Talk:Nothing to My Name/GA1

GA Review

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Quick-fail assessment

The article completely lacks reliable sources – see Wikipedia:Verifiability. Y
The topic is treated in an obviously non-neutral way – see Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. Y
There are cleanup banners that are obviously still valid, including {{cleanup}}, {{wikify}}, {{NPOV}}, {{unreferenced}} or large numbers of {{fact}}, {{clarifyme}}, or similar tags. Y
The article is or has been the subject of ongoing or recent, unresolved edit wars. Y
The article specifically concerns a rapidly unfolding current event with a definite endpoint. Y

Everything OK, so full review to follow. --DeLarge (talk) 22:14, 19 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Template-generated summary

GA review (see here for criteria)

It is reasonably well written.
a (prose): b (MoS): — ~~See below~~ Done.
It is factually accurate and verifiable.
a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
It is broad in its coverage.
a (major aspects): b (focused):
It follows the neutral point of view policy.
Fair representation without bias:
It is stable.
No edit wars etc.:
It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.
a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
Overall:
Pass/Fail:

Specific issues

Prose

"Youth" or "youthful" appears twelve times in the main text, including eight instances of "Chinese youth". Could probably do with a bit more variety there (adolescents, teenagers, young generation, etc).
- Ok, I think I managed to get rid of about half of them...maybe I can take another go at it later and see if I can get rid of some more. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 22:52, 20 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"'Nothing To My Name'...has been described as a 'massive hit' and 'the biggest hit in Chinese history.'" I feel like this could be improved a wee bit. If a song is the biggest hit in Chinese history, it's a given that it's going to be a massive hit. As long as the citations are kept, I think you don't need to quote directly, which would probably give you more freedom. Something like "...was an enormous commercial success, becoming the biggest hit in Chinese history."
- I've removed the "massive hit" and just kept the second quote. I wouldn't feel quite comfortable saying anything about commercial success, because to be honest I don't know much about how the Chinese music industry works, but I'm pretty sure they don't have stuff like Billboard 100 or whatever we have in the States, and songs like this in the 80s weren't necessarily being sold a lot...I think its "hit"-ness is more due to how well-known it became, rather than how much it sold. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 22:47, 20 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"...wearing a red blindfold to symbolize the oppressiveness of the 'red' Communist government." I'm not 100% on this, but do you feel the sentence is better for the second "red"? Those who know Communism won't need it, while those who don't know aren't having it explained to them (and I can't quickly see anything in the wikilinked article).
- Not sure...I figured putting the second "red" there would help make it clearer why the red-ness of the blindfold had anything to do with Communism. I can't find anything good to link it to. If you're confident that people will understand the connection without having the second "red" there, then I don't mind removing it. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 22:47, 20 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"...the government-controlled People's Daily gave it a surprisingly positive review." There's a wee bit of ambiguity here for me. The way I'd use the word "surprisingly" in this context, I'd be referring to the degree of how positive the review was, i.e. it was expected that the People's Daily would give the song a good review, but just how much they liked it turned out to be a surprise. I'm guessing that's not what you meant, and I'd recommend "...the government-controlled People's Daily unexpectedly gave it a positive review."
- That rewording is an improvement, thanks. Although, I think "surprisingly gave it a positive review" might be better than "unexpectedly gave it..." 'unexpected' implies that people at the time had expectations about how it would be reviewed, whereas I think 'surprisingly' just implies that it's surprising/unexpected in retrospect, which is probably closer to what the source is saying. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 22:47, 20 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
In ==Lyrics and meanings== you state that "Timothy Brace of the University of Texas at Austin has described..." Now , having Googled around to figure out who this Brace guy was, I realised that he's a music academic, the author of the cited PhD thesis, and a recognized authority on the subject. However, at the moment that fact isn't obvious to the reader. He could just as easily be "Timothy Brace of the University of Texas at Austin who lives in the next dorm to me". I'd add a qualifier to explain who he is, with an inline citation to his magnoliaarts.com page where his bio can be found—you've already done that with Dennis Rea by describing him as a "music scholar", even though you were able to wikilink internally to him. It might also be OK to do the same with Rebee Garofalo, although since his contribution is more a mere observer of events rather than expert analyst, it's probably not as necessary in his case.
- I've added "ethnomusicologist" before Brace's name...just to avoid using "music scholar" twice. Is it necessary to link to his page? I could add a link, but I don't want to make it look like I'm putting in a plug for his website or anything, especially if his profession is already clear from the papers he's authored.
- As for Garofalo, that was just an accident on my part; thanks for catching it. Garofalo is just the editor of a volume in which another Brace paper appeared, and it looks like I missed that bit when I was going through fixing stuff. I've fixed it now. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 22:52, 20 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MoS

I know there's differing opinions on whether or not there should be citations in the lede. Looking at your previous GA successes, only Mount Huang has any, so I guess you're in the camp that prefers it reference-free. That being the case, I think the citation for Cui Jian being called the "Father of Chinese Rock" could be moved into the body of the article. In fact, I might move that whole sentence fragment down to the start of the ==Impact== section. The lede would then read as "...is the English title of a 1986 Mandarin rock song by Cui Jian. It is widely considered his most famous and most important work...", while later on you'd say "Cui Jian is the so-called "Father of Chinese Rock", and "Nothing To My Name" is the song he is best known for..."
- That's a good suggestion; done. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 22:47, 20 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
In the lede, maybe add wikilinks for "traditional Chinese styles" and "rock-and-roll" (to Music of China#Traditional music and rock and roll respectively. I'd also ditch the hyphens in "rock-and-roll".
- Added, thanks. I think I had those links in this article's DYK hook and somehow forgot to include them in the article itself. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 22:47, 20 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The ==Lyrics and meanings== section switches once or twice between putting the English first and the Chinese text in parentheses, and vice versa. My personal choice would be English first (then Chinese), but whichever format is chosen I think it should be consistent.
- I agree; I've put all the English first now. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 22:47, 20 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
After "...which had emphasized conformity and obedience" and "...she will go with him" in the penultimate paragraph, there's two large forced spaces before the next sentence. I presume this is just a formatting slip?
- Hm, not sure how those ended up there. I think I've got them fixed now. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 22:47, 20 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This is more of a parroting of the kind of thing the peer review bot would say, rather than an opinion of my own, but have you considered an infobox? If you say yes you've considered it, but you think it would add nothing, then that's the end of it as far as I'm concerned. Still, I figured I'd mention it just in case.
- Yeah, I thought about it, but I figured there's not much infobox-y sort of information that would be available to put in it (as I said above, I don't think there is stuff like chart positions that I could add...and if there is information on sales, I don't know where I would find it), so I ended up just not bothering with one. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 22:47, 20 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Another parroting of guidelines more than a personal suggestion, but I think many reviewers would prefer you to spell out decibels instead of abbreviating dB, even though you wikilinked it. As with the infobox, though, I'd leave it up to you.
- Spelled out. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 22:47, 20 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

References

I'm going to leave this until tomorrow. It'll take a bit of time to work through the citations, especially since they're mostly not easily available online. Regards, --DeLarge (talk) 22:20, 20 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

- Other than the Gunde reference, which I just stole from the Cui Jian article, I think all the book sources here should be freely accessible online through Google books; I didn't do "real" research in a library or anything for this, I just spend a couple evenings on Google books and places like that. The Matusitz article that's cited a lot is available online in html format through allacademic.com, which is a royal pain to read but I guess is better than nothing. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 22:47, 20 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your thorough comments. I will try to respond to things above. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 22:47, 20 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Just finished passing this. Great article—really impressed with the sources you tracked down, and what you created as a result. When 99% of WP song pages are cobbled together from blog posts and allmusicguide.com links, a proper encyclopedia article—on a properly encyclopedic and historically significant topic like this—is a tonic. I was eighteen when the Tiananmen Square protests happened, and I remember what a big deal it was, but until I read this I had no knowledge at all of Cui Jian or this song. --DeLarge (talk) 20:45, 22 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]