Wikipedia:Peer review/George Town, Penang/archive1

George Town, Penang
Any constructive improvements/advice/questions about the capital city of Penang are greatly appreciated.

Thanks, - —User:Buonkee Buonkee (talk) 11:00, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Comments from Singora Singora (talk) 09:10, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

I live near George Town (I'm actually on the other side of the Malaysian peninsular) and have been to Penang. I recently wrote the Seri Rambai article.
 * 1. Start by looking at the article for Sarawak (which has also been put forward for peer review). By comparison, the George Town article is messy and poorly structured: there are lots of one sentence paragraphs (see the Health care section, for example), too many photographs and uncited claims. All paragraphs should end with a citation.
 * 2. The introduction highlights some of the repetition in the article. For example, the first sentence tells me the city is "currently a UNESCO World Heritage Site"; the third explains that is has held this status since 2008. Content such as this needs to be combined and edited.

For the time being, I think you should concentrate of copyediting. Take a look at this this:

'''As the Dutch East India Company had dominated the Far East spice trade in the 18th. century, the British were determined to establish their presence in the region to control the trade route between China and British India through the Malay Archipelago, and to set up a base to repair Royal Navy ships.[6][18] Because of this, Captain Francis Light, a trader for the British East India Company (EIC) was instructed by his company, Jourdain Sullivan and de Souza in Madras, British India to establish trade relations in the Malay Peninsula.[19]'''

Light arrived on Penang Island on 17 July 1786.[18] As Penang Island was still under the control of the Sultan of Kedah, Light needed to negotiate with the Sultan Abdullah Mukarram Shah to grant the island to the EIC in exchange for protection of the Sultanate against Siamese and Burmese intrusions.[19][20] The early negotiations were problematic because the Sultan did not want to cede the island to the British, but the threat from Siam grew as Kedah was forced submit to Siam as a vassal state by offering bunga mas annually.[20] The Sultan was aware that he needed an agreement with the British for protection against the Siamese, although he did not realise Light had acted without the approval of his superiors.[18]

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 * a1. "As the Dutch East India Company had dominated the Far East spice trade in the 18th. century, the British were determined ..."
 * a2. The wording here is wrong. The British were not determined to do ABC because the Dutch dominated XYZ. In a similar vein, the Dutch did not form regional alliances in the early 1600s simply because the Portuguese controlled Malacca. The British and Dutch were motivated by greed ONLY. Their determination to control regional trade was not inspired by rivalry.


 * b1. "Light needed to negotiate with the Sultan Abdullah Mukarram Shah to grant the island to the EIC in exchange for protection of the Sultanate against Siamese and Burmese intrusions"
 * b2. He did NOT need to do this. He made an offer. As you say, it was made without his superiors' approval.


 * c1. "the threat from Siam grew as Kedah was forced submit to Siam as a vassal state by offering bunga mas annually"
 * c2. This is incorrect. The threat from Siam lessened once Kedah accepted Siamese suzerainty. Kedah sent the bunga mas in recognition of Siam's status as the suzerain. The correct wording you need here is quite tricky!

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I'll add more later. I think you should be able to get this article to GA/FA level. There are lots of sources out there, and the best will be easy to access. For example:


 * 1. The Journal of the Siam Society
 * 2. The Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society
 * 3. GWHI
 * 4. Penang Heritage Trust
 * 5. The Straits Times


 * The user was recently blocked for block evasion. The master account known as Polopaladin who known for inserting non-neutral content with hidden political agenda, messed paragraph and inserting too many bare links. I have restore the article into the last stable version. Regards. Herman Jaka (talk) 09:00, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

Comments from Singora Singora (talk) 11:17, 6 May 2016 (UTC) OK -- but the previous version, though messy, was better than what you've got now. To be honest, this new version is dreadful.