Misplaced Pages:Good article reassessment/History of Japan/1

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History of Japan

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result pending

In August this article went through a massive, one-user rewrite with almost all of the sources being replaced and much of the wording of the article being altered. It passed GA ten days later having been reviewed by a user who had never edited this area before and apparently didn't examine the article very closely (see below), with the only other input being from the user who rewrote it and nominated it. The sourcing of the article was only briefly touched on in the context of whether every sentence should have a citation. This seems like failure to properly assess for GA purposes, given that one of the criteria for GAs is that they be "verifiable with no original research".

There are many sourcing and verification problems with the article, as demonstrated by the examples below:

A small sample of the OR/SYNTH and factual errors in the article
The article claimed that the eighth-century anthology of Chinese verse known as the Kaifūsō was a collection of "Japanese poetry", an obvious error that does not appear in the cited source, which the Wikipedian responsible quoted on the talk page as not supporting his edit. The rewrite also mirrored an error that did appear in the source by saying a work that was compiled at some point after 759 and not published until the ninth century was compiled "in 759" (a more accurate source is currently cited in the article). The rewrite also changed the cited source's "around 1004" for the date Murasaki Shikibu wrote The Tale of Genji to "in 1004" -- a claim that it's unlikely any source makes, given that the author herself wrote in 1008 that it was not complete, and to complete such a monumentally large work in the space of a year would make Murasaki a more prolific author than Isaac Asimov. That's three major factual errors and/or misleading remarks in two sentences, and two of those are extrapolations that are not directly supported by the cited source. The same thing was done in changing the source's "immigration" to "invasion". There were also several citations to a fringe source written by a non-specialist for a popular magazine.

A small sample of the OR/SYNTH and factual errors in the article

The article claimed that the eighth-century anthology of Chinese verse known as the Kaifūsō was a collection of "Japanese poetry", an obvious error that does not appear in the cited source, which the Wikipedian responsible quoted on the talk page as not supporting his edit.
The rewrite also mirrored an error that did appear in the source by saying a work that was compiled at some point after 759 and not published until the ninth century was compiled "in 759" (a more accurate source is currently cited in the article).
The rewrite also changed the cited source's "around 1004" for the date Murasaki Shikibu wrote The Tale of Genji to "in 1004" -- a claim that it's unlikely any source makes, given that the author herself wrote in 1008 that it was not complete, and to complete such a monumentally large work in the space of a year would make Murasaki a more prolific author than Isaac Asimov. That's three major factual errors and/or misleading remarks in two sentences, and two of those are extrapolations that are not directly supported by the cited source.
The same thing was done in changing the source's "immigration" to "invasion".
There were also several citations to a fringe source written by a non-specialist for a popular magazine.

In the space of three weeks there have been several protracted edit wars, a lengthy talk page dispute and even two ANI threads over this article. This in my opinion should not be the case with a GA-class article.

Pinging involved users: @CurtisNaito: @Nishidani: @Sturmgewehr88: @Curly Turkey: @Rjensen: @Calvin999: @Vivexdino: @MSJapan: @Phoenix7777: @TH1980: @Signedzzz:

Virtually every sentence the above users and I have checked was found to contain a factual error or a misrepresentation of a cited source. It would be an enormous project to check every such instance and bring the article to legitimate GA status. Not pretending it already is a GA is the simplest and most realistic place to start, especially given that preserving the text as it was at GA review was likely an impetus for the recent edit-warring.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:32, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

The GA review was totally inadequate. Obviously a lot of work has gone into the article, but it has issues with focus and scope—it's a long article on an topic that has a lot to be covered, and the editors don't seem to be able to agree on how much detail is too much at this scope. The article should give a birdseye view of the topic and not dwell on details such as disputed numbers that belong in the (many, many) subarticles; such detail at this scope only hampers readability and detracts from much more important details. The prose needs a very thorough copyedit: as a random example, there's "Following the death of Emperor Meiji in 1912, Emperor Taishō acceded to the throne."—which is at least twice as long as it needs to be, and perhaps is another big reason the article is so long Note: this is a single random example to demonstrate a kind of problem the article suffers from in general. The lead has gotten a lot better than it was, but it needs more than tweaks—it needs to be rethought and refocused. I won't comment on the sourcing issues as I haven't looked at them, and judging sources at that level is beyond my expertise. Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 08:41, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
It does need work, as it seems the GA was somewhat "forced." I am in the process of combing my library for material, and I know we have editors asking for access to JSTOR, etc. for other materials. We can definitely reassess this ourselves, but I have a feeling the final product is going to be very, very different, so it might be wise to delist anyway, because it's not going to be a short process. Ideally thisd should be a survey-type article, and it isn't at the moment. MSJapan (talk) 16:20, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

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