Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Transformation problem/archive1

Transformation problem

Mario Ferretti did all the writing. I churned out wikistyle maths, more readable tables, typeset, subedited, and called Mario on the academic stuff until we got the core texts listed. So a partial self-nom. For reviewing pleasure, I suggest that you force PNG display of math, I find HTML math to be rather small when it will fit comfortably on one line.

Compared with Wikipedia:What is a featured article

1. An example of best work. A simple statement of the transformation problem is difficult, I think this one is an excellent example of the best work of Wikipedia.
2. Comprehensive (summary of debates which reached pitch and resolved in the 1970s), factually accurate (it meets my recollection of the Sraffian debates), stable (yup), well-written (for this branch of Marxist economics, this is very clear writing).
3. Uncontroversial. Yes, it covers disputes that resolved in the 1970s, and indicates where opposition exists (from different disciplinary stand-points, and from non-disciplinary sources).
4. Style standards. Yes, typographically, in terms of organisation.
5. Images as appropriate. It has one image demonstrating a key element of the critique. Hopefully a few more suitable charts could be generated as appropriate by a specialist.
6. Appropriate length. I feel that this is the appropriate minimum length at which the transformation problem could be explained in an encyclopedic manner.

Finally, the article has been proposed to Peer Review, but my expectation is that there aren't enough specialist editors working on Peer Review to investigate this article. A main reason why I'm proposing it to FAC where it is likely to get a hearing. Fifelfoo 03:27, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Strong Object. While the article does seem to meet most of the featured article criteria, it misses the biggest one: "Be well written." The prose is too dense and academic for the general lay person to understand. For example, in the first paragraph of the lead it says, "In Karl Marx's Economics the transformation problem is the problem of finding a general rule (or set of functional relationships) to "transform" Marx’s "economic values" defined and used in Capital's Volume I into the "competitive prices" (or " prices of production") of Capital's Volume III. This problem was first mentioned by Marx himself in Chapter 9 of Capital's Volume III, where he also tried to solve it."

To understand what this means a reader must already have knowledge of "Marx's economic values," "competitive prices," "prices of production" and much more. Many other examples exist throughout the article. While I believe this could be an excellent article, it needs to be written in an encyclopedic manner so that average readers can understand it. A first step toward this would be to get rid of all of the undefined academic jargon like "embodied-labour quantities." As it is now, only someone who is already an expert in the field will be able to plow through it. --Alabamaboy 14:32, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

• Object. No lead, and several structural problems. I also agree with the above vote. Phils 16:21, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
• Comment, needs a lead to even be a featured candidate. Phoenix2 16:54, July 12, 2005 (UTC)