Wikipedia:Featured article review/Black pepper/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was removed by Joelr31 15:34, 23 March 2009 [1].

Black pepper[edit]

Review commentary[edit]

Notified: WP:India, WP:Food and Drink, WP:Plants, WP:Agriculture
  1. Largely unreferenced (factually accurate; FA criteria 1C)
  2. A few {{fact}} spread about the article (consistent citations; FA criteria 2C) Fixed
  3. The world trade section needs to be updated

For the most part, the article is fine in terms of prose and lede. However, nearly all of it is unreferenced, which is the main problem. Entire paragraphs lack referencing. WhiteArcticWolf (talk) 22:04, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep as FA - I cited all of the {{fact}} tags, so #2 is now invalid. I also added some reference I encountered from various books and governmental agencies to help bolster many of the uncited sections. I'll work on it some more. --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 23:39, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Good job so far! I do believe the article is near completely accurate and well-written - as long as the proper referencing is added, it will do fine. However, another problem seems to be that many paragraphs are supported by only one reference. Luckily, that's easily fixable as well. WhiteArcticWolf (talk) 00:11, 30 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I updated the World trade section with some numbers from June 2007-May 2008 as well as changing the production numbers to percentages instead of tonnage. That takes care of #3. --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 00:13, 30 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep as FA and Thanks for all the good work in tracking down references. If I get some time I'll try to expand on the botany a bit. Kingdon (talk) 14:07, 31 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Changing to Remove - the article has improved a great deal especially in sourcing, but it has enough rough edges that it really needs further improvements if it is to remain featured. Kingdon (talk) 15:22, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for working so hard! The article is looking much better than it did before. There are still some things to be fixed, but overall, the entire quality of the article has increased. I'm confident that this article will be well-restored by the end of the FAR. WhiteArcticWolf (talk) 16:25, 31 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • The section on World trade says: As of 2008, Vietnam is the world's largest producer and exporter of pepper, producing 34% of the worlds piper longum crop as of 2008. Apart from the obvious redundancy, I'm puzzled by the "piper longum" reference. I'm also unsure which source supports this. Guettarda (talk) 15:57, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • "piper longum" is the scientific name for pepper, since they are synonyms they are interchangeable. --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 19:09, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • The article says otherwise, distinguishing between P. nigrum and P. longum, and speaks about the confusion between black pepper and long pepper, Piper longum. Guettarda (talk) 19:44, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep as FA. Looks good now. Guettarda (talk) 14:18, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
As of now, the problem I have is large sections of unreferenced material, or paragraphs relying on one reference. I'll go through and find them, but for now, here are a few:
  • The ancient history of black pepper is often interlinked with (and confused with) that of long pepper, the dried fruit of closely related Piper longum. The Romans knew of both and often referred to either as just "piper". In fact, it was not until the discovery of the New World and of chile peppers that the popularity of long pepper entirely declined. Chile peppers, some of which when dried are similar in shape and taste to long pepper, were easier to grow in a variety of locations more convenient to Europe.
  • Pepper (both long and black) was known in Greece at least as early as the 4th century BC, though it was probably an uncommon and expensive item that only the very rich could afford. Trade routes of the time were by land, or in ships which hugged the coastlines of the Arabian Sea. Long pepper, growing in the north-western part of India, was more accessible than the black pepper from further south; this trade advantage, plus long pepper's greater spiciness, probably made black pepper less popular at the time.
  • By the time of the early Roman Empire, especially after Rome's conquest of Egypt in 30 BC, open-ocean crossing of the Arabian Sea directly to southern India's Malabar Coast was near routine. Details of this trading across the Indian Ocean have been passed down in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. According to the Roman geographer Strabo, the early Empire sent a fleet of around 120 ships on an annual one-year trip to India and back. The fleet timed its travel across the Arabian Sea to take advantage of the predictable monsoon winds. Returning from India, the ships travelled up the Red Sea, from where the cargo was carried overland or via the Nile Canal to the Nile River, barged to Alexandria, and shipped from there to Italy and Rome. The rough geographical outlines of this same trade route would dominate the pepper trade into Europe for a millennium and a half to come.
  • Its exorbitant price during the Middle Ages — and the monopoly on the trade held by Italy — was one of the inducements which led the Portuguese to seek a sea route to India. In 1498, Vasco da Gama became the first European to reach India by sea; asked by Arabs in Calicut (who spoke Spanish and Italian) why they had come, his representative replied, "we seek Christians and spices." Though this first trip to India by way of the southern tip of Africa was only a modest success, the Portuguese quickly returned in greater numbers and used their superior naval firepower to eventually gain complete control of trade on the Arabian sea. It was given additional legitimacy (at least from a European perspective) by the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, which granted Portugal exclusive rights to the half of the world where black pepper originated.
  • The Portuguese proved unable to maintain their stranglehold on the spice trade for long. The old Arab and Venetian trade networks successfully smuggled enormous quantities of spices through the patchy Portuguese blockade, and pepper once again flowed through Alexandria and Italy, as well as around Africa. In the 17th century, the Portuguese lost almost all of their valuable Indian Ocean possessions to the Dutch and the English. The pepper ports of Malabar fell to the Dutch in the period 1661–1663.
Once these are fixed, I'll go through the article and find the remaining unreferenced material. WhiteArcticWolf (talk) 22:38, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Commment "Pepper as medicine" is a weak spot. It ends with four one-sentence paragraphs which don't have all that much in common. It goes from describing pepper as medicine to mentioning results of modern studies about the effects on the human body. The latter is not actually pepper as medicine as far as I can tell. Peter Isotalo 07:16, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Peter, has this issue been addressed? Do you feel the article can be kept without FARC? Joelito (talk) 15:36, 17 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It's been copyedited slightly, but it still looks like a straggler statement. I think the problem is that "Pepper as medicine" mixes info about cultural beliefs with modern medical science, which really are quite separate issues. I think a separate section on proven physiological effects would work better.
Peter Isotalo 19:24, 17 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This article is quite incomplete wrt to black pepper's physiological properties. I suggest using PMID 17987447—a recent review. (a search for "black pepper" in pubmed returned 8 reviews, and 13 more reviews can be found for piperine). At the very least, since piperine is an important component, that stub-class article should be better summarized in the article on black pepper. Also, I agree with the previous comment that historical medical uses could be separated from scientifically proven ones. Xasodfuih (talk) 03:35, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Suggested FA criteria is comprehensiveness. Joelito (talk) 00:47, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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