Wikipedia:Peer review/Adam Smith/archive2

Adam Smith
This peer review discussion has been closed. I've listed this article for peer review because the article is in need of a new direction. There was a drive to improve the article in July 2008 (there was also a peer review and a good article nomination, where suggestions from both were incorporated into the article), during when the article improved immensely, but two years later now, it can do better. So, I'm looking for suggestions on what to improve. Gary King ( talk ) 22:17, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Previous peer review

Coverage (Philcha)
(comment) no gaps at the high levels - I may comments on specific sections. --18:27, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Structure (Philcha)
(comment) no issues at the high levels - I may comments on specific sections. --18:27, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Early life (Philcha)

 * "... that the man was abducted by gypsies at the age of four ..." - the man, at four? How about e.g. "While little is known about Smith's early childhood, his biographer, the Scottish journalist John Rae, recorded that Smith was abducted by gypsies at the age of four and eventually released when others went to rescue him." The sentence also is an example of 2 difficulties that are common on the article and for which you'll need to check:
 * Longer, more "fancy" words / phrases / sentences where simpler, more concise ones would be better - both to be easier on the reader and to use the space for more explanation. --Philcha (talk) 18:27, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * The article often uses a pronoun (usually "Smith") where it's slightly ambiguous because a preceding phrase / sentence contains 2 names. Almost always the reader can resolve it in a fraction of a second, but that slightly breaks the reader's concentration on the content. There's an other example at "While there, he Smith studied Latin, mathematics, history, and writing" --Philcha (talk) 18:27, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Formal education (Philcha)

 * "Here he Smith developed his passion for ...", as the previous sentence has Smith & Hutcheson. --Philcha (talk) 18:58, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * "In 1740, Smith was awarded the Snell exhibition and left the University of Glasgow to attend Balliol College, Oxford" is more concise. --Philcha (talk) 18:58, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * The 2nd & 3rd paras lead on The Wealth of Nations' criticisms of teaching at Oxford ("Smith considered the teaching at Glasgow to be far superior to that at Oxford ..." and "In Book V of The Wealth of Nations, Smith comments ..."). Needs to be structured and made more concise. --Philcha (talk) 18:58, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * If "Smith considered the teaching at Glasgow to be far superior to that at Oxford, and found his experience at the latter to be intellectually stifling" survived the structure, it can be more concise, e.g. "Smith considered the teaching at Glasgow to be far superior to that at Oxford, which he and found his experience at the latter to be intellectually stifling". --Philcha (talk) 18:58, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * "Smith had originally intended to study theology and enter the clergy, but his subsequent learning, especially from the skeptical writings of David Hume, persuaded him to take a different route" suggests that Hume's writings (in a later time) influenced Smith to avoid theology and the clergy (in an earlier time). I'd remove it. --Philcha (talk) 18:58, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Teaching career (Philcha)

 * "The alignments of opinion that can be found within their writings covering history, politics, philosophy, economics, and religion indicate that they shared a closer intellectual alliance and friendship than with the others who were to play important roles during the emergence of what has come to be known as the Scottish Enlightenment" is a monster. How e.g. "In their writings - covering history, politics, philosophy, economics, and religion - Smith and Hume shared closer intellectual and personal bonds than with other important figures of the Scottish Enlightenment"? --Philcha (talk) 21:36, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * "When the Chair of Moral Philosophy died the next year ..." is corrected but very old-fashioned metonymy. "Professor ..." would be ambiguous, as the term is senior in UK but junior in USA. I suggest "When the head of Moral Philosophy died the next year ..." --Philcha (talk) 21:36, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * In "He would continue academic production for the next thirteen years ..." is stilted and verbose. How e.g. "He worked as an academic for the next thirteen years ..."? --Philcha (talk) 21:36, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * In "Smith published The Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759 ...", the article uses "sympathy" twice but does not explain it. --Philcha (talk) 21:36, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * "Smith's popularity greatly increased due to the The Theory of Moral Sentiments ..." - but how popular was Smith previously, and why? --Philcha (talk) 21:36, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what "The development of his ideas on political economy can be observed from the lecture notes taken down by a student in 1763, and from what William Robert Scott described as an early version of part of The Wealth of Nations" contributes. --Philcha (talk) 21:36, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I assume "rather than the nation's quantity of gold or silver" means S was critising mercantilism. If sources support this interpretation, you need a concise explanation of mercantilism. --Philcha (talk) 21:36, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * " the academic senate of the University of Glasgow conferred on Smith the title of Doctor of Laws " --Philcha (talk) 21:36, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * For once a sentence is rather short - "Smith subsequently resigned from his professorship to take the tutoring position". As "At the end of 1763, he obtained a lucrative offer ..." is fairly long, I'd combine ""Smith subsequently resigned ..." with "Because he resigned in the middle of the term ..." --Philcha (talk) 22:32, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Tutoring and travels (Philcha)

 * I don't see how "Smith's tutoring job entailed touring Europe with Henry Scott while teaching him subjects including proper Polish" contributes. --Philcha (talk) 22:48, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * "Smith was paid £300 per year plus expenses along with £300 per year pension, which was roughly twice his former income as a teacher" looks as it should fit better with "he obtained a lucrative offer" in the previous section. --Philcha (talk) 22:48, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * "After touring the south of France, the group moved to Geneva. While in Geneva, Smith met with the philosopher Voltaire" should be combined. --Philcha (talk) 22:48, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * "The physiocrats believed that wealth came from production and not from the attainment of precious metals, which was adverse to mercantilist thought" suggested that physiocrats supported mercantilism against some doctrine about attainment of precious metals. Need rearrange to make it clear who supported what. And "attainment"? --Philcha (talk) 22:48, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * "They also believed that agriculture tended to produce wealth ..." - tended? --Philcha (talk) 22:48, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Character (Philcha)

 * The usual prose issues. --Philcha (talk) 23:09, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 2 paras about S's absentmindedness. --Philcha (talk) 23:09, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Why the quotes in "Smith "never" sat for portraits"? --Philcha (talk) 23:09, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Religious views (Philcha)

 * The usual prose issues. --Philcha (talk) 23:09, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * How is an examination of Hume's beliefs relevant to S's? Especially as ther's debates about H's? --Philcha (talk) 23:09, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Philcha)

 * I have severe reservations about the P. J. O'Rourke sentence and citation. At present I'd remove or comment out (by HTML) this passage - it's not necessary, as the para has enough good text and citations:
 * The passage mentions O'Rourke's commentary On The Wealth of Nations but shows not citation of that work.
 * The actual citation for O'Rourke's comments is P.J. O'Rourke Takes On 'The Wealth of Nations'. This is not WP:RS, as it's a spoken discussion with no opportunity to fix any problems.
 * O'Rourke is an journalist with a degrees in literature, not economics or philosophy (which are generally quite to very technical discipline).
 * As far as I can see, as soon as O'Rourke gets into economics, he gets it totally wrong when he says "the idea of mercantilism - the idea that you should import more than you export, and that the way a country gets rich is by importing". Every account I've seen about mercantilism says: the state wishes to accumulate reserves of gold and silver, in modern words by running a positive balance of payments; to do this, the state must export more than it import, so that other states have to pay the difference in money rather products. --Philcha (talk) 13:47, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * The rest of the section has a lot of redundancy. --Philcha (talk) 13:47, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

The Wealth of Nations (Philcha)

 * In the phrase "a price that provides a fair return on land, labor, and capital", "fair" could be misinterpreted as the medieval idea of the just price, which is based on ethics. The next sentence of the article says "optimally allocate society's resources", as in Stiglitz's proposotion (later) that all uses of the resource should yield a risk-adjusted equal rate of return; otherwise resource reallocation would result. --Philcha (talk) 14:32, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * S's ""real price of every thing ... is the toil and trouble of acquiring it" is the modern concept of opportunity cost. --Philcha (talk) 14:32, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * IMO labour theory of value is not "variations on Smith", it's a competing theory that excludes all the factors S includes, except for labour (how measured?). The sentence also has no citation. --Philcha (talk) 14:32, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * "Classical economics focused on the tendency of markets to move to long-run equilibrium" looks irrelevant to the rest of the para, has no citation, and does not make it clear whether the proposition is a tautology or a empirical hypothesis. --Philcha (talk) 14:32, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Common issues (Philcha)
I've noted some, check the article for others: --Philcha (talk) 22:48, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Need for concise explanations of some terms in economics and philosophy.
 * Need to make prose more concise generally.
 * A sentences that should be combined.
 * Please avoid ambiguous pronouns.
 * Factual details that don't contribute to the reason or explanation or narrative.
 * A few sentences give the exact opposition of what's correct.
 * Economics issues. It's a technical discipline almost from the start. And interpreting 18th cent ideas can difficulty because the meanings of terms change in that time. The economics parts of the article need to be checked by an expert (I can see a lot of the issues, but fixing them needs much greater knowledge).

End of review (Philcha)
I've stopped as I think the article needs a lot of work to reach GA standard. I suggest the first priority is to deal with the economics issues as these need an expert. --Philcha (talk) 14:32, 17 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Okay, I've gotten to most of the points here. There's still a lot of copyediting to do, as you said, and help is required from experts, so I'll get on those before bringing this to GA. This has been a long-time project of mine (almost two years now), so don't expect for things to move quickly with it. I'll be sticking with the article, but just in small increments, as usual. Gary King  ( talk ) 18:36, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Comments by doncram
Wow, Philcha has some substantial comments above. The point made that nations which export more do better, seems like what i understand, too. Upon seeing this item in the PR pipeline, i visited but got sidetracked on the house pictured in the section on The Wealth of Nations (I have interest in historic sites). Anyhow, i created Adam Smith House article which, despite help from two others, is still a sorry stub article, not worth much linking from this much better article. Hopefully the link from the pic caption is now okay. And, I wonder if, perhaps for the "Portraits, monuments, and banknotes" section which might be retitled, perhaps it may be appropriate to mention the Edinburgh house of Adam Smith, now covered somewhat in the Adam Smith House article. But there is not a pic or very solid information to draw on from that article yet, so if you mention it at all perhaps you should do so without a link to that article. Hope this helps in a very small way. :) --doncram (talk) 16:07, 17 February 2010 (UTC)