Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Japan/archive2

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

The article was not promoted 20:17, 9 January 2007.

[edit] Japan

This article has improved substantially in the past few months and I think it truly deserves FA status. --WoodElf 10:07, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

July 2006 FAC.

• Support as part-author. --WoodElf 10:12, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
• Object. Have not read the article. But, Notes are grossly mismanaged. Many web sources lack important info like publisher, author, date of retrieval etc.--Dwaipayan (talk) 10:57, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
• Object per Dwaipayanc, also, stand-alone portal links go in the See also section. Sumoeagle179 13:59, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
• Comment. There's a minor problem with parenthesis syntax in the lead after I tried to reinstate the pronunciation file that was lost some time ago. It's Template:Nihongo that is causing a bit of trouble, but I'm sure it can be fixed without removing the link to the sound file. / Peter ^Isotalo 15:45, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
• Support as per WoodElf and as a contributor. John Smith's 18:08, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
• Object per Dwaipayan, also because parts of the article do not accurately reflect sources referenced[1][2]. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by HongQiGong (talk • contribs) 18:19, 28 December 2006.

• Comment. As I have said many times, the reason "continental East Asia" was adopted was because of a discussion and informal vote on the talk page. You and others have refused to conduct another one, prefering to try to hold the article to ransom. Either get a consensus to change it as you wish or stop complaining. Why are you so proud you won't have a discussion on it? John Smith's 18:30, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

• Comment When did I say I won't have a discussion on it? Now, the source cited specifically mentions China and Korea. The statement that uses the source do not reflect this accurately. And "Continental East Asia" includes Mongolia, possibly Vietnam, and any other ancient cultures in continental East Asia at the time. It's vastly inaccurate to use that term when most scholars agree that Yayoi cultural influences came from China and Korea. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 18:34, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

• Comment I have opened a poll on it, so take part - if you agree to respect the result. If you don't then you don't have a leg to stand on. By the way, why haven't you stricken the second part of your objection? The current version is as you want it. John Smith's 19:01, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

• Object per Hong Qi Gong. Foreign influences and relations have been whitewashed, and citations manipulated by some editors. Wikiment 18:40, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Wikiment registered on December 1, and has 21 edits. Sandy (Talk) 01:07, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
  • If someone thinks that something was whitewashed, pls raise those issues in the talk pages. The article doesn't look like it was "whitewashed", and content-based improvements/changes can always be made even after FA in any case. Baristarim 09:31, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

• Support per John Smith's Hidvegi.gabor 18:46, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
  • This was Hidvegi.gabor's first post to Wikipedia, as a newly-registered user today. Sandy (Talk) 19:34, 28 December 2006 (UTC*
• Support Article contains good information has a good layout. Lord Metroid 19:46, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

• Strong Object. 1c (factually accurate), 1e (stable), 2 (headings). First, the WP:POLL and talk page environment/tone indicate stability concerns are unresolved. Heading Administrative Divisions doesn't conform to WP:MSH. The article is seriously undercited, containing numerous basic facts without citation. The footnotes that are provided are sloppy and poorly formatted - FAs should represent our best work, and this article needs much more polish before its ready for FAC. Suggest peer review, full referencing, and a copy edit. Sandy (Talk) 19:50, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

• Comment The page has had a peer review already - you can check it if you access the talk page. Stability issues arise from editors that refuse to recognise a consensus. HongQiGong has stated on the talk page under a poll I opened that he will not respect any result he dislikes. If you object to the FA status because of his reverts, then you are saying he can hold the page ransom until his demands are met. What sort of message does that send out? If you don't want a page to get FA status, all you have to do is revert three times a day. John Smith's 20:10, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

• The article has enough other serious problems that POV is just one of many - I don't think anyone is holding anything ransom. Get the citations up to snuff, and you may find that POV concerns subside. Sandy (Talk) 20:34, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

• If you would actually look at the comments, you would see people couldn't care less about citations. It's about pushing POV regardless of what a majority of editors might think. Besides I have carried out some work to tidy-up the worst of the citations. I can promise you it won't make the least bit of difference. John Smith's 20:55, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

• Editors reviewing a featured article do care about citations. Please focus on the task at hand - you have problems in addition to POV concerns. Your peer review got input from exactly one (respected) editor - a longer stint at peer review may help - and he also said the article was lacking citations. The article is not ready for FAC.Sandy (Talk) 21:15, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

• No offence, but I just had a look at the edit you made, and I thought it was far from being necessary. It may be a little better, but it's almost negligable in my opinion. And I'll back that up with evidence from another country page that has FA status, People's Republic of China. If you look at the citations there you will see many that do not follow a template format. So I guess that page should be stripped of its FA status in your book, right? John Smith's 21:27, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

You are certainly free then to ignore all three reviewers here who have told you your references are not correctly formatted. The risk is yours. I did but one sample to show the work needed throughout (you didn't provide a publication date on a news source, and didn't use cite news), without even getting into the areas of the article that are undercited and the rest of the sources that are incorrectly formatted. It doesn't appear that you are interested in responding to reviewer's concerns. I suggest that you not compare to China, which will be up at FAR soon. Sandy (Talk) 21:29, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

For one thing, the third editor was just jumping on the bandwagon - he adds citations that are no better than the rest. For another the first two were looking at the old version - you cannot say your change was more significant than what I did. I obviously responded to concerns by individually applying a template format that I could find to the sources. So why did you claim I was not interested in responding to the concerns raised? John Smith's 21:32, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Try taking a look at Canada for example since PRC article does have some problems. Baristarim 09:38, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

(unindent) I cleaned up what refs were there from Economy onwards, but didn't get to the top of the article. This should give an idea of how to fix the rest of the refs, but while I was in there I found templates in the wrong place, some prose issues, and large amounts of uncited data. Getting the article cited will be the first priority. Sandy (Talk) 22:53, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Why does this need five sources? Can it be narrowed down to one or two?

• The Yayoi period, starting around 300 BC, marked the influx of new practices such as rice farming and iron and bronze-making brought by migrants from China and Korea.[2][3][4][5][6]

This Encyclopedia souce needs to specify the article title in the encyclopedia:

• The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia, 1983 edition, © Columbia University Press ISBN 0-380-63396-5

Sandy (Talk) 23:12, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

This is what I was telling you about earlier. People are adding sources to try to "prove" something. They can't accept they're wrong, so they're just throwing stuff in to try to support their position. And already Hong has said his agenda will override the views of everyone else's. So what am I supposed to do? Talking hasn't resolved anything and peer review can't. How is someone supposed to resolve a dispute when one party will never back down? John Smith's 23:34, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I think I've cleaned up most of the refs that were there, but there are numerous uncited statements - I added some cite tags, but am going to stop now, as it's ruining the article. There are other problems - some of the prose is tortured, choppy, and even grammatically incorrect. The See also and Main templates aren't used correctly, as the daughter articles are not stand alone articles, summarized to this article. Some of the daughter articles are barely more than stubs. There is much work to be done here: solving the POV issues among the editors is only a small piece. I suggest focusing on fixing the cold, hard facts first, and hope the rest will eventually work itself out - right now, even the facts aren't well written or well referenced. Sandy (Talk) 00:42, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

• Object Problems with citation + structural problems that make the article hard to read. There shouldn't be subsections, and if there are any they should be kept down to a bare minimum. That's not a rule set on stone, but experience shows that too many subsections confuse the reader. But in any case the problem seems to be with the level of citations + WP:CITE format problems. Maybe peer review? Baristarim 21:57, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

CommentThis article has already undergone a peer review. True, this article has fewer references that most country articles, but that does not neccessarily make it a bad article. --WoodElf 07:27, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

No, it is not a bad article :) It is sure that it is a good article since it came this far. Personally, the biggest thing with me is the structure. So many subsections cut down on the fluidity of the article and it shouldn't be too hard to fix: just combine the sections and make each subsection a different paragraph in the main section, for example in the demographics section. It might be nicer if the largest cities sub was merged to administrative divisions section.

As for the references... The whole article can use more references all around, but there was something else that caught my eye. The CIA Factbook is cited seven times in the article. Even though the Factbook is not bad, it is not known to be a very reliable reference, with some data simply being rough estimates. Even though the criteria for inclusion is veriability and not reliability, I think that the avoidance of its use is preferable for a FA article. What is needed for an FA is there, but there needs to be a minor structural cleanup and a referencing drive I think. The WP:CITE doesn't seem to be a problem anymore. Baristarim 08:48, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

• Object Too many unsourced statements. In fact there is at least one entirely unsourced section --Zleitzen 01:02, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

• comment some of the text is out of date. For example, in the economy section, it refers to 2006 as being in the future. Hmains 04:22, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
• Object until ^{[citation needed]} tags are fixed.--Yannismarou 18:14, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

• Object—No, not well enough written. Just two sentences at the top say it all:
  • "The characters that make up Japan's name literally mean "sun-origin," thus Japan is sometimes identified as the "Land of the Rising Sun," derived from the country's eastward position relative to China. Its capital and largest city is Tokyo." Remove "literally". Hate those commas within the quotes, but if the MoS says it's OK, I'll have to put a sock in my mouth. A semicolon, not a comma, is required after "origin", in any case. "Referred to" rather than "identified". "Derived" is uncomfortable—what, the term in quotes is derived? Make it explicit, or reword. Whose capital? Looks like China's. Tony 13:52, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

• Comment: The English words "Nihon or Nippon, officially Nihon-koku or Nippon-koku" in the lead appear in a weird monospace font. The use of the {{nihongo}} template needs to be fixed to correct this. Andrew Levine 23:25, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
• Support. Well written and much better than the articles on Korea and China too! Bookishreader45 03:19, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.