips:

1. Use Template:Interlanguage link when possible, making sure to apply the principles of MOS:OVERLINK to it.
   • Also, if you have an interlanguage link it generally removes the need to show non-English text for a concept. E.g. right now Suwon Hyanggyo has Hangul/Hanja, but if I replaced it with Suwon Hyanggyo, there's no need for the text because people can just go to the kowiki article to see what the text is.
   • When an article is eventually created for that topic, it'll automatically get converted to a regular link.
   • You get to see what other language Wikipedia find important, and how much information about a topic is missing on the enwiki.
   • Through this, I've discovered a ton more topics to write about; probably 50% of my articles are the product of my snooping around the kowiki for interlanguage links.
2. In references, when possible you should link the article for the website or book being referenced.
   • Also I'm not sure about this, but I think you should use title casing for translated article titles.
3. Also, I like to use Template:Main article when possible. Currently, this can be done for the Hwaseong Fortress section.

toobigtokale (talk) 02:31, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Also, take a look at Wikipedia:Featured articles#Cities, towns and villages. While a GA doesn't need to be as good as FA, you should actively browse through these for inspiration.

Honestly speaking, I think this article has a long way to go before it can hit GA level. I expect this to take at least 20-30 hours of work for one person. I'm willing to help you on it, but you're free to close the nom and renom later if you'd like. Otherwise I'll continue working on this. toobigtokale (talk) 02:49, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks again for the feedback. My main reason for nominating it in the first place was to get advice on getting it up to scratch, and this has been very useful so far. I'd be happy to leave the nomination open and continue improving the article if you're OK with helping, but please don't feel obliged. I also expect it to be slow as I'm going away for a week next Tuesday.

Regarding your more specific points above, I'll start working on those. I'm curious about the interlanguage links, though. You've given an example with Suwon Hyanggyo, but because this doesn't exist in English Wikipedia, this is a red link. Since we generally frown upon red links, might this not cause some problems?

As always, thank you very much for your input. :)JPBarrass (talk) 03:42, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Happy to help 🙂.

Relevant policy: WP:REDLINKS Add red links to articles to indicate that a page will be created soon or that an article should be created for the topic because the subject is notable and verifiable.. As long as the thing you're linking is notable and verifiable (in any language), you should use ILLs. This applies generally to red links btw; if something is notable feel free to red link it. toobigtokale (talk) 03:49, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Ah, that's great to know. Thank you! 🙂 JPBarrass (talk) 10:19, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Oh, and thank you for adding substantial useful historical content. :) JPBarrass (talk) 06:32, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Something to put on your radar: for the list of people, we should try to trim the alt names (Hangul/Hanja especially). Guidelines:

1. Only show the English name they're most likely to be known by, likely their Wikipedia article title.
2. Only show Hangul/Hanja if they do not have an article on the English OR Korean Wikipedia.
3. Use interlanguage links where appropriate.

In other words, keep Hangul/Hanja if they don't have an article anywhere. Either way, the list is a bit long; may be good to prune it if you're not certain how/why they're important people. toobigtokale (talk) 03:50, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm also noticing a few incorrect romanizations and romanization practices. Here's a website where you can automatically convert Hangul names to either RR or MR: http://roman.cs.pusan.ac.kr/input_eng.aspx

Important, give these both a read: WP:NCKO and MOS:KO#Romanization. Make sure you understand these really well, it'll be continually relevant if you plan to work on Korea-related articles in the future. Feel free to ask questions, and try applying these, and I'll give you as much time as you need and later I'll point out if anything needs fixing. toobigtokale (talk) 08:59, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. I've corrected Ilwang and Changryong now. I suspect others you may have spotted could be Haewoojae, Kyemyung, Kyeonggi Ilbo, and Kyeongin Ilbo, but these are proper nouns, and these institutions/businesses seem to have chosen these spellings. Several years ago, too, the road signs changed from Woldeukeop-ro to Worldcup-ro, so I used the new Anglicised spelling here. Lastly, I used people's chosen spelling for their names unless I couldn't find those, in which case I used RR except for surnames, when I used the most common forms, e.g., Kim, Park, Lee. JPBarrass (talk) 14:50, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Another issue is dashes in names and MR for pre-1945 people. toobigtokale (talk) 19:13, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Hi. Hyphens are definitely confusing, as there doesn't appear be any standard practice in society. Consider a name such as 가진. The pusan.ac.kr site suggests using a space (Ga Jin) as if 진 were a middle name. Some people do this for their name in practice, while many others don't. Nowadays very few people seem to use hyphens, too, so I'm inclined not to use them.

Obviously we should go with what people have chosen for their own names, but when we can't find their preference, we likely need some standard. Does Wikipedia perhaps have some sort of standard practice for personal name orthography? JPBarrass (talk) 01:00, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

It's listed under here: WP:NCKO#Given name. I agree that the practice is uncertain in modern South Korea, but we follow guidelines until they change. toobigtokale (talk) 01:06, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Ah, brilliant, thank you. I'll look through that then apply it. ^_^ Much appreciated. JPBarrass (talk) 02:54, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. I've added interlanguage links, and removed transliteration as you suggested. I think it can be difficult to determine who's more relevant, as that would risk prioritising my own interests. I agree, though, that it takes a bit of scrolling to get through this list. I'll try turning it into prose, grouping people by activity, e.g., independence activism, music. Thanks again. JPBarrass (talk) 14:53, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Another thing to work on: information in the infobox, if not already in the body of the article, should be referenced. I think having too many references in the infobox tends to look messy, so I often try to weave infobox information into the body so I don't have to cite it in the infobox. But for things like area code that don't really have a great place to go in the body you can just cite only in the infobox. toobigtokale (talk) 09:41, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Also some more feedback, history section is still in need of more work. I'm having a hard time significant writing about Suwon's history in English.

If you're up for it, I've found this free book in Korean: [1] (click 원본보기; blue button). It's a reliable source; the Suwon government I think borrows writing from it on occasion (example, although I think we shouldn't directly cite a paraphrased version). Are you willing to give parsing it a try?

One cheat we could do is you could use the paraphrased version and Google/Papago Translate to get an idea of what to look for in the book, then cite the book itself when you find the original source of the info. If you're not feeling confident I can get around to it later. toobigtokale (talk) 10:00, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

This book is really good btw, such a great introductory and comprehensive source. For future reference, I know that Seoul similarly publishes local history books like this for free. I think other local governments probably do similar. toobigtokale (talk) 10:14, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks very much. Things are starting to get busy with holiday prep, so I expect not to get a whole load done till the middle of next week, but I'll definitely get onto it. I had another question for you, too. I see you've cited some authors using their names in Hangul rather than Romanising them. Is that typical? (I've Romanised them all beforehand, so I may have to go through reHangulusing them.) JPBarrass (talk) 14:55, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't think it's necessary to re-Hangul the names, it's a fairly minor issue. I started that practice after observing another editor doing it. It makes sense I think; we don't always know how living people want to romanize their names, so why should we need to if we can just use their hangul names without any glitches? It also takes effort to look up how they romanize their names, and you usually can't find it. However, one hiccup is if you need to mention the author inline, e.g. "Scholar x claims that y". In that case, inline I romanize using hyphenated RR with common spelling for surname (and show the hangul name in parentheses), and in the ref I use Hangul. toobigtokale (talk) 21:29, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for that explanation. I'll leave things as they are regarding that point, at least for now, then. ^^ JPBarrass (talk) 15:20, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Ah actually we should be consistent. Later I'll convert the hangul names I added into romanizations, less work total. toobigtokale (talk) 15:49, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

[2] another good book, saving for later toobigtokale (talk) 04:48, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm happy you spotted the freedom of panorama issue; I was going to bring it up at some point down the line, as it's a complicated topic. We'll need to go through all the photos and make sure they're ok in order to pass the article. toobigtokale (talk) 09:44, 16 February 2024 (UTC)