Talk:Ming treasure voyages/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Khazar2 (talk · contribs) 18:07, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

I'll take this one--working up review comments now. Thanks for all your work on it! -- Khazar2 (talk) 18:07, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Review
This article is excellent in many respects, particularly its thorough sourcing--thanks for doing all this research on the topic!

There's three areas, though, in which this article still needs work to reach GA status.

The first is the lead, which is too short to summarize an article of this length; you should try to expand it to four full paragraphs, ideally mentioning each section of the article.

The second is the article's length itself. At 85kb of prose, it's much longer than recommended at WP:SIZE, and it seems to me to contain an excessive level of detail, which is a problem for GA criterion 3b. (You can see the full GA criteria at WP:GA?.) For example, there's no reason to devote a paragraph to debating the date of the edict proclaiming the second treasure voyage; this detail could be moved into a footnote or simply summarized. Shi Jinqing's role and reward in the pirate battle seems like something that could be mentioned in passing, rather than detailing it, per WP:SUMMARY. Or a series of sentences like:

"Afterwards, they sailed through the South China Sea.[22] They would travel to Java.[22][26] Thereafter, the fleet sailed through the Strait of Malacca.[26] They made a stop at Malacca.[22] Eventually they arrived at the destination of Aru, Semudera, and Lambri on Sumatra.[22][26] The fleet would then depart for Ceylon"

Could be easily summarized:

"The fleet then sailed to Java; to Malacca; to Aru, Semudera, and Lambri on Sumatra; and to Ceylon."

Similarly, "Chen Zuyi was executed in Nanjing on October 1407. On the same day as Chen's execution, his lieutenants were also executed", could probably be condensed as "Chen Zuyi and his lieutenants were executed in Nanjing in October 1407.". (This should be "in October", btw, instead of "on October".)

I would suggest trying to reduce the article's overall length by one third, both by condensing overly wordy sections and by somewhat reducing the level of detail. Another possibility would be to do some WP:SPINOFF articles allowing you to present more detailed descriptions of each treasure voyage without making the main article too unwieldly.

The third area that I'd suggest working on is copyediting; the article shows persistent minor errors in verbs and prepositions such as (to take examples from just a paragraph or two):
 * "began with its return journey to China" instead of "began its..."
 * "a ship split off to and went to" should be "a ship split off and went to"
 * "On arrival to Ceylon, the fleet met with hostility from Alagakkonara, thus Admiral Zheng He left with his fleet from Ceylon for the time being to travel further to other destinations" -- comma splice
 * conforming that he did " -- should be "confirming"--also, pronoun "he" is unclear
 * "ten pirate ships were reduced by ensuing flames" -- I'm not sure what "reduced" means in this context--damaged? destroyed?
 * "Although the much-later account in the Mingshi recorded that Chen Zuyi planned to intercept and ambush the treasure fleet" -- sentence fragment

If you'd like help with copyediting, by the way, you can put in a request at WP:GOCE for another user to lend a hand.

Smaller notes:
 * "(1) the usual outward voyage, from Nanjing to Liujiagang to Changle and then across the South China Sea to Qiu Nhon (Xinzhou) in Champa; (2) either Thailand and Java in that order, or perhaps visits by detached squadrons to those countries; (3) regrouping at Malacca; (4) up the straits, visiting the Sumatran Muslim states of Semudera, Aru, and Lambri; (5) straight across the Indian Ocean until the mountains and headlands of Ceylon were sighted, then around the southern tip of India, where Jiayile, Abobadan, Ganbali, Qiulon, and Cochin could be visited in succession before the fleet arrived at Calicut." -- a long quotation like this should become a block quotation for clarity
 * "didn't call at Ceylon" -- don't use contractions in articles except in quotations
 * "The Chinese received and accepted their payment and their apology.[46] They would continue to monitor their activities during subsequent voyages" -- avoid pronoun confusion, as here; they/their shifts back and forth between Chinese and Javanese

Conclusion
Because this article seems to me to need substantial work to meet some of the GA criteria (particularly 1a, "clear and concise", and 3b, avoiding "unnecessary detail"), I'm going to close this for now and encourage you to do some rewriting and resubmit. Even though it's not passing this time, please know that your hard work is much appreciated. This one's improved tremendously already thanks to your work, and would be a great article to see as a GA. Please let me know if you have questions about the above, and good luck in continued work on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 18:40, 26 July 2013 (UTC)