Talk:Peking Man/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Kokopelli7309 (talk · contribs) 14:53, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

Will add later!

that was fast   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  01:23, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

@Dunkleosteus77: actually, I'm sorry – I just realized I don't have access to all of the sources I need to edit this article. Is there a way for me to undo signing up for the review? Kokopelli7309 (talk) 16:33, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

@Kokopelli7309: If it's the People's Peking Man, you can see the before-peer-review version on proquest https://www.proquest.com/docview/305200797   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  17:53, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

@Dunkleosteus77: That's what I needed, thanks! I'll post the review soon. Kokopelli7309 (talk) 22:40, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Nitpicks I've found so far

• In the "Research history" section, the line "Unfortunately, the ship was attacked by Japanese warships..." seems to be kind of editorializing.

fixed   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  23:20, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

• The first few sentences in the "Age and taphonomy" section aren't written very clearly, and you should probably "taphonomy" to something like "fossil remnants" to make it less technical.

What about it is confusing specifically?   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  14:42, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

See my feedback below in the "Well-written" section. Kokopelli7309 (talk) 14:47, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

• The line supported by ref 79 ("Men hung and women gather"), isn't supported by the given source as far as I can tell. Let me know if I am missing something, or if you just used the wrong citation.

It says on p. 152, "The more detailed depictions of life in Peking Man's time generally followed the notion that 'men hunt and women gather.'"   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  14:42, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

We must just be working from different drafts, but it's okay as long as it's supported by the text. Kokopelli7309 (talk) 14:53, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

It's the same link I sent you. When I say page 152, I mean it's marked as 152 on the actual document, not the slider system to the left   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  17:13, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

• It also doesn't seem like you gave a citation for the "Problems of Leninism quote"

added   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  14:42, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

• More editorializing: "The calm between the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution" (and Cultural revolution should be WikiLinked) at the end of the "Stone tools" section

Should I change it to stability?   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  21:42, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

"Period of stability" wouldn't be bad – I'm not trying to underplay the effects that Chinese politics had on science, but the original version wasn't NPOV. Kokopelli7309 (talk) 12:48, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

done   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  17:39, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

• The first sentence in the second paragraph of "Classification": it should be "as suggested by French archaeologist..."

done   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  17:39, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

GA Criterion: Verifiable w/o Original Research

I just finished going through the document, and other than the nitpicks I discussed above it looks good on that front.

GA Criterion: Well written

For the most part, the writing style here is good. However, I think that it can be a bit too technical in places. Some sections, like the ones on "anatomy" and "taphonomy" are technical in nature and so that kind of tone is appropriate, but the ones on the history of the fossils should be written in a way that the general reader could understand. Here are some places that should probably be made more clear:

• "the Zhoukoudian proved to be a valuable site, with a preponderance of human remains," preponderance should be replaced.

Should I replace preponderance elsewhere? It's not like it's a technical word   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  17:20, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

I think "technical" was the wrong term to use – it just makes it read more densely than it needs to when you could just say "there are many human remains ..." Kokopelli7309 (talk) 23:57, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm still confused on the kinds of words I'm allowed to use. Is robust too much, or exorbitant, or protrusive? Am I only allowed to say "a lot"? You also have issues with postulate which is certainly a commonly understood word. Are circumscription and ubiquitous too much?   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  12:46, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

See my comment below – again, it's not that the words themselves are too much, it's just that you could easily replace them with simpler language to make the piece easier to read. Kokopelli7309 (talk) 14:35, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

• The first sentence in the Classification section is a bit of a run-on.

Does that make it hard to understand?   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  17:20, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

I would say so – just try breaking it up if possible. Kokopelli7309 (talk) 00:00, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

• At the end in the first paragraph in Anatomy, the expression "in sensu lato" isn't really necessary.

removed   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  17:20, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

• At the beginning of the "Skull" section: could you be more specific about what you mean by "constructing" a skull? Did they just construct it with computer modeling or make plaster casts to fill in the missing parts?

It's a composite of all the known materials of similar age and sex, and then you fill in the gaps based on what you have and what you expect to be there. You can't make plaster casts of bones that don't exist, and you can't make those kinds of computer models with 20th century technology   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  17:20, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Got it, thanks. It would be nice if you could WikiLink that to an appropriate article if there is one, though. Kokopelli7309 (talk) 01:10, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

not sure what I'd link to   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  12:34, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Okay – if there's no article on it, maybe this one's fine as is. Kokopelli7309 (talk) 14:05, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

• In the first sentence of the "postcranium" section, the word choice "derisory" isn't very clear and I'm not sure it's the right word to use.

is scanty better?

That sounds good! Kokopelli7309 (talk) 23:55, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

• I'm going to stop leaving comments on clarity for now, since it seems like there are a lot of places where this applies, but try to generally clean up as many sentences as possible where unnecessarily technical language is used.

• To be more specific, I feel like almost all of the problems in this regard are found in the "Classification" subsection and the "anatomy" section. Following the ONEDOWN rule, the ideal would be to phrase these sections in a way that a secondary school student could understand. I don't think you need to totally rewrite these sections, just change some words or phrases to make it more understandable.

there shouldn't be anything truly technical at all in Classification, there's just a lot of context necessary and I wasn't sure how much I was supposed to explain (and it's already very large as it is)   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  17:20, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

True – again, I think I'm misusing the idea of a "technical" word here. It's more that the word choice here tends to make it seem harder to read than necessary, especially since this is a topic that could appeal to a wide audience. As an example, here are the first few lines with a few changes that I think would improve it: Despite what Charles Darwin had hypothesised in his 1871 Descent of Man, many late-19th century evolutionary naturalists thought that Asia (instead of Africa) was the birthplace of humankind as it is midway between all continents via land routes or short sea crossings, providing many dispersal routes throughout the world. Among the latter was Ernst Haeckel who argued that the first human species (which he proactively named "Homo primigenius") evolved on the now-disproven hypothetical continent "Lemuria" in what is now Southeast Asia, from a genus he called "Pithecanthropus" ("ape-man"). "Lemuria" had supposedly sunk below the Indian Ocean, so no fossils could be found to prove this. Still, Haeckel's model inspired Dutch scientist Eugène Dubois to join the Dutch East India Company and search for his "missing link" in Java. He found a skullcap and a femur (Java Man) which he named "P. erectus" (using Haeckel's hypothetical genus name) and unfruitfully attempted to convince the European scientific community that he had found an upright-walking ape-man dating to the late Pliocene or early Pleistocene, who dismissed his findings as some kind of malformed non-human ape. Dejected, Dubois fully withdrew from anthropology by the turn of the century.

I know this is a lot, but I'm guessing it's the last substantial suggestion I'll make for this review. Just go through and try to change as many words as you can to make it accessible to a broader range of readers. Kokopelli7309 (talk) 00:12, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

So you just want me to be less grandiloquent? I feel that words like term, preponderance, nevertheless, postulate, etc should be commonly understood words   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  01:12, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Yeah – I agree that a lot of these words are commonly understood, but they just might not be great for the flow of the article. Even if readers know what a word means, replacing simple words with longer ones will just make the piece harder to read. As a general rule, there's nothing wrong with the words you mentioned in and of themselves, but if you could replace them with a shorter word without losing any meaning you probably should. Does that make sense? Kokopelli7309 (talk) 14:34, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Just a note, in some instances the big word has an implication that you might not be applying properly. For example "preponderance" doesn't mean "large number" it means an excess or majority in relation to something else. The use is fine in "the preponderance of skulls compared to body remains is conspicuous," but "The site has yielded a preponderance of stone tools" and "with a preponderance of human remains, stone tools, and potential evidence of early fire use" the usage seems to be more "large number" as opposed to "more of these than other items," which is imprecise. —Carter (talk) 14:37, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Certainly it is a preponderance of these items compared to other H. erectus sites, emphasizing how important this site is   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  16:03, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Dunkleosteus77, that may be your intent, if you mean there are more of these items in this one site than in all others worldwide, but it's not what the sentences are saying. —Carter (talk) 19:24, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

I think that I will make my feedback a little bit less general, so that it's easier for you to bring this article to the finish line. It's okay to use big words in places, but there are a few specific instances throughout the text where word choice really gets in the way of comprehension. I've listed below the ones that really need to be replaced:

• "Paucity," near the end of the third paragraph of the "classification" section, should be replaced with something like "dearth."

paucity: smallness of quantity : DEARTH https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/paucity#note-1

I just thought that dearth would actually be a little bit more specific here, since it specifically means a lack of something. Kokopelli7309 (talk) 21:10, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

@Dunkleosteus77: Looks like this is the last one to fix, then. Kokopelli7309 (talk) 00:55, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

I still don't think dearth is the best since it could also mean a total lack, whereas paucity very clearly is defined as hardly any but still something   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  02:11, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

If you're not willing to change it, I'll leave it for now – as a whole, the article is still good enough to be promoted. Still, some of this language will need to be changed in the future if the article is promoted to a higher class. Kokopelli7309 (talk) 12:01, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

• As mentioned above: the word "preponderance" is not used correctly at the beginning of the second paragraph of the "stone tools" section, and after the "Location of the Zhoukoudian" map. Responding to your comment above, to make this more clear you should at least say "preponderance compared to other sites."

when it says "most productive H. erectus site in the world" this makes "compared to other sites" redundant   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  20:12, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Got it, that's fair enough for the use of the word after the map. However, do you mind still fixing the other occurrence (in the "stone tools" section)? Kokopelli7309 (talk) 21:08, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

removed but I still disagree. All descriptors are relative and are implied what it's in relation to. When I say the skull is long, it's implied long compared to modern humans and not horses   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  22:54, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

• The word "prolific," used just before the start of the "society" section, isn't used correctly either.

prolific: marked by abundant inventiveness or productivity https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prolific

All right – I'm still not sure that it's great for flow, but I guess that I can let this one slide. Kokopelli7309 (talk) 21:12, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

• Same with "exorbitant," used in the first paragraph of the "postcranium" section.

exorbitant: exceeding the customary or appropriate limits in intensity, quality, amount, or size https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/exorbitant   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  20:12, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

True, but this word also carries a dramatic connotation that I don't think is appropriate. Honestly, the sentence would flow fine if you just took the word out. Kokopelli7309 (talk) 21:06, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

It should be rather dramatic, H. erectus skullcaps have sometimes been misidentified as turtle carapaces   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  22:37, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

It's just surprising given the tone of the sentence, but I guess that this one is okay to stay for now. Kokopelli7309 (talk) 00:54, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

• Finally, "amalgamations," used at the beginning of the "Paleoenvironment" section.

changed to cluster   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  20:12, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! Kokopelli7309 (talk) 21:03, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

With these five changes, I think that I will be able to promote the article. I'm replacing these words not because their too technical but because they weren't used properly according to their definitions. Let me know if you have any questions, or if there's anything I can do to help! Kokopelli7309 (talk) 16:08, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

GA criterion: Broad coverage

I think this is a definite go. A lot of interesting parts of the subject area are addressed, including the fossil's relationship with the political landscape of the time. In the future, I think it would be nice to expand the info about this fossils relationship with the Mao era to a separate section, so it is more clearly organized, but I don't think this is essential to meet the GA criteria.

is it not already? Actual Maoist ideology is only really talked about in Society   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  14:59, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Fair enough – like I said, this is more of a loose suggestion than something that needs to be changed. Kokopelli7309 (talk) 15:09, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

GA criterion: NPOV

I think this one is okay as well, besides the nitpick I made above – even when discussing censorship under communism, which is a difficult topic, the article seems fairly balanced.

GA criterion: Images

The images add a lot to the article. They also all look good copyright-wise, with one exception: the file File:Sculpture of Peking Man at the Zhoukoudian Museum.jpg has been proposed for deletion under China's copyright laws. Take a look at the deletion discussion page – it seems like it's been going on for a while – and if it hasn't been resolved, we might just need to get rid of the image. We could always take the image out temporarily and add it back in later if the copyvio is resolved.

I started that discussion. Chinese copyright law got amended just last year, so the photo is fine now   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  01:29, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Great, thanks. Kokopelli7309 (talk) 14:29, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Verdict

I think I will put this one on a standard 7-day hold for now, to give you time to make the writing more clear and fix the situation with the image. Other than that, I think the article is almost ready to be promoted – great work! Kokopelli7309 (talk) 01:16, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Second verdict

Approved. I still think there are some issues with the wording that deserve to be fixed in the future, but for now it is fair to say that the article meets the GAN criteria. Kokopelli7309 (talk) 12:10, 29 June 2021 (UTC)