Wikipedia:Peer review/List of National Treasures of Japan (paintings)/archive1

List of National Treasures of Japan (paintings)

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I would like to nominate it at WP:FLC and would like to receive creative feedback on what needs to be done to get it there. The article/list is modeled after the featured List of National Treasures of Japan (sculptures). PS: I know that the lead needs expansion and I am currently rewriting and expanding it. bamse (talk) 09:25, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Brianboulton comments: The main list is a most impressive piece of work, and I congratulate you on it. There are, however, several issues related to the article and its overall presentation. First, this is a "list", and as such is subject to different rules from tose that relate to a prose article. In particular, the text does not have to be comprehensive, and should contain only sufficient information to make the purpose of the list clear. You say you think the lead needs expanding; I would say it is plenty long enough as it is, and could possibly do with some pruning, in fact. Whether you decide to do that or not, there are numerous prose fixes required, which I have listed below. I have also done some punctuation and minor prose fixes myself.

• Lead
  • The first sentence would read better if reworded and reorganised as, for example: "Religious paintings from the mainland first arrived in Japan in the mid-6th century, at the time of the introduction of Buddhism from Baekje."
  • "religious paintings like mandalas" sound weak. Suggest "religious paintings in the form of mandalas"
  • "An early example includes..." → "An early example is..."
  • "art form" is two words
  • Some date indications for the Muromachi period would be helpful
  • Similarly, for the Momoyama period
  • Citation required for first sentence of fourth paragraph
  • "dominant", not "dominating"
  • "most enduring" would be better than "longest lived"
  • What "previous trends" continued into the Edo period?
  • Last sentence of fourth paragraph needs a citation

    Japanese culture, H. Paul Varley, p. 223, [1]. ("The leading Japanese bunjin artists of the 18th century were..."). I'll add the ref later, when the copyediting is completed.

• Fifth paragraph: I suggest this is separated from the lead and made into a section of its own entitled "Definition and criteria"
  • "These paintings..." Be more precise, as in "The paintings in this list..."
  • "The items are selected..." I think "have been" would be be more appropriate
  • "This list presents 157 entries of paintings,..." I would prefer to see "This list consists of 157 paintings,..."

    This would not be correct. There are 157 lines in the table (="entries"), however some of these entries consist of more than one painting (albeit related paintings under a common name). That's why there are more than 157 paintings in the list. bamse (talk) 23:28, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

  • The number of paintings is higher than what?

    See reply to previous item, "higher than 157" which is the number of entries (lines in the table).bamse (talk) 23:28, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

• Statistics: second table. Would it be possible to align the numbers properly?

  I'll try. bamse (talk) 23:28, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

• The notes under the Usage heading all relate to the main Treasures table, and should appear as notes under that table's heading, not in a separate section

  Not sure, after all the whole article is about the main treasures table, so everything relates to it. bamse (talk) 23:28, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

• Treasures table
  • What is the rationale for the table's order? It would seem to me that chronological sequence would be the most logical default setting - is there a stronger reason for the present order?

    The order is the order used in the online-database. It traverses Japan roughly from North to South-West (as for the present location of the paintings). Ordering by date can be achieved with one click, so unless a it is a big deal I would not want to reorder items by date at this point. bamse (talk) 23:28, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

  • I notice that up to about 20 of the images are missing. Rather than leaving the cells blank it would be better to have a short note: "Image not available"

    I still hope to find images for these entries. Help welcome.bamse (talk) 23:28, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

  • I see that one of the images is a 50 yen postage stamp. This sits rather oddly with the others. A note of explanation, perhaps?

    Of course the postage stamp is not the treasure but the underlying artwork. Indeed it looks a bit out of place, but I did not find any better source, so I asked the experts from the photography workshop for help. bamse (talk) 23:28, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

    User:penubag was so nice to extract the painting from the stamp. bamse (talk) 09:51, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

I hope that you are able to use these points to improve the list. Brianboulton (talk) 22:32, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for the thorough peer review. The lead section is just now being copyedited by User:Truthkeeper88. I'll reply to your comments that are not language related above. bamse (talk) 23:28, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

The lead section has been copyedited by User:Truthkeeper88 and all issues have been addressed. bamse (talk) 00:00, 11 November 2009 (UTC)