GA Review
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.
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Nominator: Chickenpox4dinner (talk · contribs) 22:06, 30 September 2025 (UTC)
Reviewer: Reconrabbit (talk · contribs) 16:44, 16 October 2025 (UTC)
Hi, I'd like to review this article against the Good Article criteria. Since this is your first nomination (as far as I can tell) please ask if there's anything unclear in my review and I'll be happy to clarify -- Reconrabbit 16:44, 16 October 2025 (UTC)
- Thank you so much for reviewing the article, I appreciate the time and effort! Your notes are very even-handed, I will work to address all concerns as soon as possible.
- I would like to take you up on formatting the journal links - using the Wikipedia Library links was an oversight I've since stopped doing, and I'll defer to your expertise for cleaning those up best.
- I have one clarifying question: for the fail re:Broadness, is the issue the underusage of Cite #14, or the lack of a definition section? To the former, I mainly wanted to avoid WP:WORLDVIEW issues by overly focusing on American industry -- is this a reasonable excuse of under-utilizing the source?
- Thank you again! chickenpox4dinner (talk) 18:18, 16 October 2025 (UTC)
- That makes sense. I'm also not finding much about the "1760 Holland pulp engine" described in that book... I just note that it seems if the British rag paper industry is described, so should the American one and others, at least in passing - that campaigns urging women to save their rags were undertaken elsewhere, including in the United States... that in the 18th century, the demand for rag paper in Portugal and its overseas colonies was met by importing from Italy and Holland, despite paper mills being built in Leiria and Minas Gerais (link)? The scope could be broadened is what I mean there, mainly. -- Reconrabbit 20:29, 16 October 2025 (UTC)
- Alright, here are my improvements:
- I added the National Archives of Brazil cite you provided to flesh out early modern history;
- I used former Cite #14 to flesh out more of the worldwide history leading up to the pulpwood paper transition;
- I fleshed out the lead section with a summary of the history and more about the characteristics of modern rag paper;
- Made suggested sentence prose change;
- The prior changes should have helped address scope, but I also added a reference about the Ottoman paper industry collapse re: European paper export dominance, as well as some more about Muslim religious concerns about Christian paper
- I replaced the blurry Holyoke image with a multiimage of an industrial rag boiler & rag beater.
- I believe this addresses your notes such far, looking forward to hearing back! chickenpox4dinner (talk) 19:50, 17 October 2025 (UTC)
Prose
- I notice that the introduction is very short. "Widely used... for the past two millenia" is fine, but expand on the paper's invention, when it became more popular, and how it is made then and now.
- Amalfi paper was an increasingly relevant Italian rag paper by the early 13th century, marked by Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor banning its use for court documents This could be clarified by splitting into two sentences
- Copyright: I could not find anything so far. Excellent use of summary style for these wordy sources
References
- Layout: Technically no issues, but some of the references being formatted with {{cite journal}} and others being in plain text leads to inconsistency. While I can read some of the Wikipedia library links, not all of our readers will be able to. I don't mind reformatting these for you.
Spot checking
Reviewing ~10 sources, since this is a short article. Numbering is based on this revision.
- [1] Can't access, skipping
- [2]
Y - [3] Y though it is worthwhile to note Cai Lun did not "invent paper" wholesale, rather that rag paper was an improvement on existing formulas, as this source also notes
- [5] Y
- [7] Y on Jewish involvement
- [8] Can't access, skipping
- [11] Y a good summary of the state of rags in the Victorian economy, though it doesn't include the manufacturing process described in [14] (thus could be placed at the end of the sentence ...in turn make rag paper for sale back to city centers). The washing process may be accurate but is presented more as metaphor.
- [12] Y
- [13] Y on generalizations that are otherwise covered by [12].
- [14] Supports the text, but could be used much more extensively as described below in the "broad" criteria. Y
Scope
- Broad: The article lacks information on the American rag paper industry which is described extensively in [14]. Otherwise, it is presented in a good summary style.
- Narrow: The details on the early and modern history of rag paper is included, but a section on the rag paper's general properties could be included as well - is the definition of rag paper so broad as to not have a simple definition? Could note the invention of the Dutch pulp engine in 1760 from [14], which improved processing. This article from Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/s40494-022-00714-5 gives a definition as "Rag paper is a high-quality paper made from cotton (originally from cotton rags and nowadays from cotton linters) characterised, on average, by pH = 6.4 and degree of polymerization (DP) = 1481.2" and also notes that they are most susceptible to deterioration due to cellulose hydrolysis in the summer and autumn.
- I noted a few places where you can add more context from the sources already in the article.
Stability
- Neutrality: An unbiased account of the history and production of rag paper. Y
- Edit warring: Nominator is the only major contributor to this article, which has received no disruption otherwise. Y
Images
- Free/Fair use: Images are public domain or appropriately free-use licensed. Y
- Relevance: All images are relevant to the sections where they appear, except maybe the Holyoke, Mass. image, which is hard to discern details in relative to the other pictures.
Good Article review progress box
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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.