Talk:Zhu De/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Wizardman (talk · contribs) 02:05, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

I'll review this article shortly. Wizardman 02:05, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

In short, I'm going to have to outright fail this article. Here's the issues I found:
 * The citations are a complete and utter mess. It's mostly a bunch of bare URLs to what seem to be google book sources. The sources themselves seem okay but you have to at least make them usable on here. The ones that aren't bare URLs are no better, and are mostly useless.
 * The lead needs to be expanded.
 * "a hilly and isolated part of northern Sichuan province." the hilly and isolated part isn't really needed.
 * "Yilong high primary school " So was it Yilong High or Yilong Primary? Or is it both and needs to be capitalized?
 * "...as a gym instructor. An advocate of modern science and political teaching, rather than the strict classical education afforded by schools, he was dismissed from his post" I feel like something's missing here. How can a gym instructor have that kind of power?
 * "Following the death of his mentor Cai E and his own wife, Zhu " his marriage was never mentioned in the article before this sentence. Same for the second. It feels like it jumps past a lot of detail in the Warlord section, actually.
 * "Zhou Enlai was one of his sponsors ... In 1927, following the collapse of the First United Front, KMT authorities ordered Zhu lead a force against Zhou Enlai and Liu Bocheng's Nanchang Uprising.[15] However, having helped orchestrate the uprising, Zhu and his army defected from the Kuomintang.[19] " This part gets really confusing. It reads like he goes from supporting Enlai and the KMT to being against Enlai then being against the KMT in one fell swoop. Obviously that's not how it actually went down, but as is it's utterly confusing.
 * "Here Mao had formed a soviet in 1927, " what?
 * "In 1959, he tried to protect Peng Dehuai in the Lushan Conference. He just gave some mild criticisms of Peng. Mao Zedong wasn't satisfied with Zhu De's behavior." The tone here is poor, and it makes for a confusing section. The second sentence can be removed, and the first and third could be combined and explained more clearly.
 * " His death came six months after the death of Zhou Enlai,[49] and just two months before the death of Mao Zedong." Not necessary.
 * Not every single image of Zhu De needs to be in the article. The sepia one at the end and the vehicles can be removed. Right now the article feels squashed on both sides by them, and since it's not that long an article so many aren't necessary, unless you're going to put a gallary at the end of the article (which may be a better idea)
 * Overall, the article feels rather haphazard, jumping from one event to another without feeling like a smooth transition. It's one of those things that's not easy to explain, but someone reading through the article for a first time would get what I'm saying.
 * The article also feels a bit on the short side given the subject. It's entirely possible that this is all there is, but with the way it's worded it could be expanded just using the sources provided and making the language flow better.

The stunted feel of the article's language along with the referencing issues leads me to fail this article. It may be ready for GAN again once both parts are cleaned up big time. Wizardman 02:24, 31 March 2014 (UTC)