Talk:Zhou Houkun

Zhou Houkun has been listed as one of the Engineering and technology good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Review: January 12, 2025. (Reviewed version).

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A fact from Zhou Houkun appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 30 November 2024 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Zhou Houkun wrote a thesis on the use of bamboo to reinforce concrete?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2024/November. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Zhou Houkun.

Wikipedia

Did you know nomination

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 AirshipJungleman29 talk 16:07, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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Comment or view
Article history

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Zhou in 1914

... that Zhou Houkun (pictured) wrote a thesis on the use of bamboo to reinforce concrete?

Source: [1]

Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Harriette Cooke

Created by Kimikel (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 21 past nominations.

Kimikel (talk) 00:15, 28 October 2024 (UTC).[reply]

Verified that the article is long enough, that there are no plagiarism concerns through the Copyvios tool and spotchecking, and that the hook is sourced in the article. Cunard (talk) 05:32, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review

Passed. —Kusma (talk) 20:31, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

This review is transcluded from Talk:Zhou Houkun/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Kimikel (talk · contribs) 01:34, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: Kusma (talk · contribs) 17:34, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Content and prose review

I will comment on anything I notice, but not all of my comments will be strictly related to the GA criteria, so not everything needs to be actioned. Feel free to push back if you think I am asking too much, and please tell me when I am wrong.

Lead: reminder to self to comment on completeness / coverage later.
Name: The Chinese Wikipedia says that his courtesy name was 朋西 (Péngxī)

I think that's true, but I can't find any source that confirms that. Kimikel (talk) 15:29, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

he worked as an engineer for various Chinese companies, the chief editor of the Journal of The Chinese Engineering Society, and the vice president of Shanghai Industrial Junior College better to repeat "as" here for clarity.

Done Kimikel (talk) 04:36, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

its communist revolution this is piped to the Chinese Civil War, which is not optimal.

Done Kimikel (talk) 04:36, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Early life: bringing silkworm farming to Jiangsu source says he brought it to "the region", which isn't quite the same as the entire province. Would it be enough to say that his grandfather became wealthy by silkworm farming?

Done Kimikel (talk) 15:29, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldn't linking to Imperial examination make more sense than Confucianism?

Done Kimikel (talk) 15:29, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Nanyang college could be linked as Nanyang College [zh]. Tangshan Railway and Mining College should be piped to Southwest Jiaotong University.

Done Kimikel (talk) 04:36, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The section is very short; a possible (but certainly not mandatory) restructuring would be to merge with the first part of the next section to "Early life and education" (strictly speaking, studying isn't a career...)

Done Kimikel (talk) 04:36, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Career: Zhou was selected as an Indemnity Scholar do we know by whom? And do we know whether he spoke English already?

Have not found anything on this. Kimikel (talk) 15:29, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

BTW some interesting people were selected in the same year, for example Zhao Yuanren. I don't know whether they ever met, but Zhou and Zhao would certainly have had something to talk about :)
the first such degree awarded in the field Does this mean that MIT was the first university to award such degrees or that Zhou was the first recipient of an aeronautical engineering degree worldwide? (I will need to check sources carefully as these are both fairly strong claims)
- Actually seems he was the first person to receive a degree in aeronautical engineering overall. OK.
Chinese typewriter: I can't see any links to Chinese typewriter in this section, but I would expect one. There seems to be more content here, so perhaps a {{main|Chinese typewriter}} is not needed.

Added Kimikel (talk) 15:29, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

More precisely, it seems the sort order was Kangxi radical + stroke count? (a popular sort order used in many dictionaries and even in Unicode).

Added Kimikel (talk) 15:29, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Qi Xuan do we know his name in characters?

Added, as well as for the other Chinese names in the article Kimikel (talk) 15:29, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Return to China: the Chinese typewriter article mentions a Commercial Press employee called Shu Changyu (舒昌鈺), while the zhwiki article on Zhou mentions a Shu Zhendong (舒震東); were both of these people involved?

Both the same guy; Changyu was his real name, but he is more often to referred to by his pen name Zhendong. Kimikel (talk) 15:29, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Your ref 2 mentions him in 1959 so he was probably still alive?

Added Kimikel (talk) 15:29, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Source spotchecks

Numbering from Special:PermanentLink/1260410089

1 and 2: would be nice to have an author for these pages. An educated guess is Emma Teng (see her website [2]).
1f: ok
1l: not sure the question mark is enough for an explicit "is unknown"; just neither you nor the author of 1 knows it...

IAW MOS:CIRCA I've changed it to "after 1959" since that's the last 100% certain year of his life. Kimikel (talk) 15:29, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

1a/2a: I don't think these two sources are independent of each other, so giving both doesn't really help... and there are other opinions on the year of birth like 1889? here. Primary sources on ancestry.com (passenger lists from 1910) list him as 20 years old, which points to 1889/1890 using Western age counting and 1891 using Chinese age counting.

To reflect the multiple different birth years given, I listed it as c. 1890 and clarified that he was born 1889-1891 in the body. Kimikel (talk) 15:29, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

2c: ok
4: ok. and indeed Zhao Yuanren was on his boat so I am happy now :) (big fan of the guy). The book hedges the "first aeronautics degree" a bit to "first aeronautics degree in the US".

Changed that last part Kimikel (talk) 04:36, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

9b: ok
10: couldn't fully access but looks plausible
22b: ok
26b: ok
31: ok
35b: ok

Spot checks clear.

General comments and GA criteria

Prose: some points see above.
MoS: No major issues.
Referencing is ok, minor comments see above. Not certain about year of birth.
Broadness/focus: information about his life from the 1930s onwards is very scarce, but that seems to be the same as in the sources. zhwiki has slightly more on the 1930s but the source link is permanently dead and I couldn't reproduce anything.
No other major article issues.
Images are PD and captions are OK.

A nice article, a few minor things to do but should not take long. @Kimikel, over to you. —Kusma (talk) 23:22, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for the review. I've done a few quick changes; I'll get to the rest tomorrow. Kimikel (talk) 04:36, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Kusma: I have addressed all of your comments. I implemented most of the changes you suggested; where I didn't, I left a comment. Thank you again for the review and please let me know what else you need from my end. Kimikel (talk) 15:29, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Happy with these changes that address my concerns. —Kusma (talk) 20:30, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Good Article review progress box

Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV ()

3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant ()

Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.