Talk:Manchurian plague

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 The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 02:52, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

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Plague workers wearing personal protective equipment

• ... that the Manchurian plague of 1910–1911 set a precedence for widespread use of cloth face masks and quarantine to contain the spread of disease, especially in epidemics and pandemics? Source: Plague Masks: The Visual Emergence of Anti-Epidemic Personal Protection Equipment

Created by Caorongjin (talk) and Bangalamania (talk). Nominated by Caorongjin (talk) at 08:43, 25 April 2020 (UTC).

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: - Offline/paywalled citation accepted in good faith Interesting:

Image: Image is freely licensed, used in the article, and clear at 100px.
Freely licensed: Used in article: Clear at 100px:

QPQ: None required.

Overall: I would suggest removing the extra links in your hook so only " Manchurian plague" is linked. You want people to click on your article and not any of the others. Image is OK after a crop. buidhe 19:13, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

• Comment: Thanks! I have removed most of the extra links. Caorongjin (talk) 10:08, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

• Hi, I came by to promote this. As we've run quite a few "cloth face masks" hooks lately, I'm wondering what you think of this alt:
• ALT1: ... that the origins of the modern hazmat suit can be traced to the first use of personal protective equipment (plague workers pictured) during the Manchurian plague of 1910–1911? Yoninah (talk) 11:46, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

• Hi @Yoninah: That makes sense. Although, I wonder if it would be better to foreground the plague (and use fewer wikilinks). Not sure which is found to render more clicks! So:
• ALT2: ... that the Manchurian plague of 1910–1911 set a precedence for widespread use of personal protective equipment such as the modern hazmat suit (plague workers pictured)? --Caorongjin (talk) 12:56, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, but I'm trying to catch readers' attention with the well-known hazmat suit and leading them to the Manchurian plague. Your wording set a precedence (should be "precedent") is also a little wordy. My hook doesn't need so many links:

• ALT1a: ... that the origins of the modern hazmat suit can be traced to the first use of personal protective equipment during the Manchurian plague of 1910–1911 (plague workers pictured)? Yoninah (talk) 13:18, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

• @Yoninah: Thanks for that. That's fine. Though, I would be cautious not to name it the first use of PPE, given that it can be understood in a generic sense. Also, would not PPE be sufficient as opposed to "personal protective equipment"? Perhaps:

• ALT1b: ... that the origins of the modern hazmat suit can be traced to the use of PPE during the Manchurian plague of 1910–1911 (plague workers pictured)? --Caorongjin (talk) 18:40, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

• That's fine, though we should link PPE. @Buidhe: could you take a look at ALT1b please? Yoninah (talk) 19:20, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

• ALT1b per previous review. Thanks for the suggestion, Yoninah! buidhe 19:30, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Great Article

Wow, more little known history coming to light in Wikipedia. Kudos to whoever set this up. I wish there was more information, especially on how the plague was transmitted, symptoms and timeline of the sickness. And the human stories, which are lightly brushed in the article. Thanks!! 2001:569:BDC1:EB00:6028:BC3A:A714:AB71 (talk) 01:46, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

GA Review

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

Reviewer: David Eppstein (talk · contribs) 02:39, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

This is a very short article, well-cited for its length, but I think too short to cover its subject adequately. In particular, there is nothing about the timing and geographic distribution of this plague beyond the brief "in Manchuria in 1910–1911". In what dates and what places in Manchuria did it begin, spread, and eventually end? Maps would help. Did it spread through infected animals, through fleas, through contaminated breath from other infected people? How did it spread beyond Manchuria? How do the numbers of infected and dead people relate to the total populations of the infected area? What was the age distribution of the victims?

Additionally, at least a paragraph worth of context of what kind of plague this is would be helpful, as would at least another paragraph worth of context on what living conditions and health care in Manchuria were like at that time. "Bacterial pneumonia" is very vague. Was this Yersinia pestis, specifically, as the link in the lead suggests?

Were cloth face-masks the only protective equipment used in this outbreak, or is there more to it than that in order to justify the "credited for the origins of the modern hazmat suit" claims? A hazmat suit is very far from a face mask. One of the photos in the article suggests that much more than masks were used but there is no textual support in the article for this.

Two of the sources are entire books written on this specific topic. If there's enough material to write a book on it, surely there's enough to expand this article to more than seven paragraphs. In short, I think this article could easily be twice as long as its current length without running afoul of WP:GACR #3b. I think that it requires significant expansion before being ready for GA, that the required expansion would be so significant that it would make it into effectively a totally different article than the nominated one, and that this is very far from meeting GACR #3a, "it addresses the main aspects of the topic". Therefore, I think the best outcome for now is a quick fail, WP:GAFAIL #1.

On a superficial reading, though, the article looks ok with regard to the other Good Article criteria, well sourced and well written, so I think this is a good start and could be renominated after an appropriate expansion.

—David Eppstein (talk) 02:39, 7 March 2022 (UTC)