User talk:Zhongshusheng/sandbox

Peer Review of Your Work
Hi! Sorry this is pretty late. It looks like you guys have added a TON to the Philosophical skepticism article which is awesome!! Something I've noticed-- there are very long stretches of the article without citations. This lack of citations creates the appearance that many of the facts are not sources, though I am sure this may be because whole paragraphs come from a singular source. Perhaps if you are spending that much time with a single source, it would be good to have at least one additional citation to back up those claims. Also, it seems that there are many primary sources present, which is not appropriate for a Wikipedia article. This problem occurs especially in the Sextus Empiricus section. Additionally, the whole first paragraph of the section has no citations. Hopefully, this can be amended easily. Juliaattie (talk) 02:32, 11 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Hi Julia, thanks for your peer review. I agree with your comment about needing to use more sources to double check, but this may be a bit difficult since Popkin is such a leading authority on this subject. I will try to read some more sources before this is due. Also, I think the whole sextus empiricus part should be rewritten but I also haven't gotten around to doing so yet. Hopefully me and Shusheng can work on this this week Sissizheng (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 23:26, 11 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Hi Julia, thanks for your comment! I will try my best to fix the citation problem of the page in the following days, but it would be a difficult task for certain sections since they are not written by me or Sissi. Sissi and I both used Popkin as our major source for the edit, so the reference seems kind of monotonic. Considering Popkin was like the authority of this field, I think it would not be necessary to back him up if what we put on the wikipedia page is more factual, but I will make sure that I back up the claims or arguments made by him with some other sources or at least point out that this is his opinion. Admittedly the page still has a lot to improve like the primary source problem and the part on Sextus Empiricus you mentioned, and I will try to reorgnize it to make it more clear and organized once I have finished adding contents to the page. -- Zhongshusheng (talk) 06:08, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Peer Review of Philosophical Skepticism
I know this review is a little late in the process, but hopefully it can still be of some help. You guys are definitely taking on a large task by rewriting this article. I really like what you've done so far! I think the main thing this page needs, as it seems you've identified, is to be structurally reorganized to present the information more clearly. I think the idea that Sissi had with how to organize the sections is a good one. Switching the order of the eastern and western schools might not be necessary, but it would be good if you could consistently break down the western section to be divided as:

Western Philosophy: Era #1: Philosopher #1: Philosopher #2: Philosopher #3: Era #2. Philosopher #1: Philosopher #2: etc.

This may mean you have to change around the names of some of the sections to have the philosophers fit (e.g. Ancient Greek Philosophy could become Ancient Greek/Roman Philosophy to account for people like Augustine), but I think that this would make the page much more navigable for readers. This would especially be helpful if you plan on adding more philosophers. Following on this, I think it may be a good idea to split up the "Ancient Greek skepticism" section into two sections, with one on Pyrrho and one on the Academic Skeptics. This would keep the formatting consistent with the rest of the article and I think it would be a easier way to present the information (especially if a reader is just looking for information on Pyrrho, for example).

Beyond the structural editing, I don't have too much to add. I think that Julia made some good points in her peer review, and I think the content you've added is very good and provides exactly the type of information a reader would be looking for. My last point would be that you may want to be careful with how you present the information you're presenting at times. For example, in the section about Pierre Bayle, there's this quote: "Bayle's real intention behind his extremely destructive works remained controversial. Some described him to be a Fideist, while others speculated him to be a secret Atheist. However, no matter what his original intention was, Bayle did cast significant influence on the upcoming Age of Enlightenment with his destruction of some of the most essential theological ideas and his justification of religious tolerance Atheism in his works." With the way this is written, I'm unsure if this is an ongoing dispute or something that scholars have generally reached a consensus on. I think it would be especially important to mention if there's a consensus today. Another smaller example would be the quote in the section on Augustine, "Augustine proves that Skepticism does not lead to happiness like the academic skeptics claim." The way this is written makes it seem that the article is agreeing that Augustine successfully did prove that Skepticism cannot lead to happiness.

Overall I think that you all have done a really good job, especially considering just how massive this rewrite is. Well done! Ethan Della Rocca (talk) 23:04, 12 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Hi Ethan, thanks for your detailed peer review. According to your suggestions, we made some edits on the page such as including Augustine into the Ancient Greek and Rome category. We will try to add some more to the page before the quarter ends as time permits! Sissizheng (talk) 04:18, 14 March 2018 (UTC)