User:FangzhuLu/sandbox

''' Hello! My three editing articles "internet water army", "mass surveillance in China" and "book censorship in China" are in another three separate sandboxes (sandbox article one; sandbox article two; sandbox article three). Thank you! '''

Article Evaluation: Internet Water Army
I choose Internet Water Army article to evaluate. This article has been rated as Start-class because it is still in its developing period and readers need much meaningful content. This article needs more details to explain in depth and more adequate citations based on reliable sources.

Evaluating Content:
I think this article contains too much combined definitions of Internet Water Army from different sources, mainly media resources. In the name section, the article is supposed to state clearly the definition of Internet Water Army in a concise way as the current explanation provides too much information which may easily distract readers' attention. The article does not explicitly explain what's the difference between Internet Water Army and 50 cent party, which may confuse the reader. Moreover, the article does not even mention several important Chinese social media platforms where Internet Water Army gather such as Weibo and Tianya. Actually, if the article can provide some examples of how Internet Water Army operates on Chinese social media platform or provide some data, it would be much better. Some of the information the article provided is even outdated as the latest citation it uses was written in 2011. China has already implemented the real-name mechanism and issued the Provisions on the Administration of Internet Comments Posting Services in 2017. Unfortunately, the article does not mention these at all.

Evaluating Tone:
The tone is fine in this article. But it should be figured out that Internet Water Army in China does not particularly work out of political purpose, many private companies in other fields may hire them to do their own promotion or out of other purposes.

Evaluating Sources:
Citations should be expanded and updated. As I point out before, the latest one is in 2011. Many sources are from Chinese state-run media, such as Xinhua News Agency and Chinadaily. It would be much better to include more peer-reviewed journals and international newspapers.

Talk page:
In the article's talk page, several external links are modified. One editor figures out that the background section may stray from the topic of the article, and I agree with that. There could be more discussions for improvement.

Content:
This article's content is basically relevant to the topic. However, it does not explicitly provide the definition of mass surveillance, but just saying "a widespread practice in China" which is too vague for readers who have no idea what's the mass surveillance in Chinese context. In the first introductory paragraph, it is expected to list several main ways of mass surveillance Chinese government adopted. For example, big data collected from the social media can be regarded as a way of social mass surveillance. Beside, I think the section of current affairs can be combined with the timeline part since they all talk about the events related with the mass surveillance. In the spending estimates part, it ought to include more consistence timing development as there are only several years' data, and some of them are probably not about mass surveillance but about national security spending. It would be a good thing if the article provides an estimated general trend of the spending during the past few years. Furthermore, I think it would be better to include some Chinese official government statements year by year to support the content.

Tone:
The tone in this article is neutral. It is basically a combination of information collected from different news resources and actually shows some statistics from Chinese government.

Sources:
The article has many citations from mainstream international media such as BBC, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, etc. These mainstream international media are reliable sources. However, when the article cites Chinese government statistics, it does not cite the original official documents. I think it is important to refer to the original documents to double check whether the figure reported by the media is accurate.

Talk page:
There is no much discussion on the talk page. The latest one is that an editor modified external links. Even though this article is rated as a start-class one, it has high importance in the Wikiproject Mass Surveillance. Therefore, this topic is worthy of putting more efforts to improve.

Other reference sources:
"China is building a vast civilian surveillance network — here are 10 ways it could be feeding its creepy 'social credit system"

"China’s Skynet Project finds people in minutes"

"How China’s smart cities, social credit system and mass surveillance were sparked by rocket scientist"

Content:
This article is a start-class one and rated as mid-important one, meaning it has much room to make improvements. Generally speaking, the content the article provides is relevant to the topic. However, I think the whole structure of the topic should be reorganized. It now has four sections, i.e. names, tactics, legal problems and detection. I think the name section has some repetitive and redundant information which may distract readers' attention. The explanation of the origin of the name ought to be succinct and precise. The article is supposed to provide reasons of the emergence of internet water army, their types, features and functions and so on. Moreover, one thing I want to figure out is that internet water army in China does not only center around the propaganda and government level, it has even been commercialized and used in many other ways.

Tone:
The tone of this article is fairly neutral. It analyzes the group of people from diverse perspectives, such as media, academia, law and so on.

Sources:
This article has many well cited quotes including both Chinese media materials, international media reports and some academic archive materials. It may include more academic materials and Chinese reports which may have some useful collected data.

Talk page:
In the talk page, editors modified some external links, showing that they are trying to add more information on this page. I hope there could be more discussion about the structure and organization of the article.

Other reference sources:
"Undercover Researchers Expose Chinese Internet Water Army"

"揭秘“网络水军”生意经：只要给钱 什么新闻都能发 (Disclosing "Internet Water Army"s business: any news can be released if you give me money)"

"Behavior Modeling of Internet Water Army in Online Forums"

Content:
Regarding the article's lead section, I think it can combine the first and the second paragraphs to make it more concise. The first five paragraphs covers different perspectives, which is good, but I think that it can be more structured and categorized to make it more clear for readers. If there are a timeline of the development of china book censorship and related images, it would be better. Besides, it can cover more regions, including Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc.

Tone:
The tone is neutral. But it should be noted that the censorship is not only about domestically political sensitive ones, but also about books imported from other countries which has some kind of past or current international conflicts with China, such as books imported from Japan.

Sources:
The sources are based on some international media such as The New York Times and Huffington Post as well as some from online library sources. I think it should include more sources from academic presses, peer-reviewed journals and other reliable and independent sources.

Talk page:
In the talk page, editors added and modified external links, meaning they are bringing more information regarding this topic.

Other reference sources:
"Gray Areas: Book Banning and Censorship in China"

"How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression"

"Foreign authors warned about book censorship in China"

Notes (Edit Summary)
1. The following paragraph is copied from Mass surveillance in China which I would like to add more information:

"As part of a broader surveillance push, the Chinese government encouraged the use of various mobile phone apps. Local regulators launched mobile apps for "national security" purposes and to allow citizens to report violations, "which is a way for residents to conduct social supervision," according to a commentary in the Global Times. "

Revised version

"As part of a broader surveillance push, the Chinese government encouraged the use of various mobile phone apps. Local regulators launched mobile apps for "national security" purposes and to allow citizens to report violations, "which is a way for residents to conduct social supervision," according to a commentary in the Global Times. " Besides mobile phone apps, nowadays, the Chinese central government also adopts facial recognition technology, robot police, big data collection targeting online social media platform to monitor citizens.