Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Republic of China/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by SandyGeorgia 00:30, 16 August 2009.

Republic of China

 * Nominator(s): Laurent (talk) 13:27, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

The article has been recently reviewed, expanded and verified by several editors, and I feel that it must be close to FA status now. Laurent (talk) 13:27, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Eubulides (talk) 20:23, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Alt text is missing for many images; see WP:ALT and the "alt text" entry in the toolbox at the upper right of this review page.
 * Existing alt text contains phrases that cannot immediately be verified by a non-expert who is looking only at the images, and need to be reworded or removed as per WP:ALT . These include "38 years old", "the PRC", "American F-16 Fighting Falcon", "charismatic", "of the Republic of China" (in several but not all instances; the map is OK), "written in both English and Traditional Mandarin" (just give the English and Mandarin text; don't say that they are translations of each other; it's OK to put Mandarin in alt text as long as it's pure text), "National Emblem of the Republic of China (Taiwan)". I may have missed some, but these should help you start.
 * Some existing alt text is inadequate, e.g., "Taipei", "Tainan", Kaohsiung", "Taichung",
 * File:Resolution-2758.png is purely text and its visual appearance is irrelevant. It should be replaced by text, e.g., in a quote box. This should work better for both visually impaired and sighted readers.
 * File:CountriesRecognizingROC.png has alt text that doesn't give the visual impression of the image. It should mention that only a few small countries recognize the ROC, and list their general areas (central America, Paraguay, etc.).
 * The image gallery is not encyclopedic and should be removed or greatly reduced as per WP:IG. (This should save you some alt-text work....)

Oppose: big problems in the lead, to start with. The whole article needs serious attention. I haven't yet determined whether the nomination is saveable.
 * I just don't get the opening sentence, and I suspect that most English-speaking readers won't either: "The Republic of China (ROC), commonly known as Taiwan, is a state in East Asia that has evolved from a single-party state with full global recognition and jurisdiction over China into a democratic state with limited international recognition and jurisdiction only over Taiwan and minor islands, though it enjoys de facto relations with many other states." It's a lot of unfamiliar, unintuitive information to hit us with. I wasn't aware that Taiwan owned the whole China—nor that it evolved from a one-party state. Perhaps this could be more gently introduced further down? This is before we even know it's an island off the coast of mainland China, with a population of blah? The second para is even more baffling. We start with a constitutional fact, then go straight to the opinions of past presidents. Huh? Then the third para, where we find that these presidents operated in a democracy, etc (the D word also made a brief, opaque appearance towards the start). Disordered. I think the lead needs trashing and rewriting. Comma before "although". "That" before "there is no need".
 * "Despite being currently located in Taiwan, the ROC started its existence in China"—the moving location of a republic sounds very odd in English. Tony   (talk)  12:42, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your comments, I didn't realize the lead was so obscure for readers not familiar with the subject. I'll have a look at other country FA articles to see how they are usually written. If you have some more comments on how to improve or structure the lead in the meantime, I'd be interested to hear them. Perhaps part of the issue here is that the article used to be focused on the history of the ROC, while the focus now has shifted a bit more on its current status, however the lead stills reflects how the previous article was organized. Laurent (talk) 11:30, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * One problem is that you are (accurately) depicting a paradox; Taiwan was not part of the Republic of China in 1944, but was most of the area under its de facto (there is no consensus on de jure) control by 1950.
 * The more general problem is that you are beginning with the unusual aspects of the Republic. I would break this up into two or three sentences (probably one on the RoC c. 1937 (it wasn't a one-party state in 1916), and another on the present), add a topic sentence (such as the Republic of China is unusual among the world's governments) and move most of it down  a paragraph. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:11, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah, that's what I was fumbling towards saying, but didn't have the knowledge to do so; thanks, PMA. Tony   (talk)  11:58, 7 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Object not comprehensive. Nothing on culture/arts/sport for a start.  YellowMonkey  ( cricket photo poll! ) paid editing=POV 01:53, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment: It's a fair point but note that the culture, arts and sport in Taiwan are detailed in the Taiwan article, while the ROC article focuses on the state only. If it was up to me I'd merge the Taiwan and ROC article but that's not going to happen, so in the meantime we have to leave certain things like indeed the culture or geography in Taiwan, while the rest can go in Republic of China. Laurent (talk) 11:30, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment: I don't consider that a valid point; the economy and political status are discussed in Taiwan as well, yet they feature in the ROC article too. Or am I missing something? MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 08:27, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
 * This is about the government, which is responsible for the economy and the political status; it is not, in the same sense, responsible for culture. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:53, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment. So, wait a minute this means we have one article on Taiwan as a place controlled by a government and one article on ROC, the government that controls the place?  I don't want to sift through the article history myself, but I assume this has something to do with edit warring over what constitutes the legal government of both Taiwan and Mainland China.  I don't understand why a separate article detailing the ROC is necessary (except, of course, as a daughter article for other topics perhaps).  Surely the history of the ROC before 1949 would be part of the history of China and the history of the ROC after that date would belong with Taiwan?  I realize the issue is complicated by the fact that the ROC claims control of China and the PRC control of Taiwan and that the world at large did not recognize the PRC as the rightful government of China officially until the 1970s, but this seems a really weird way to go about this.  I would hear more, but I am inclined to oppose this article on comprehensiveness grounds.  Some sections refer only to events on Taiwan, others refer to events in both Mainland China before 1949 and on Taiwan, and other topics are relegated to the articles on Taiwan and China themselves, which, by the way, overlap with this and create redundancies.  I assume a compromise had to be worked at some point, but this seems inelegant for FA status. Indrian (talk) 19:33, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment: I wholeheartedly agree. This is a complicated issue, for sure; but at the same time, this article is just far too strange - for instance, history, geography, demographics, and culture are handled in the "Taiwan" article - with a link at the top stating, "For the state commonly referred to as "Taiwan" which governs the island, see Republic of China." I realize that by saying this, I am probably opening Pandora's box - but it seems ridiculous to me that we can't simply merge the two articles, since (whether you like it or not) the ROC is Taiwan's de facto government and splitting the two articles seems like we're trying a little too hard to appease everyone (particularly those who would prefer we merged the Taiwan article with "People's Republic of China"). Furthermore, I haven't come across any other article about a state that makes a distinction between the state itself and the land and people upon which it governs - even the tiny, barely recognized breakaway republic of Transnistria manages to get by without having to do this, and the ROC is a far more legitimate government. Alexthe5th (talk) 04:36, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Does Ireland ring a bell? Controversy over the-island vs. the-state has led to an RfC that's currently ongoing. --Cybercobra (talk) 05:06, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
 * On second thought, let's not open that box. Good point about Ireland, though. One thing to consider is that the issue with Ireland is slightly different, since Ireland has two fully recognized governments on the island (the Republic of Ireland and the UK) so that's a little more ambiguous. In any case, though, I don't think this is the place to debate the merging of the articles (that can of worms can be opened in the Taiwan/ROC article talk pages), but I will throw in my two cents and say that in the current state, it's not FA-ready. On those grounds, oppose for now until this becomes more elegant. Alexthe5th (talk) 17:33, 11 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Dabs; please check the disambiguation links identified in the toolbox. Dabomb87 (talk) 21:47, 11 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Comments -
 * There are three dead weblinks showing by the link checker tool.
 * You have a number of websites in the references that lack last access dates.
 * Also a number lack publishers.
 * There are a number of references that have links to google books pages, but the references need to be formatted as books, with publisher, etc. given.
 * Newspapers and magazine titles in the references should be in italics. If you're using cite news, use the work field for the title of the paper, and the publisher field for the name of the actual company that publishes the paper
 * What makes the following reliable sources?
 * http://www.taiwandc.org
 * http://www.bilaterals.org/article.php3?id_article=242
 * http://www.freedomhouse.org
 * Please spell out abbreviations in the notes
 * Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:32, 15 August 2009 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.