Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of National Treasures of Japan (writings: Chinese books)/archive1

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

The list was promoted by The Rambling Man 16:13, 13 July 2011 [1].

List of National Treasures of Japan (writings: Chinese books)[edit]

List of National Treasures of Japan (writings: Chinese books) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): bamse (talk) 15:28, 8 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is a list of manuscripts of old Chinese books that have been designated as National Treasures of Japan. Three types of manuscripts are included: those created in China, those copied in Japan and some of the oldest printed editions from the Song Dynasty. The list has been modelled on other featured National Treasure lists. bamse (talk) 15:28, 8 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support: Well-detailed, quality page, which from what I can see satisfactorily meets the criteria for a Featured List. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 04:27, 9 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved comments from Giants2008 (27 and counting) 22:15, 19 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comments –
  • Add "the" before "7th century Tang Dynasty"?
  • "or are Chinese printed edition." "edition" → "editions"?
  • Usage: Add "by" to "sortable pressing the arrows symbols"?
  • Chinese manuscripts: Excess word in "One of the most most well-known missions...".
  • Don't need a second Tang Dynasty link here.
  • "Twenty Chinese books National Treasures...". "books" → "book"? There's something similar in the next section.
  • Wang Bo collection vol 29, 30: Comma needed after "one verse from the biography section".
  • "Elegant Orchid" isn't sorting in the intended order, perhaps because of the quotation mark.
  • Japanese manuscripts: Period missing after "At first the curriculum consisted mainly of Confucian Classics and Chinese history".
  • "consisted of Chinese works and scholarly collections were dominated by Chinese secular works." Add "that" or "which" before "were dominated".
    • This would change meaning. In this sentence "collection" has the meaning of "library", so "scholarly collections" is a subset of all libraries. Would it be clearer if split in two sentences: In the Heian period, the majority of works held in libraries (both those produced in China and those copied in Japan) consisted of Chinese works. Scholarly collections were dominated by Chinese secular works. or if "collections"->"libraries"?
  • Kanen: Is "the Three Kingdoms of Japan and (symbol) China" missing anything, or is this correct?
    • Removed the "symbol". Nothing was missing.
  • In this table: the books by Oe no lekuni don't seem to be sorting properly by author (diacritics will cause this).
  • Song printed editions: Remove comma after "when a large number of dharani known as Hyakumanto Darani".
  • No need for a second Chinese Classics link in this section.
  • The third table has some odd sorting in the format column. May need a sort template for the numbers.
    • The format columns are not meant to sort by numbers (which would be less useful, because, say how do you compare three scrolls with two books, etc). As explained in the Usage section the format columns sort by the type of manuscript: "books/scrolls/other". As for the third table, all entries are of the same ("book") type, so sorting is not really useful here. If you wish, I can make that column unsortable in the third table. bamse (talk) 19:59, 17 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note 2 is missing a period at the end.
  • Notes 6 and 7 could use some "a"s in "designated as National Treasure".
  • Note 12: Add apostrophe at end of "monks"?
  • References 20, 25, and 59 could use PDF designations, like ref 3 has. Giants2008 (27 and counting) 14:56, 17 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot for your thorough feedback. I addressed almost all of your comments following your suggestions and replied to those that I did not address (i.e. to two comments) above. bamse (talk) 19:59, 17 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

One more from taking a look at the changes: in note 2, the order of "blank" and "two" should probably be switched. Giants2008 (27 and counting) 22:15, 19 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Done. bamse (talk) 22:49, 19 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment This is an exemplary list and really commendable work. Main qualms are about the bibliography formatting. There are ghost ref tags, inconsistency in inclusion of publisher location, and some wikilinking errors for the {{harvnb}} template. Could you brush through the references once more please? — Legolas (talk2me) 06:25, 5 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'll have a look at it. What do you mean by "ghost ref tags"? bamse (talk) 10:48, 5 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Removed one </ref>. Is that what you meant by "ghost ref tags"? bamse (talk) 10:50, 5 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Done as far as I can see. Removed one excessive "</ref>", removed location of publisher from one bibliography and all the {{harvnb}} links should work now. Please let me know if something else needs to be fixed. bamse (talk) 11:26, 5 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes its done as I can see, however another query. Some of the books have just the year of the publication while some have exact dates. As far as I can see for them, Google books did not list any date when they were written. Can you please correct them? — Legolas (talk2me) 05:53, 6 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I used this tool for creating the bibliography. Honestly I don't know where it takes the month/day information from, so I asked the creator of the tool (who has not been active on wikipedia since May 7, 2011). Since year information is sufficient and since the tool sometimes created wrong dates (day=32), I got rid of the months/days. bamse (talk) 12:42, 6 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: Excellent page. Wish more lists were this thorough and organized. One suggestion: get rid of red-links in the references section. I'd suggest getting rid of the red-links in the list itself, but I suppose there's a good chance someone will eventually write articles on those places, most of which I believe, are temples. Primary editor is to be commended for compiling this list of written works. Boneyard90 (talk) 08:01, 10 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks. As for the red links, these are temples and museums which house or own National Treasures and as such are relevant and will get their wikipedia article eventually. I am planning to create articles for all shrines/temples/museums that have National Treasures of Japan. In fact, I recently wrote Omura Shrine and Anraku-ji (Ueda). It'll take some time before all of them have a wikipedia article though. In order not having to put back wikilinks later, I'd prefer to leave the red-links in there unless that's an issue for FLC. bamse (talk) 08:39, 10 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
In this narrow issue, I have to disagree with Boneyard90. I would have thought that Wikipedia:Red link suggests a kind of fuzzy logic? In each instance, Bamse is likely able to explain and defend the red link as a positive element in the current state of this article. For example, in the Japanese manuscripts section, the red link for Daigaku-ryō caught my attention. This was an article I intended to create some time ago -- in fact, I thought I did create this article at the same time I developed Yushima Seidō; but I was distracted. The red link served as a reminder and I immediately set about creating a stub ... which is a good example of what a red link is supposed to do. --Tenmei (talk) 13:14, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I wonder if one or two sentences might be added to the last paragraph of the introduction of this article (and its corollaries)?
  1. The comprehensiveness of the current list is explained clearly, but I wonder if some kind of caveat like {{dynamic list}} would be perceived as timely? as an invitation? as a distraction? Some variation on these words is worth considering: "This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries."
  2. I also wonder if the overview of this subject would be enhanced by a sentence which explained that the official listings do evolve as part of an on-going process? Compare National Treasures of Japan#Designation procedure. In other words, the Agency for Cultural Affairs is likely to designate one or more additions to this list in 2012 or at some other time in the future. Compare National Research Institute for Cultural Properties.
  3. I wonder if a "See also" section should mention Independent Administrative Institution National Museum, Tokyo Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Nara Research Institute for Cultural Properties, etc.?
These suggestions present issues of judgment and focus. --Tenmei (talk) 12:17, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your suggestions and support. As for {{dynamic list}}, my understanding is that this template is for lists that are inherently incomplete (List of female tennis players,...) and whose inclusion criterion often is the existence of a wikipedia article. This list however is complete and in fact is not changing on short timescales. In the 21st century, between one and five National Treasures were designated each year. There are 13 Lists of National Treasures of Japan, so any of these lists is updated on average only about once in 4 years due to new designations. I added a see also section per your suggestion (didn't know we had an article on "Independent Administrative Institution National Museum" and in fact had never heard of this title before). As for your second suggestion, it is kind of implied by the language and tense used in the intro: "...have been designated...", "...items are selected...". Do you think that a more direct statement is necessary? bamse (talk) 12:53, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No changes are necessary. These suggestions only demonstrate engagement with an open-ended question -- musing, speculation, wondering about what might be marginally better? Your good judgment is unquestioned.

As you know, the last sentence of National Treasures of Japan#Designation procedure is: "In the 21st century, between one and five properties were designated every year.-- 国指定文化財 データベース, Database of National Cultural Properties.

Is it likely (or possible) that a reader might profit from reading a variant of this sentence at the end of the last paragraph of the introduction? It's just a question? "No" is a reasonable and acceptable answer. --Tenmei (talk) 15:02, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In my opinion, it would be good to have a sentence like that referring to "writings: Chinese books" only (i.e. to the items in this list). However, due to the small number of Chinese books NT (56 versus more than 1000 NT as a whole), I feel that we can't have a meaningful statement like this because of a lack of statistic samples. (Does this make sense?) bamse (talk) 15:13, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Let's agree that this is a trivial issue; and yes, I defer to your good judgment. In the future -- perhaps in 2012, we may revisit this if you or I stumble across an on-point citation in a credible source? --Tenmei (talk) 16:46, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed! bamse (talk) 20:55, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]


The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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