Talk:Fish maw

Fish maw is currently an Agriculture, food and drink good article nominee. Nominated by chickenpox4dinner (talk) at 01:33, 24 December 2025 (UTC) An editor has indicated a willingness to review the article in accordance with the good article criteria and will decide whether or not to list it as a good article. Comments are welcome from any editor who has not nominated or contributed significantly to this article. This review will be closed by the first reviewer. To add comments to this review, click discuss review and then edit the page. Note: I pledge that when this article gets reviewed, I will review two other articles, prioritizing old nominations to the best of my ability. Short description: Fish bladder as food

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GA review

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

Nominator: Chickenpox4dinner (talk · contribs) 01:33, 24 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 08:20, 26 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

• The main text launches straight into 'Consumption' without saying what fish maw is, so the first chapter is missing. We'd expect (as, say, for Beef tenderloin, to pick an example at random) at least some sort of 'Description', defining what the thing is, some sort of account of terms used and perhaps an etymology. I note that part of this is in 'Production' and should be moved from there.

• Suggest we use "fish maw" as the name of the item throughout, once the synonyms have been introduced in the 'Description' chapter. "Fish sounds" in 'Consumption by region' should become "Fish maws" (multiple instances).

• Please follow logical order is 'Production', then 'Consumption' (people produce a foodstuff, then other people eat it); this is common practice in food articles.

• The 1747 "cookbook" is by Hannah Glasse, who needs to be mentioned here.

• 'Industrial international trade' is an odd phrase. Suggest removing 'Industrial'.

• Trade and production aren't the same thing. Trade should not be subsumed under production. There can be massive production of a foodstuff that is purely local to a country, for example, so that trade in some products is small whereas production is large. Suggest that 'Trade' should be a top-level chapter.

• Differences in swim bladder size within a species are directly proportional to the size variation within the species, so the largest specimens caught are the most valuable. - 1) this is poorly expressed, and the final clause is a non sequitur (folks might like to eat small delicate ones, after all). I think that all that is needed here is to say that swim bladder size is proportional to fish size; and that the larger ones are more valuable.

• 'Wildlife trade' has a non-neutral ring, reinforced by comments on bycatch, minimal governmental oversight, dead fish dumping, eutrophication, and official controls. In other words, the section, ostensibly about trade regions and volumes, carries the half-stated message that fish maw trade and perhaps consumption are environmentally harmful. Wikipedia articles are required to be neutral, and must state the facts clearly. We need to separate out a plain (neutral) description of trade (so many tons were shipped from A to B with value $N in year Y) from a plain, fully-cited, account of environmental or conservation impact (in a separate chapter). I suggest we have a structure something like:

Environmental impact

Damage to fish stocks

Collateral damage (Vaquita, via use of gillnets)

Lake eutrophication

• Another aspect that requires reorganisation of its own chapter is 'Crime'. I suggest that we group this under the following headings:

Crime

Counterfeiting

Poaching (with some of the totoaba material: but is this the only instance?)

Smuggling (incorporating some of the 'Totoaba' material)

• The very long list of 'Source fish' should be in a subsidiary article, List of fish used for fish maw, as it unbalances the article and reduces readability.

• It isn't clear why Other targeted fishes are not in the list. The first column can simply be left blank for family entries. I note that "lates perch" is the Latidae which are already represented in the list, so it would actually make more sense to put the 'Family' column on the left, give it a brief mention in the 'Common name' column, and to note that the named species are just examples within the family. You could rename the 'Common name' column to 'Common name/comments' if that feels more comfortable to accommodate this.

• Why does the croaking mechanism affect the price of croaker fish maw?

Images

• All images are on Commons, relevant, and plausibly licensed.

• Hong Kong, Nile perch, and totoaba images need the |upright parameter.

• Images should be placed after any 'further' or 'main' links.

• The Fried fish maw image should be in 'Consumption' not 'Production'.

Sources

• Earwig finds no copyvio issues.

• We can't use a primary source like Glasse 1747 to say which cuisines the food was used in during the 18th century; that requires a secondary source which says the book was popular in America, etc.

• Spot-checks:
  • [1] ok
  • [3] is page 158 not 138. I hope other page numbers are correct.
  • [12] Please supply either page number or quotation to support this.
  • [11] ok
  • [21] ok
  • [30] ok
  • [31] SEMARNAT not verified. Not sure why we're emphasising Sea of Shadows, as it was just one of multiple sources: focus should be the poaching and its effects here.

Summary

This article is a welcome addition to Wikipedia's coverage of foods and fisheries. However, it has several structural issues which need to be addressed before it can progress to GA. These should be reasonably straightforward to fix.

I may need to carry out a second pass of this review after the rework has been completed. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:12, 26 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Chickenpox4dinner - I see you're doing some editing elsewhere, so while no hurry, I'd be glad to know your rough timescale for sorting this one out. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:31, 28 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Chiswick Chap Sorry for the delay, I was trying to clear my plate before giving my full attention to this review. Thank you so much for taking on this review, I greatly appreciate your expertise - I agree with pretty much all of your points. I think this article suffered from being a draft for too long, so I am ready and willing to work it back into shape. I expect to have it ready for your next pass before the end of the month, maybe EOD Monday if I hit my stride. Thanks again! chickenpox4dinner (talk) 15:37, 28 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Chiswick Chap: I was wrong -- I will have the draft to you more like Thursday or Friday, New Years is far busier for me than I expected. Thank you again for your notes. chickenpox4dinner (talk) 18:41, 29 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Enjoy the holiday! Looking forward to seeing the updates. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:07, 29 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]