Wikipedia:Peer review/Hong Kong/archive3

Hong Kong

Previous peer review

I've listed this article for peer review because most parts of the article have been exhaustively rewritten and rechecked over the past month and I'm looking to have it re-listed as FA.

Thanks, Horserice (talk) 01:45, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

Since this has gone so long without anyone picking up, and because it's an article about a major global city, and because I worked on the Dubai peer review, and because I've been there, I will print it out and do this. Give me a couple of days ... Daniel Case (talk) 07:12, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

Much appreciated! Cheers, Horserice (talk) 23:29, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

OK, I will be getting to doing light copyediting now ... sorry the stuff I was doing took longer than a few days. Daniel Case (talk) 17:45, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Copyedit is done; I will post a bulleted-list—type critique later. Daniel Case (talk) 20:10, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Alright, I think I can do this now ...

Reviewing this article brought back some memories of my trip there in 2013, and coincidentally my wife was watching some Hong Kong-related video as I was doing the copyedit. I actually Learned a Few Things from this article, things that make sense once you've been there but until you read them they don't click. It makes sense that Hong Kong is the world's most vertical city; if you decide walk back down Victoria Peak to the Mid-Levels and the escalators, you appreciate that and understand why buildable land there is scarce. But to read that it has the greatest percentage of people who live above 50 m ... wow. Never would have thought about that, but it's true.

And then we got to talking about how we should go back there sometime and do some of the other things we didn't get to do during the Wikimania week. Especially if we were to go at this time of year, with less heat and less tourists.

But anyway ...

I looked over the previous discussions here, at FAC/FARC and the GA reviews. I think I can honestly say that the article as it is is better than it was during its previous tenure as an FA, better than it was when the four successive FACs failed back in 2010-11, and better than what was previously peer-reviewed. I didn't review as deeply as I might if it were an FA nominee again, but it is definitely ready to go through that process again.

Generally

It reads as if written in a consistent voice throughout. It is free of spammy insertions (a major problem with Dubai when I reviewed it here which led me to initiate a GAR that delisted it). It seems from the talk page that there has been some dispute in the past over how Chinese to describe Hong Kong and its people as being; I know it is a contentious issue but the article does not currently show any scarring from this.

- I'm glad my effort to prune a lot of the spam hasn't gone unnoticed :)

On the whole, it tells me what I would want to know and gives (mostly) the facts I would expect. No major aspect of Hong Kong that any encyclopedic article should discuss is left out.

If it has any faults, it is perhaps that it is occasionally too wordy (something I did my best to take care of during my copyedit), finding rather roundabout ways to say what it should say straightforwardly. It also seems to want to show its work, citing a lot of numbers and specific facts that it may not need to. But that's erring in a direction opposite to what one usually finds in reviews. As the top-level article on Hong Kong, it pretty much does what we want it to.

- Are there any more sections that you would consider too wordy? Definitely will try to cut down some parts if it's coming off as too verbose or lengthy to read.

It would also be good if we could perhaps distinguish "the city" from "the territory" as a stand-in for "Hong Kong". It's my understanding that the two aren't entirely synonymous. Even better, perhaps (and I tried to do this where I could) would be to cast sentences so we don't begin them as much with "Hong Kong", "the territory" or "the city".

- Yeah, you're right "city" and "territory" are different. I'll scan through later to see if anything needs to be corrected.

Specifically

• We need to find a way to shorten the intro to the usual four grafs. It strikes me that the fifth graf is a bit more disparate than the others, reading a bit more like Things Someone Wanted to Have in the Intro But Didn't Have the Time to Fully Integrate into it. Maybe it could be dismantled that way, without losing anything from the intro.

- There was a lot of info that was already there that I wasn't entirely sure I should take out. A lot of other major city articles, like New York City, tend to include stats like HDI or quite detailed info about geographical location, so I just thought that was standard and broke things up into five paragraphs.

@Horserice: Those four grafs in the NYC article (which got defeatured as well, but not because of that, I think), are pretty long. If you want me to integrate the stuff from the fifth graf back into the rest of the intro, I'd be happy to. Daniel Case (talk) 05:38, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

• The first graf goes into more specific detail about what's near Hong Kong. I think we could just stick with saying "on the eastern side of the Pearl River Delta" there; readers who wanted more detail can go down to the geography section.

- Do you think it's appropriate to combine some of the stuff about the Pearl River delta metro region with that part?

@Horserice: Yes, actually. That would make more sense there. Daniel Case (talk) 05:38, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

• Likewise the second graf goes into detail about the territorial evolution of the then-colony that is better left to the history section. Really, all we need to say there is something along the lines of "With the exception of World War II, when the territory was occupied by the Japanese, Hong Kong remained under British control until 1997, when it was returned to China"

- Agreed, condensed this part a bit.

@Horserice: Much better! Daniel Case (talk) 05:38, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

• In that history section, under "Imperial China", four grafs down we learn that exactly 1,648 of the people who were evacuated during the Great Clearance later returned. Wow! That's pretty exact information for something that happened 350 years ago.

  I would submit that the effect of the Great Clearance on Hong Kong's population at that time would be better communicated to the reader by saying something more like "Only 10% returned".

- Hah, yeah I guess such specificity doesn't matter that much to us here.

@Horserice: Daniel Case (talk) 05:38, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

• It strikes me that a nice illustration for the last graf of the "Greater China relations" subsection would be this image of the paper flag currently stapled into the passports of non-Chinese visitors, the lead image at Visa policy of Hong Kong. If we want a better quality image, or one with multiple flags or juxtaposed with a Chinese visa, well, I could scan those pages of my passport.

- Ooo, that might be useful. I went ahead and changed the graphic in that section to passports of the three Chinese jurisdictions to illustrate that point for now. Let me know if you think that works or if you think something more Hong Kong-specific works better.

@Horserice: I sort of like the flag image ... it makes the point. But then in my passport, I can juxtapose the Hong Kong entry flag with corresponding PRC Shenzhen Luohu entry/exit stamps on the facing pages. Daniel Case (talk) 05:38, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

@Daniel Case: Can you upload that an image of that? Horserice (talk) 00:41, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

• Under "sociopolitical issues and human rights", the second graf ends with a discussion of the Causeway Bay Books disappearances. However, it does not mention that they returned, as that article says.

- Noted, will fix.

@Horserice: OK. Daniel Case (talk) 05:38, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

• In the next graf, discussing increasing pressures on the media, I wondered as I read if there's a significant opposing or contrasting view on this. If there is, we should probably acknowledge it.

- I'm honestly not sure where I could find an opposing view on this outside of Chinese state media. Wouldn't seem to be an appropriate source for a counter to that.

@Horserice: Thought I'd ask. Daniel Case (talk) 05:38, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

• In the last graf under "Military", there's a sentence plopped in the middle about how the territory's defenses were handled under the British. This comes from out of nowhere and seems apropos of nothing. Perhaps this should have been put in another section, or better contextualized?

- It's one of those bits of info that I wasn't sure if I should omit. Maybe it fits better in the subsection on the handover? Something like "The British Forces Overseas Hong Kong vacated the territory prior to the handover..." to at least preserve some detail on it in the article.

@Horserice: That sounds like a better way to say it, yes. Daniel Case (talk) 05:38, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

• Under "Climate", we first get the record high and low for the Hong Kong Observatory, then records for the entire territory. Is there some reason for doing it this way? Are the observatory readings how most Hongkongers experience the climate, i.e. in Kowloon and Central? Or are they more accurate than the other extremes. Either we have just the hottest and coldest temperatures ever, anywhere in Hong Kong, or we explain this.

- I have no idea. For whatever reason, that seems to be a regular place where temperatures are measured. I know that TVB weather reports will sometimes make a point of saying "this was the lowest temp recorded at the HK Observatory." At the very least and if there's no other reason why that location is significant, there's consistent records for temperatures at that location dating back to the 19th century and the most data exists to compare to.

@Horserice: In retrospect, I see the point. Daniel Case (talk) 05:38, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

• At the beginning of "Demographics", we learn what the Census and Statistics Department estimated the population at about eight months ago (as of this writing). But when was the last actual count, i.e., when was the last census taken? Are they taken regularly like the U.S. and Canadian censuses? It seems from the accompanying table that there was an actual census in 2011, and we really should put that inline.

- I thought it was more prudent to have the most recent estimation in that line rather than the census since we're closer to 2021 than 2011. But yeah, censuses are more accurate counts. How would you integrate 2011 census data into that section?

@Horserice: Hmm ... seems it's much easier to get to the 2017 estimate rather than the 2011 count. If we can find that, stated as one number, we should get that. Other than that the table will have to do. Daniel Case (talk) 05:38, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

• In the last graf of the Economy section, it is stated that Hong Kong is the 14th most popular tourist destination in (I presume) the world. That information seems to come from 2016. Is this still so and are there numbers from the same source for 2017?

- I will try to look for more recent info on tourism.

@Horserice: OK, good. Daniel Case (talk) 05:38, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

@Daniel Case: Doesn't appear that WTO stats for tourism have come out for 2017 yet, and I'm hesitant to find a less authoritative source for that part. Horserice (talk) 00:53, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

• In transportation, under "Ferries", the first of two largely unrelated sentences that comprise the last graf tells us that Hong Kong is "famous for the junk ships that traverse the harbour". I know it was, (certainly you can see this in Enter the Dragon) and I do say was, because in 2013 I saw maybe one of them in the harbor, and it was my understanding that that was sort of a token thing for all the tourists who thought they'd see the harbor clogged with these boats, because the living conditions on them were sort of an embarrassment to the British and well before handover they got all the people living on these boats off them, on land and into proper housing projects way the hell out in the New Territories or on Lantau.

  Maybe we should update this statement to reflect this, if that's what happened?

- I'm okay with taking that out and putting it in the Culture section and elaborating on it there. Definitely not a significant mode of transport anymore.

@Horserice: OK, good. Daniel Case (talk) 05:38, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

• By the same token, the other sentence tells us that "The Port of Hong Kong is a busy deepwater port, specialising in container shipping." Uh ... OK ... didn't we just read about that in more detail up in the economy section? This reads like one of those artifacts from an earlier version of the article, or something someone trying to be helpful who didn't have time or inclination to read the whole article decided that they'd, y'know, stick this into the article somewhere.

- Okay, let's omit that.

@Horserice: Lookin' better! Daniel Case (talk) 05:38, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

OK ... that's what I got. Happy editing! Daniel Case (talk) 07:05, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

@Daniel Case: First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to go through this article. I know it's a lot, and I appreciate all of your feedback. Definitely try to go back during the early spring, late fall, or wintertime! Winter can be a bit cold, but if you're normally situated anywhere in the northern US/Canada, it should feel like pretty nice weather.

Alright, I'm going to try to address everything in sequence: Horserice (talk) 23:24, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

@Horserice: Do you think you could put your responses under the points you're responding to? Thanks. Daniel Case (talk) 03:28, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

@Daniel Case: Done! Horserice (talk) 05:17, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

@Daniel Case: Promoting article to FAC, so closing discussion here. Feel free to add new comments over there, and thank you for your comments so far. They've been very helpful, and I'm looking forward to more of your feedback. Horserice (talk) 01:25, 6 March 2018 (UTC)