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Template:Did you know nominations/Kang Shi'en

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The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Jolly Ω Janner 06:57, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Kang Shi'en

[edit]
  • ... that Vice Premier Kang Shi'en, China's "energy czar", was officially reprimanded after an oil rig accident that killed 72 people?

Created by Zanhe (talk). Self-nominated at 04:29, 14 January 2016 (UTC).

  • I'll do a full review in a sec but one thing to deal with first is that the current hook is rather bland. On its face, there's nothing unusual about the relevant minister receiving a reprimand over a failure in his department. If you want to leave dates out to trick people into thinking this may have just happened, it's still more interesting to know that the punishment was an "unprecedented" "demerit of the 1st grade". Personally, I think it's more interesting to know that there was an "Oil Clique" jockeying for power after the fall of Mao. Can't get on my VPN at the moment to check your sources, but the most interesting thing is that this demerit was likely overstated explicitly to knock him out in favor of 'Savior-of-Tiananmen' Li Peng. Does anyone mention whether Hua Guofeng, Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yun, &c. was behind using this excuse to take him out and why they thought it necessary? It may not be the most mysterious hook but it'd be the most interesting fact about the guy's career in retrospect. — LlywelynII 03:01, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

    Hmm... the part about his having been purged during the Cultural Revolution for prioritizing production and expertise instead of ideological purity in oil production is also interesting. I assume it's supported by the cite in the following sentence? — LlywelynII 03:23, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
  • As for the rest of the review: New enough at time of submission; long enough (~5200 elig. chars.); the narrative of his career may have issues (Chinese politics is hardly ever neutrally recounted) but it's neutrally phrased and well-referenced, including non-Chinese sources, so any issues can be dealt with down the road; some minor grammatical and formatting issues (fixt); no copyvio per Earwig; QPQ done. Just needs a slightly better hook. — LlywelynII 03:23, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
  • @LlywelynII: Thanks for your review. The sources make it pretty clear that his punishment was a direct result of the fatal accident, and there's no mention of any ulterior motive. How about:
ALT1 ... that Vice Premier Kang Shi'en, China's "energy czar", received an unprecedented demerit of the first grade after an oil rig accident that killed 72 people?
-Zanhe (talk) 03:25, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Yeah, that's better. ALT1 is supported, terse enough (155 chars.), and G2G. — LlywelynII 03:29, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
  • @Zanhe: What is a demerit of the first grade? It seems such an obscure term that the hook offer nothing of interest. Jolly Ω Janner 05:45, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
  • @Jolly Janner: It's an (apparently serious) grade of reprimand. I originally used "reprimand", but changed it to "demerit of the first grade" per LlywelynII's suggestion above. Now you think demerit is too obscure. It's hard to please everybody. I personally don't care either way. -Zanhe (talk) 05:51, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
  • I like that you have noted it is unprecedented, but don't like the obscure detail of the type of reprimand. Maybe you could reword the hook based on these two comments? Jolly Ω Janner 06:09, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
  • It is hard to please everybody and you don't have to. This entry is already reviewed and noted as good to go, and Jolly's personal opinion is neither here nor there unless there's a substantive policy issue I missed somewhere. People's curiosity as to what that kind of demerit might be just makes it a better hook. (Though, of course, if there is an article on Chinese demerits it should be linked from the page. You don't have to write an entirely new page just for the purpose of this DYK, though.) — LlywelynII 13:39, 11 February 2016 (UTC)