Talk:Daqin/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Carabinieri (talk · contribs) 20:59, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Initial comments/questions

Hi, thanks for all the work you've put into this article.

Before I start a more in-depth review, I have a more general questions. I wasn't exactly sure what the topic of this article is. There's already an excellent article about Sino-Roman relations, which I see you wrote. This article discusses the term Daqin itself and Chinese perceptions of Rome some, but large parts of it are just about the relations between China and Rome. What are your thoughts on this? What is the distinction with respect to subject matter between this article and the one about Sino-Roman relations?

The article also makes use of long quotations to an extent I feel might be a little excessive. --Carabinieri (talk) 23:21, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

User:Pericles of Athens, if you're too busy right now, I'll put this on hold.--Carabinieri (talk) 20:59, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

@Carabinieri: hello. Thanks for starting the review! I have been busy with the FAC for Cleopatra, but it's rather quiet now, so I can focus on this. The article isn't meant to be as comprehensive as Sino-Roman relations and is really only meant to cover some of the basics of how the Chinese perceived the Roman world. Notice, also, how there are some details in this article that aren't present in the other one, such as a more in-depth look at Christianity and the explanation about Chinese surnames for foreign peoples such as the distant Romans. As for the lengthy block quotes, I can try to summarize them instead, putting the entire quotes into footnotes if readers are still interested in the primary source materials. Regards, Pericles of Athens^Talk 20:04, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. I'm sorry, but the article's subject still isn't quite clear to me. It seems to cover three topics related topics. 1. The term Daqin and its varied uses in Ancient China (referring to the Roman Empire, individuals from Rome, or Christianity). 2. Sino-Roman relations. 3. Chinese perceptions of Rome. Some parts also seem to stray to Roman or Ancient European perceptions of China and Asia. Those seem like distinct topics, though they are certainly related. I'm having trouble finding the common thread that justifies having this article under that particular title.--Carabinieri (talk) 22:00, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

@Carabinieri: there isn't one exclusive topic of the article; it is a combination of topics related to the ancient Chinese perceptions of the Roman Empire and medieval Chinese perceptions of the Eastern Roman Empire. It follows a similar pattern as the Wiki articles for Dayuan and Kangju, which deserve their own articles aside from Greco-Bactrian Kingdom and Sogdia (see Zhang Qian), because again, we're talking about the uniquely ancient Chinese concepts of these countries. This article, Daqin, also offers a good amount of details that are not featured in the Sino-Roman relations article, while excluding other details, such as Roman geographical ideas of East Asia (which is instead covered in the Sino-Roman relations article). Pericles of Athens^Talk 13:29, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Another example: this article covers the Chinese perceptions of how law and order was maintained in the Roman Empire, something that isn't covered in the Sino-Roman relations article, because the latter is more about the interactions and contacts of these civilizations, not exactly about the Chinese thoughts of how the other empire operated and functioned on a similar level. Pericles of Athens^Talk 13:31, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

You also seem confused about the Wiki guidelines concerning overlap of material in related articles. Per Wikipedia:Summary style, Wikipedia:Splitting, Wikipedia:Content forking, and other guidelines, it is acceptable for related articles to contain some of the same or very similar information. This article would be rather incomplete, for instance, if I removed all the information about the contacts of these civilizations in the embassies section, because that provides an enormous amount of context for the other sections of the article and why this article is noteworthy in the first place. Pericles of Athens^Talk 13:37, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with the overlap in content with other articles nor am I saying that this article doesn't have any content not covered by other articles. My concern is that the selection of content in this article feels rather arbitrary. If this article is about Chinese perceptions of the Roman Empire, (by the way, why not give it that name then?) considerable parts of this article seem extraneous to that topic.--Carabinieri (talk) 23:59, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Hi, it's been over a month. I find it hard to evaluate whether or not this article is broad in its coverage, because it's unclear to me what exactly the subject of the article is or because it's about a number of disparate topics. Do you see my point at all?--Carabinieri (talk) 04:44, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

I'm going to close this nomination. Nominator appears to have lost interest.--Carabinieri (talk) 09:46, 17 July 2018 (UTC)