Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Heian Palace

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 candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted 17:10, 24 September 2007.

Heian Palace

Self-nominate The article has been through peer review (archived here) and then given GA status in July this year (GAR archived [article review/Archive 25#Heian here]). In the GA process a few reviewers expressed their view that missing page number references in notes were the only thing keeping the article from being of FA quality. Encouraged by the GA reviewers' comments, and having finally found the time to go through the article's references and to add the previously missing page numbers, I'm submitting the article as an FA candidate. Stca74 20:25, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment, Good article: phrase "foreign ambassadors were not received more most of the Heian period" (in Greater Palace (Daidairi), para 4) does not make much sense.--Grahamec 13:36, 9 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Done Fixed that one. Thanks for pointing it out! Stca74 14:16, 9 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Support--Grahamec 02:37, 14 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Upon review, it seems clear the quality of the article is among Wikipedia's best. I'd love to see someone get a hold of the Japanese sources, but I'm fairly convinced that it would lead to no or few corrections, based on the quality of the sources that were used. I hate to say it since it looks like a good article, but four references? I could possibly handle it if the were all scholarly, detailed, and focused on the specific topic of this article, but they just appear to be general works including a little information on the palace. Also you'd have to convince me that there aren't any other good sources of information on the palace and I'd be surprised if that were the case. - Taxman ^Talk 05:43, 18 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid that unfortunately the sources available are few, and to my knowledge there are no English (probably no non-Japanese) sources focussed just on the Palace. On the other hand, I hope you are not making a judgement based on just the number of references; instead of being "general works with little information on the palace" all four are scholarly and detailed works, written by recognized academics specialised in Hein period history and archaeology. I would, in particular, propose that you have a look at McCullough and McCullough (1980), where the 22-page section on the Palace qualifies as a sufficient source on its own. Further evidence supporting the status of the latter as the most comprehensive, and sufficiently recent, English source is that the Cambridge History of Japan (itself an approx. 3500-page 5-volume work considered to be the most authoritative English-language general history of Japan) uses it as the primary source on the Palace. In case this is not enough to convince of scarcity of the available sources, I would propose a detailed look at search results from Google Books: short (less than apage) passages discussing the palace, with no information available in addition to what is already in the cited sources. Another proposal is to go through the extensive bibliography of the Cambridge History, vol II (Heian Japan).

Second, I would like to point that what WP:FACR and WP:V ask for is verifiability against reliable sources, not any specific number of sources nor even that the provided bibliography is comprehensive (even though I think the one in the present article is). Moreover, by WP:V "All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged should be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation." (emphasis in original), and "In general, the most reliable sources are peer-reviewed journals and books published in university presses; university-level textbooks; magazines, journals, and books published by respected publishing houses; and mainstream newspapers." As far as I see, these criteria are amply satisfied, unless someone is willing to challenge a statement made in the article, in which case a further footnote would be needed.

I hope this answers the points made in the previous comment. Finally, in case someone succeeds in finding a new source with new information that should be added to the list of cited references, I would be more than happy to do so (as well as to study the source myself). Stca74 07:23, 18 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that you're that confident of the quality of the sources is a good thing. No number isn't everything, independence and corroboration (or disagreement) would ideally result from more varied sources though. But you're right that they are just smaller parts not focused on the subject was the bigger piece. I also wonder why you described the primary sources (which is great by the way) but didn't cite those or list them as references. Those and perhaps the archeological papers mentioned would make for valuable augmentation to the article. I take it you don't read Japanese to use sources in Japanese as well? I'm not trying to be difficult, it's just featured articles are the face of the project and I want to help contribute to high quality. You've clearly done great work in consulting the quality of references that you have. - Taxman ^Talk 13:20, 18 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You are right, I do not unfortunately read Japanese, and that is one reason I have not attempted to review the Japanese original research articles referred to in the sources I have used (and I do not think that just copying articles' names without making own assessment of the content would be good practice). The second reason is what is stated in WP:V#Sources in languages other than English — I do believe the sources used do pass the test of being of sufficient quality.

In addition, I did a further search in Google Scholar, and got similar results as from Google Books — articles that mention the Palace in passing, or Japanese-language articles. What I found, though, is a quote from E. Seidensticker's review of McCullough and McCullough (1980) in Monumenta Nipponica 36:2 (1981) pp. 195–200, stating the following about the source used in the article: "... The two long appendices, on ranks and titles and on the Heian palace compound, are so thorough and authoritative that they are not likely to be superseded for ..." (unfortunately I do not have JStor access to retrieve more text, but I think the reviewer's point is clear).

Finally, as regards primary sources, using those as article sources would not appear to be in agreement with WP:NOR. This is what Wikipedia:WikiProject History#Sources says: "Primary sources that have been published by a reliable source may be used for the purposes of attribution in Wikipedia, but with care. Don't misuse primary sources. Edits that rely on primary sources should make descriptive claims that can be checked by anyone without specialist knowledge. Further interpretation of primary source material can be sourced to a secondary source."

In summary, I think that given the scarcity of English-language sources the article is currently as well sourced as can be expected. While I'm in principle open to the idea of listing Japanese sources (that someone else should then inspect), I think it would be first necessary to have the general discussion of whether WP:FACR does indeed require that in a situation like this; if it does, I'm afraid it raises the bar on what can be a featured article to al level where we can expect very few new ones (and a massive downgradings through WP:FAR). Stca74 14:19, 18 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's not that dire. Featured articles are generally considered to need multiple high quality sources. Yours appear very high quality. I have asked for help from a Japanese speaker, and hopefully she can find someone familiar with the subject that can help out. I agree you shouldn't list references you haven't verified yourself. And though you do need to be very careful with primary sources, that doesn't mean they can't be valuable. I notice that both of the texts you described have been translated to English. If you could get a hold of those I believe that could help a lot. - Taxman ^Talk 12:49, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the effort you're putting into this. If your Japanese-speaking contact can provide us with further sources that can be verified, that's great. As for the primary sources, it took me a while to understand that you were referring to the three literary texts; yes, they've been all translated into English (Genji in fact three times). What's your view with regard to referencing? They have been wikilinked to their own articles, so I'm not sure we should have bibliographical references here as well (although Genji and Pillow Book articles need to be amended to have the bibligraphical data there). Finally, as for possibly quoting passages from these sources, I'm not sure we'll find too many good ones — I've read the three works, and they generally assume the reader is already familiar with the places, and thus nice descriptive passages are rare; instead, one needs to infer from what is said in many places in the text. And quoting a passage on an arbitrary detail would be, I'm afraid, just that: arbitrary. But I'll think it over. Stca74 14:36, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I thought that might be possible that was the case with those texts. Yes, then citing them to individual statements would indeed be arbitrary and isn't a good idea, unless you find a really specific descriptive passage or something. But if they do support the material in the article then perhaps they could be listed as general references without individual citations. I'd like to see what other people think about that and the general issue. - Taxman ^Talk 15:52, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Verifications made: the only non-Japanese source in the footnotes to McCullough and McCullough (1980) is Ponsonby-Fane (1956), which I have now added in the Further reading section. This is a reissue of a 1931 Hong Kong book, itself a compilation of journal articles from 1925–28. It is also the English-language source referred to in McCullough (1999) (the Cambridge History of Japan section); this is what the footnote on page 97 in McCullough(1999) says:

The chief source for the physical description and history of Heian presented here is Kyoto-shi, comp., Kyōto no rekishi, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Gakugei shorin, 1970). A much older but still mostly reliable English-language study is R.A.B. Ponsonby-Fane, Kyoto: The Old Capital of Japan, 794–1869 (Kyoto: The Ponsonby Memorial Society, 1956; first published in article form 1925–28).

I hope this finally settles the question of available English-language sources. As for the main Japanese source mentioned in the quote above, its availability in English-speaking countries seems to be limited: I was not able to locate a matching reference in the Bodleyan (Oxford) or in the Harvard library system (HOLLIS catalogue). In HOLLIS there is a matching title (京都の歴史), but with different publishing date and publisher. Again, I would not like to add a reference which I cannot verify myself, let alone one that appears to be hard to veryfy at all in English-speaking countries. Stca74 07:32, 19 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Done: Further searches located the correct 京都の歴史 referred to above (10 volumes, published 1968–1976 in Tokyo by Gakugei shorin) in a few University of California libabries. Here's a number=031298&set entry=000007&format=999 pointer to the Melvyl catalogue entry. If there'ssomeone with reasonable access to one of these libraries a verification of the references could be made there for giving direct footnote references. However, I still think this would be an overkill in the English-language Wikipedia. However, having propre bibliographical data, I've now added this reference to Further reading section in the article. Stca74 08:06, 22 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I wonder if Ivan Morris' World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan bbs sr 1/104-4438807-7787138?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1190303187&sr=1-1 Amazon link might be of use to you. I remember it discussing the general design of Heian rather than the palace itself, but there is some discussion of ceremonial and leisure practice. Just a thought. Also, I think the article needs a close copy-editing: I've changed a couple of errors that caught my eye, but I there are more out there.--Monocrat 15:52, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the copyediting. I've done one more round of checking for typos (found a few more) as well as made consistent use of the definite article with the buildings within the palace (several were missing). As for the Ivan Morris book, I considered that, but there's really no important information there that cannot be found in the main references used. However, now that we have the "Further reading" section, I'll add the Morris book there. Stca74 16:25, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Support Fine article, thoroughly researched, clearly written, nicely illustrated. Valuable contribution to Wikipedia. Fg2 02:19, 23 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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 candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.