Talk:Periphery countries/GA1

GA Review

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I'll give the formal checklist against the Good article criteria first, followed by more detailed comments. As (I hope) Piotrus has made clear, any criticism here is not necessarily criticism of the contents of the article, but to a great extent is measuring whether it complies with Wikipedia's policies in given areas.

Checklist

GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS):

   This article's had the good luck to have been visited by Malleus Fatuorum, one of Wikipedia's best cleaner-uppers, and thus the spelling and layout are up to scratch. See my comments below for why I've not currently signed off on criterion 1b.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

   The article's been in existence for such a short time, it's impossible to sign off on "stability". That won't count against it, as I see no sign of any dissenting view editwarring against the current version.

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

Comments

1. I've not currently signed off on criterion 1b ("it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation") due to a relatively minor issue with the layout. At the moment, the formatting of the section headers makes it appear to have an empty "Interactions" section (most obvious if you look at the table of contents). If the subsequent sections are intended to be part of a broader Interactions section, the headers need to be nested one level deeper (ask Piotrus what I mean by this if you're not familiar with Wikicoding; basically, they all need one more = sign than they currently have). I've not fixed this myself, just in case the intention is to expand out Interactions with text and have it as a separate section.  Done
2. There's no problem with the references, but you may want to consider using Template:Citation rather than the "raw" references you're using. It automatically tidies up the references, making the urls of the weblinks less obtrusive, and makes sure that the article (and anything added to the article by anyone else in future) has all its references in a standard format.
3. I'm taking it on faith that the topic is fully covered; there are no obvious gaps I can see, but this isn't a field with which I'm familiar.
4. The article contains a mixture of British ("specialise") and US ("labor") spellings; standardize(ise) on one.

I'm on the verge of signing off on this as I think it meets the current GA criteria other than the minor points I mention. However, I am going to make a couple of strong suggestions:

One is that in some places, there appears to be ambiguity (such as between "…periphery nations are exploited by core nations" and "some nations decide to be isolationist")—presumably an ultra-isolationist country such as 14th-century China or 19th-century Japan, while a "periphery country" by the definition used, is not actually in any relationship, exploitative or otherwise, with other countries.

The other is that while the lead (rightly) makes it clear that the concept of a periphery country is a part of a particular broader theory and not a universally accepted concept, the rest of the article appears to have been written on the assumption that the theory is correct, and contain language that implies acceptance of the theory ("must", "obviously" etc). This is not going to lead to the article being failed as a Good Article, but I would recommend making it clearer that this is a particular viewpoint, not an undisputed fact. (See Intelligent design for a good, albeit overlong, example of how to write about a theory that doesn't have universal acceptance.)

Reviewer:  – iridescent 21:51, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Thank you I will take this into account and fix what is necessary. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.3.18.118 (talk) 06:02, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes we do plan to extend interactions and it is currently in the works. Thanks. HareJ10 (talk) 03:52, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Interim comments

I'm not going to do a "full" review at this stage, as I can see it's still being quite heavily worked on. A couple of points in the meantime: Malleus's point about Russia ("periphery" on the map, "core" in the text) still needs addressing; I appreciate that the list of periphery/non-periphery countries used for the map is drawn from a reliable source, but in particular if Russia is treated as a periphery country on the map but as a core country in the text the reason for this discrepancy needs to be explained, otherwise readers are just going to be confused. There are some other issues with the map—French Guiana shown as a periphery country, despite being a fully-integrated département of France and not an independent country, the Argentine half of Tierra del Fuego a different color to mainland Argentina, a non-existent island country off the coast of Brazil… The article could probably do with explanations of how the country types are defined (Dubai, Slovenia or Singapore, for instance, certainly don't suffer from "lack of technology, unstable government, and poor education and health systems" which is the definition used in the text). The map used on the core countries article seems to be drawn from a different data-set, and to my eye looks to far more accurately represent the divide.

I'm also sceptical about the whole Stabilized government section. I can think of any number of dictatorships with considerably more stable governments than the Western democracies, and with the (arguable) exception of Iraq I can't think of a military action by any country (core, peripheral, or otherwise) in the past 20 years with protection of markets as the driving objective. If this is what the theory says (the cited source isn't available online so I can't check), it needs to be very clear that this is what this particular theory says, not what is widely accepted. For an article like this, on a topic that's open to debate, it needs to be made clear where every statement has been sourced, regardless of the fact that it makes the article look cluttered with citations. It also needs to be made clear what is a fact ("During the early 1900s the economy of the Russian Empire was a backward, primarily agrarian country with isolated pockets of heavy industries") and what is the personal opinion of a particular academic ("As a country becomes richer, it is able to build more schools and better fund the schools already built. This was seen in Russia after the October Revolution"). I don't really want to plaster the article with {{citation needed}} tags at this stage while it's still being expanded, but at some point over the next few days I'll go through and mark up the facts are disputable enough to warrant their own citations. – iridescent 19:53, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Quick comments on the map used in the core articles: it is based on this classification, which is an alternative classification to the core/semi-periphery/periphery classification. For a less controversial classification fitting this article, I'll once again suggest checking the lists by Wallenstein here (as far as I can tell those books are not available on Google Print, so yes, it will entitle a trip to the library...).

On the subject of citations needed: as I said earlier, every sentence should be referenced (and don't forget about page numbers). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 20:21, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Update

As Piotrus has said, there are still a lot of statements that need citations. I'll leave the review to give time to fix these at least until Piotrus says that the assignment has finished, but as things stand the article is going to fail due to the volume of uncited potentially contentious material. Obviously, the history section—which currently ends in the 15th century—needs to be completed as well.

There's also one statement which—no matter how reliably sourced it is just plain untrue; "At the beginning of the 19th century, Asia and Africa were considered periphery and their lack of development enabled the United States and Germany to remain successful core nations". At the beginning of the 19th century, North Africa and West Asia were dominated by the Ottoman Empire which in this period was a full-blown superpower; the United States was a narrow strip of coastal European settlements, virtually cut off from the world economy; Germany wouldn't even exist as a country for a further 70 years and consisted of a bunch of squabbling principalities devastated by the Napoleonic wars and the hyper militarist failing state of Prussia. – iridescent 14:07, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Comments by Malleus Fatuorum

I'd like to make a few additional comments, if I may. I think the article's generally on the right lines, but apart from the issues that Iridescent has raised I see a few others as well. It's Iridescent's choice though as to how important these are to this nomination, not mine.

• The article veers between "semi-peripheral status" and "semi-periphery status", both of which redirect to Semi-periphery countries.

• I think the lead is too short to adequately summarise the article.  Done
• I find the large map in the lead to be a little overpowering, but more importantly, I don't understand it. Russia, for instance, is shown as a periphery country, coloured red, but it's one of the examples cited of a country that developed into a core country.

• Section headings like "Rising up" and "Ways to escape" appear to me to be revealing a little too much about the political stance of this article's editors.  Done

• The Education section is completely uncited.  Done

• "At the beginning of the 19th century, Asia and Africa were considered periphery nations ...". Neither Asia nor Africa are nations, they're continents.

• "Furthermore, other reasons that keep nations in the periphery is the lack of agricultural and mechanization." The article needs to checked through for this kind of thing. "Other reasons" is plural, so it ought to be "... are the lack of agricultural and mechanization". But I'm not sure what that means anyway. Should it be "agricultural mechanization"?

Malleus Fatuorum 22:46, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Thank you we will try to go through your list and fix all of this. We appreciate your input. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.3.18.118 (talk) 06:03, 9 June 2010 (UTC) tried fixing the lead let me know what you think, thanks HareJ10 (talk) 03:12, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Changed headings to Ways to Improve and Economic Possibilities, hopefully these sound better. Also trying to find more sources for education. Thanks HareJ10 (talk) 03:47, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Comment by Piotrus

On the subject of article being comprehensive and properly covering the sibject, as I noted above, it needs a list of countries considered peripheries in the modern day (such as the one found here). Further, the article has two examples sections - this is confusing; I'd suggest discussing the examples in one dedicated section. If the goal is to provide a historical overview of how countries become (and stop being) peripheries (which is a very good and even a necessary idea), I'd suggest modeling it on a history section found here (see also a similar section in the core countries article here).

As Malleus noted, this map is confusing - which era does it represent? I assume it represents the modern times, but it is not clear. It really needs sources, and I will review them - because as it is now, I find categorization of many countries as peripheries on it confusing (Greece, Taiwan, Iceland... just to name a few, I could go on, plus there is a bunch of cases where islands belonging to various core countries are treated as peripheries: Hokkaido for Japan, Sicily and Sardinia for Italy, Corsica for France, Greenland for Denmark, Balearic Islands for Spain...). I applaud the creation of a dedicated map, but I'd suggest basing it on an estabilished source (once again, I'll link to this).

PS. The article has lost its categories. Please restore them (it was properly categorized few days ago).

So, to sum up my comments on content: 1) add a list of modern peripheries 2) fix the map 3) add a section on "History", describing which (major) countries were peripheries in the centuries past). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 00:12, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, the history will soon be included in the background info. We will try to organize this a little bit better with the examples. We will also take the other comments into account.HareJ10 (talk) 06:05, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Comments by White Shadows

(Yes I know it's an odd name)

• Well for starters, this may be small but the map has a few mistakes in it. Sicily is red while mainland Italy is blue. Same with Sardinia and Corsica. The most northern island of Japan is also Red while the rest of the island chain is blue. (I'm guessing that all of Japan should be blue) There may be a few more of these but that's just what I saw in one glance.
• As for the citations, can you be a bit more specific than "Fitzpatrick. The Russian Revolution. Oxford University Press." GA's have to have citations that have the first and last name of the author, a page number and the publisher and publishing year. There are also some bare URL's that ned to be fixed.  Done
• Some sections are in need or writeing and others are totaly unsourced.
• Is this article part of a series of articles? (does this have anything in common with another aticle?) If so then a template at the bott om of the page may bee usefull for navigation
• Just a suggestion, the refs don't need to mention every detail in every citation. That's what "Bibliography" sections or "Work cited" sections are for. Take a look at another GA, like World War II (one which I helped to promote) for an example.
• I'll take a closer look at the text adn let you all know of any other issues. Good luck!

--White Shadows ^{stood on the edge} 00:35, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for the input. I will look into reciting the book I used I was unaware page numbers were needed when i first cited it. Also thanks for noting the problems on the map we will try to straighten that out asap. We appreciate all of your guys comments and time and will put our best effort into fixing everything wrong. HareJ10 (talk) 06:07, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Ok then. If you need any help with the map just ask. I can re=upload it with the correct colors if you'd like me to.--White Shadows ^{stood on the edge} 20:56, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

That would be great if you don't mind. Thanks. HareJ10 (talk) 03:41, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Review complete

While this has improved considerably over the course of the review, I'm going to have to close this as not passed at this stage. While the Good Article requirements don't require everything to be cited, they do require everything open to a reasonable challenge to be cited, and as it stands there are too many instances where it's not clear what's an accepted fact and what's the opinion of a particular academic.

Not being a "good article" does not mean this is a "bad article"; it means that it doesn't comply sufficiently with Wikipedia's policies and protocols. If at any time you think it's ready, do feel free to go to WP:GAN and renominate this. – iridescent 15:08, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Finishing touches

Hey guys just wanted to let you know I just finished up most of my section, adding references and fixing a few minor things. If anyone needs helps with any last minute things just post here and I'll see what I can do. Overall the page looks pretty good and hopefully we can get good article status. HareJ10 (talk) 21:29, 18 June 2010 (UTC)