Talk:History of the Han dynasty/GA1

GA Review

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

This is a very good article. Pericles you have outdone yourself! However, perhaps there can sometimes be too much of a good thing, and this is the case with History of the Han Dynasty. The article is too long. There are a couple of ways to shorten the article. 1) Cut down on the number of references. I don't think you need a reference after every sentence, particularly the same reference several sentences in a row. 2) Remove mention of scholars. A footnote is sufficient when referring to 'some scholars'. Referring to scholars by name disrupts the flow of the text. 3) Consider adding the portion of the article about Wang Mang into the Xin Dynasty article, since it isn't strictly part of the Han Dynasty. There should still be a short section in this article about the period. 4) If there are any other ways you can think of to shorten the article, these would be welcomed as well.

I'll put the article on hold for now, but have no doubt it will soon be ready for promotion! Zeus1234 (talk) 06:52, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

• I'll certainly shorten the prose size of the article, but there is a problem with some of your suggestions.
• The number of references does not really affect how the size of the article is to be judged. According to WP:SIZE, only the amount of the article's prose—or main body of the text excluding the introduction—should be put into consideration. However, when a paragraph uses the same source with the same page number, cited in every single sentence, then I will definitely make an effort to eliminate redundant citations. WP:SIZE says that anything over 100 KB is unacceptable, while prose size between 60 to 100 KB should most likely be cut down, but sometimes the scope of a topic demands a large article in this range. The prose size of this article, according to my copy-and-paste methods into a Word document, was approximately 88 KB before I started editing, and is now 85 KB (with spaces in between words, 72 KB without spaces). Obviously, the article could use a little more trimming, but so far I'd say I've done a pretty good job covering 400 years of history in less than 100 KB of prose.
• As for the mentioning of scholars, I did notice some were a bit extraneous, so I deleted a few for the sake of prose size. However, I don't think this is the source of the problem about article size.
• It is actually imperative that you mention them by name in the text when you directly quote them. Such is the case for the following scholars (section names put in quotes): Michael Loewe in "Consolidation, precedents, and kingly rivals", Robert P. Kramers in "Confucianism and government recruitment", Hans Bielenstein in "Traditionalist reforms", and Mansvelt Beck in "Downfall of the Eunuchs". Granted, the mentioning of Rafe de Crespigny in "Policies under Guangwu, Ming, Zhang, and He" did not precede or follow a direct quote, but it preceded his own opinion and value judgment about what was the most important reform of the dynasty; if I didn't attribute his sentiment to him, someone in a FAC review is liable to say "ok...who thinks this is the most important reform? Are you doing your own original research?" The same could be said for Valerie Hansen in "Reforms and policies of middle Eastern Han", Crespigny again in "Foreign relations and war of middle Eastern Han," and Crespigny and Ebrey in "Yellow Turban Rebellion". Plus, mentioning the names of scholars—in a way that does not break the flow of the article, of course—actually gives a Wiki article much more credibility and authority.
• As for Wang Mang's section, I have already started to delete material as you suggested, but not everything, since a good portion of the information there actually deals with his actions during the late Western Han Dynasty and with important figures of the Western Han. Also, Wiki readers might become confused with the following foreign relations subsection if nothing is said of Wang Mang's regime (i.e. Xiongnu relations and Tarim Basin falling out of Han's hands).
• Besides the recent reductions I just made, I will find other ways to reduce size, trust me!.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 18:43, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I never suggested you outright delete the Wang Mang material, just move most of it to the Xia Dynasty article. Also, while references don't have anything to do with the prose length as you pointed out, I still think that multiple same references in a row are unnecessary (i.e two consecutive sentences with the same reference at the end). AS for the direct quotes, I didn't notice that many of the scholar mentions had direct quotes associated with them.Zeus1234 (talk) 00:38, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Well to be fair, two quotes from scholars were rather small ones that you might have missed since they consisted of a couple quoted words and not a whole sentence. I didn't mean to suggest that you believed the whole Wang Mang section should be scrapped; I simply used the term "but not everything" as an exaggeratory phrase. As for references, I've already started eliminating extraneous ones as you've suggested, which is a good point, because redundancy isn't necessary and it was perhaps a bit of paranoia on my part to place a citation after every sentence. Sometimes if you don't, editors come in and put the dreaded "citation needed" tag on your sentences, because they don't understand that it should be implied that the citation of the next sentence also counts for the citation in the previous sentence.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 00:47, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Following your advice, I just deleted several instances where there were redundant citations in the same paragraph. Are things looking a bit better? I'd like to know how much more progress you think should be made with reducing the size of the article.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 01:14, 13 March 2009 (UTC)