Talk:Agnes Chow/GA1

GA review

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Nominator: Jishara (talk · contribs) 20:57, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Reviewer: Grnrchst (talk · contribs) 10:12, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

I'll be taking this on for review as part of the Developing Countries WikiContest and in fulfilment of my pledge for the review at Talk:Dora Brilliant/GA1. --Grnrchst (talk) 10:12, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

Comments

• Having contributed 4.9% of the article, the nominator is ranked fifth in authorship, behind even the InternetArchiveBot. This only barely passes the standards for significant contributions to not be considered a drive-by nomination, so I will go ahead with reviewing the article. However, I should note that I do not think the nominator has taken adequate steps in preparation of the article to check it against GA criteria for prose, verifiability or broadness.
• It stands out to me that all of the cited sources are contemporary news articles, there's no use of broader-scope scholarly sources.

Personal life

• Her date and place of birth should be provided in the article body, not just in the lead and infobox, per the Manual of Style on lead sections.
• Spotcheck: [10] Not exactly, the article says she described her household as apolitical, not necessarily her upbringing.
• "thousands of young people agitating for change" Context? "Change" is rather vague.
• Spotcheck: [11] Verified.
• Suggest linking to Diocese of Hong Kong.
• "her Catholic upbringing had an influence on her participation in social movements" How?
• Spotcheck: [12] Verified.
• "In 2014, Chow attended" She attended it for a few years, not just in 2014; either change "attended" to "enrolled in" or change "In 2014" to "From 2014".
• Spotcheck: [13] Verified.
• Spotcheck: [14] Verified.
• Authors should be credited in the JAPAN Forward citation.
• The TV Tokyo citation could do with a title translation, publication date and a clearer publication name.
• Tokyo Voice citation could do with a title translation and should credit the author.
• Frontline citation should credit the author and provide a publication date.
• The Stand News citation should provide a title translation and credit the publication.
• Dateline citation should credit the author and provide a publication date.
• "Chow launched a YouTube channel, where she uploaded vlogging videos in both Cantonese and Japanese" What are these videos about?
• Is there a more up to date secondary source we could be citing for her channel's subscriber numbers? Is there no more interesting information about her channel than an outdated subscriber count?
• For the sake of maintaining chronology, consider integrating parts of this section into the other sections; this might help better contextualise some of this information, like, for example, the Japanese media nicknaming her the "Goddess of Democracy".

Early activism

• The Irish Times citation should include a publication date.
• France 24 citation should credit the author.
• Spotcheck: [20][21] Only the France 24 source mentions Scholarism and neither appear to mention her attending the Holy Family Canossian College; the rest is verified.
• Varsity citation should credit the authors.
• Spotcheck: [22] Cited source doesn't appear to specify the date this happened, it only says "more than a year ago".
• OZY citation should credit the author.
• Spotcheck: [24] Cited source doesn't mention Chow leading the "class boycott campaign"; it says she led the first major protest of the Umbrella movement on 13 September.
• Hong Kong Free Press (2015) citation should credit the author and provide an access-date.
• Spotcheck: [13] Verified.
• "continued to be involved in the movement behind the scenes" This should be in quotation marks, as it's a direct quote of what Chow said.
• What was she doing in 2015, during the time when she had stepped back from politics?

Demosistō

• Spotcheck: [26] Cited source never mentions the date of the party's founding, never says who founded it, never mentions Nathan Law, and doesn't mention Chow's term as deputy secretary general lasting from 2016 to 2017.
• Time citation should credit the author and provide a publication date.
• Spotcheck: [27] Cited source never mentions Chow campaigning with Law for the Legislative Council.
• CNBC citation should credit the author.
• Spotcheck: [28] Technically this protest was ahead of Xi's visit, not during it.
• This lack of chronological order is really starting to mess with the flow of the article, as this second paragraph talks about the dissolution of Demosisto in 2020 right before a section about Chow's Legislative council bid two years earlier.
• Spotcheck: [29] Verified.
• Hong Kong Free Press citation should credit its authors.
• The Japan Times uses a generic name in its author field, this should be removed.
• Spotcheck: [30][31] Verified.

Legislative Council bid

• HK01 citation should include a title translation and should credit the article's author.
• "she gave up her British nationality" "renounced" would be the more proper term.
• Spotcheck: [33] Verified.
• ""cannot possibly comply with the requirements of the relevant electoral laws, since advocating or promoting 'self-determination' is contrary to the content of the declaration that the law requires a candidate to make to uphold the Basic Law and pledge allegiance to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region."" This is quite the long quote. Can we trim it down to its bare essentials? Or summarise what is being said?
• Spotcheck: [34][14] Verified.
• "Had Chow been elected, she would have been Hong Kong's youngest-ever lawmaker, ahead of Law" And had my grandmother had wheels, she would have been a bicycle. She wasn't elected, so this hypothetical third conditional statement just reads like alternate history trivia to me.
• HK CitizenNews citation should credit the author and provide a title translation.
• Again, can we trim down and/or summarise this quote from Lam?
• HKFP citation should credit the author.
• Time citation should credit the author.
• Spotcheck: [37][38] Verified.
• "On 2 September 2019, Chow succeeded in her appeal" This is the first time we're mentioning an appeal. When did she submit this appeal?
• Radio Free Asia citation should credit the author and provide a publication date.
• HKFP citaiton should credit the author.
• Spotcheck: [41][42] Verified.
• This section focuses a lot on the reactions of other people and institutions to her run, rather than what Chow herself was doing and saying during this time. It seems to me that we could be balancing this section a bit with her own perspective on the situation. What platform was she running on during the election? How did she feel about being barred from running? Did she have any response to what the commission and chief executive had to say?

Police headquarters assembly case

• "for allegedly participating in, and inciting, an unauthorised assembly at Wan Chai Hong Kong Police Headquarters on 21 June 2019" Did she? It seems like this allegation should be pretty easy to verify. Also, who/what is alleging this?
• Did this have anything to do with the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests against the extradition bill? Was she involved in these protests? What did she think about them?
• Taiwan News citation should credit the author.
• Spotcheck: [45] Verified.
• Amnesty International citation should include the organisation's full name, in place of the website domain.
• Spotcheck: [46][47] Verified.
• Did Chow give any statement about her arrest and those of her fellow activists?
• There's nearly a year between her arrest and her pleading guilty to the charges. What happened during this long stretch of time? What was she doing during these 11 months?
• Spotcheck: [48] I'm not seeing anything about Chow "stat[ing] to the media that she was mentally prepared to be sentenced to imprisonment".
• Spotcheck: [49] Verified.
• "Agnes Chow, Ivan Lam and Joshua Wong were put in custody until a trial scheduled on 2 December 2020" Wait, I thought she had already been tried and convicted months earlier? Now she's on trial again?
• There are several short and single-sentence paragraphs in this section, which per the Manual of Style on paragraphs, inhibits the flow of the text; these short paragraphs should be merged together for better readability.
• "they pleaded guilty regarding events during the June 2019 demonstration at the Hong Kong police headquarters So she did participate in the demonstration. So why did we say "allegedly" earlier?
• "She was remanded at Tai Lam Centre for Women in Tuen Mun until the trial" Until what trial?? There's apparently been two already!!
• "On 2 December 2020, Agnes Chow [...]" Yeah, this entire section needs to be rewritten. This is so poorly laid out it's hard to read.
• Spotcheck: [53][54] Verified.
• Again, it seems like Chow's place in this is being lost among the broader coverage of the process against her and her fellow activists.
• "On 12 June 2021, Chow was released from prison" Did she comment on what her time in prison was like?
• Spotcheck: [57][58] Verified.
• Why was she released early? How come she didn't serve the full 10 months?
• "dressed in black and with yellow masks" What is the significance of this outfit?
• This final citation doesn't credit the publication or include a publication date.

International responses

• There's no need to include a citation to the statement on the HoR Speaker's website, when this information is already covered by reliable secondary sources.
• The generic name in the Gov.uk citation should obviously be replaced, good grief.
• Is there no secondary source on Raab's statement?
• AP News citation should credit its author.
• Chow herself is once again getting lost among the broader coverage of the mass arrest and sentencing. Only one of these statements even mentions her by name.
• Taiwan OCAC link is dead, the url-status field in the citation should reflect that; the archive url also doesn't even link to the cited article, so this citation is basically useless.

National security case

• "Chow was arrested again on 10 August 2020" My word, we're jumping back in time again. Is this case separate from the previous one that was apparently occuring at the same time? The timeline of events here is so confusing, this article is really hard to understand, the way it's structured.
• Reuters citation should credit the author.
• The New Lens citation links to a dead link. The url-status field should be changed to reflect this.
• The Japan Times citation links to a dead link. The url-status field should be changed to reflect this.

Exile

• "On 3 December 2023" There is a gap of 2 and a half years between her release from prison and her announcement of her exile. What was she doing in all this time??
• Spotcheck: [74] Verified.
• Spotcheck: [75][76] Verified.
• Spotcheck: [77][78] Verified in The Standard but not in BBC News.
• "coerced Shenzhen tour" This is not a neutral wording. Neither of the sources describe it as "coerced".
• What was she doing during the year and a half between her exile announcement and her graduation?
• Do we have a secondary source that we could be citing instead of her youtube video?

Recognition

• Spotcheck: [80] Verified.
• Spotcheck: [81] Verified.
• The Financial Times citation needs to credit its authors and provide an access-date.
• Forbes Japan citation incorrectly identifies the publication as the Financial Times and doesn't include an access-date.
• Why is she being recognised by all these publications? What do they recognise her for?
• "She appeared in the PBS Frontline documentary Battle for Hong Kong in 2020 as herself" So what? How does this count as "recognition"? What did she do or say in the documentary?
• This section is short enough that it could be integrated into other parts of the article to better contextualise her recognition by these publications.

Lead and infobox

• Per the Manual of Style on lead sections, citations aren't necessary for the lead when information is repeated from sourced text in the article body.
• This long list of nicknames in the infobox isn't contextualised anywhere in the body of the article; only one of these nicknames is even mentioned in the prose. This list doesn't help us understand who gave her these nicknames or why. The length of the list and frequent use of the term "Goddess" also arguably messes with the neutrality.

Checklist

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it well written?

   A. The prose is clear, concise and understandable to an appropriately broad audience, and the spelling and grammar are correct:

   There were no major grammatical or spelling issues, but the prose is sometimes unclear and inconcise.

   B. It complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation:

   A few areas where it does not comply with the manual of style.

2. Is it verifiable with no original research, as shown by a source spot-check?

   A. It contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline:

   References are improperly formatted throughout, neglecting basic information about authors, publications and dates, and sometimes including generic names.

   B. Reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose):

   As far as I can tell, the sources are largely reliable, and cited inline throughout. Though I'm left wondering if more scholarly sources could be included.

   C. It contains no original research:

   Several cases where spotchecks of cited sources failed verification.

   D. It contains no copyright violations nor plagiarism:

   No plagiarism as far as I could tell from spotchecks. Earwig results only flag clearly attributed quotes.

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. It addresses the main aspects of the topic:

   There are several gaps in the biography that need filling.

   B. It stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style):

   Multiple cases where the article loses focus on Chow's biography and instead gives broader coverage of the events at large.

4. Is it neutral?

   It represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each:

   A couple minor cases where I think it verges into non-neutrality.

5. Is it stable?

   It does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute:

   No major changes since GA nomination, last revert was minor and took place last year.

6. Is it illustrated, if possible, by images?

   A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content:

   All images are properly licensed.

   B. Images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:

   All images are relevant to the subject and properly captioned.

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

   This article needs a lot of work before it will meet GA criteria, especially given this is considered a vital article. It falls short of criteria in several areas, particularly verifiability and broadness. I'd be happy to give time for these issues to be fixed, given the importance of the article, but I'm honestly not sure they can be fixed in a reasonable time frame or if the nominator is willing to put in the necessary work to do so. Frankly, given the depth of some of the issues, I wonder if I've dedicated more time to reviewing this article than the nominator had preparing it for nomination. Feel free to ping me once my comments have been addressed and/or if you have any questions. --Grnrchst (talk) 10:12, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

@Amigao and Rhapsodic: Courtesy ping to the main authors of this article, just in case they have any desire to comment on this. --Grnrchst (talk) 10:14, 7 August 2026 (UTC)