Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Forbidden City/archive1


 * 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 not promoted by User:SandyGeorgia 21:51, 3 January 2009.

Forbidden City

 * Nominator(s): PalaceGuard008 (Talk)

This article went through a peer review a while ago, and I believe most of the issues have been addressed. The article has been improved by various editors since, and this version has been largely stable for a few months now. This is an important topic for readers interested in Chinese history and culture, and I hope that it will be deemed - or improved to - FA quality. PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 05:59, 25 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Oppose:
 * Non-English sources of Wikipedia:Verifiability, says "Because this is the English Wikipedia, for the convenience of our readers, editors should use English-language sources in preference to sources in other languages, assuming the availability of an English-language source of equal quality, so that readers can easily verify that the source material has been used correctly." Forbidden City being such a famous structure, there must be plenty of references in English. There are around 25 Chinese references.
 * The text is being sandwiched between Images, reorganization of images needed.
 * Bullet-point lists in "Influence" and "Symbolism" should be converted to paras.
 * Overlinking: bronze, Britain, France, Switzerland, the United States, Japan. Hall of Supreme Harmony is linked atleast 3 times.
 * "A Starbucks store,[26] which opened in 2000,[27] sparked objections[28] and eventually closed on July 13, 2007." Why are references placed not at the end of a period? A little distracting.-- Redtigerxyz Talk 16:16, 25 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Images: All images not checked
 * File:Verbotene-Stadt1500.jpg lacks explicit date, proof for PD claim
 * File:Forbiddencity notopen06.JPG lacks explicit information of date, Source, Author
 * Prose:
 * "The Hall of Supreme Harmony ("G") is the largest, and rises some 30 metres (98 ft) above the level of the surrounding square." "It weighs some 200 tonnes and is the largest such carving in China." "According to the results of a 1925 audit,[64] some 1.17 million items were stored in the Forbidden City." " includes some 30,000 pieces." Vagueness: exact figures can be included, also "approximate" will be more suitable
 * "Interestingly, this axis is not exactly aligned north-south, but is tilted by slightly more than two degrees." Interestingly may be seen as one of the Words that editorialize.
 * There are places where there is a lack between ref tag and period. (he was evicted after a coup in 1924. [16] ,as the core of the National Palace Museum in Taipei. [20] ) Please fix them
 * References needed:
 * "Paintings": and many of these were subsequently lost or destroyed.
 * "The Forbidden City is the world's largest surviving palace complex"
 * "(Hall of Supreme Harmony is) and the largest surviving wooden structure in China"
 * "the imperial libraries housed one of the country's largest collections of ancient books"
 * "The personal interest of Emperors such as Qianlong meant that almost all surviving paintings from the Yuan Dynasty and before were held by the palace." WP:OR?
 * "Emperor Gia Long of Vietnam built a palace and fortress that was intended to be a smaller copy of the Chinese Forbidden City in the 1800s"
 * References: What are
 * "The Palace Museum. "Collection highlights - Ceramics" (in Chinese)"? A book? no date, author.
 * The 5th Avenue Theater. "Our Historic Theater - 5th Avenue Theater".
 * The Palace Museum. "太和殿 (Hall of Supreme Harmony)" (in Chinese).
 * The reference style: "p 253, Yu (1984)": Shouldn't it be "Yu (1984), p 253" see Citing sources-- Redtigerxyz Talk 05:57, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
 * THanks for those ocmments Redtigerxyz. "Some" is a term of expression that means "approximately and/or at least". The reference issues you mentioned seems to be a cite template that has malfunctioned since it was added to the article. I'll see if the template is being repaired or whether an alternative template can be found. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 12:44, 26 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Use citebook, citeweb for consistency. -- Redtigerxyz Talk 14:40, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Specific citation methods are not prescribed by either WP:CITE or WP:WIAFA; citation templates are not obligatory. Consistently formatted citations are required by WP:WIAFA, whatever the method.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 03:57, 29 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Though I see a lot of work has gone into this article, my concerns about the Chinese references may be not be fully satisfied in the short period of the FAC. I also see a need for a section devoted to the restoration of the Forbidden city. A section about the construction and materials used in much more detail. (Read comprehensiveness concerns) Both of these were detailed in much detail in a programme on National Geographic, yesterday. So i am opposing the article in the current form. -- Redtigerxyz Talk 15:06, 27 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Comments This article is gonna take a long time to examine, and I'm not gonna have any time at all... just off the top of my head, the Symbolism section is way too list-like and way too sketchy. Not much discussion of numerology etc. I'll try to add more comments, but I'm gonna go catch a flight in about 2 hours or less.
 * I hope you can find a better word for "pierced" to describe the entrances. And yuk, the Influences section is looking a lot like a "Forbidden city in popular culture" section. Yuk. Yuk. Why on earth is it notable that some theater in Seattle looks kinda like the Forbidden City? I know a Chinese restaurant in [city omitted] named "Forbidden City"; should we include that too? This looks an awful lot like boosterism. Anybody from Seattle involved in writing this? As for Kingdom hearts, I don't think it's notable that a scenario takes place in the Forbidden City. I mean, if the game were titled "Kingdom Hearts in the Forbidden City" I could... extremely reluctantly.. close my eyes, grit my teeth and let it pass. But it isn't. So I won't. Ling.Nut (talk&mdash;WP:3IAR) 09:41, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for all of those comments. I'll work on those over the next few days and report back when ready. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 12:44, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Comments -
 * In the Notes, it should be Author name, year, THEN page number, not page number first.
 * Current ref 5 (Gugong...) is using a wiki article as a reference. (you'll need a reference for this statement)
 * Books that are in Chinese need to be so noted.
 * What is "National Palace Museum - Tradition & Continuity"? Book? Magazine article?
 * Newspaper titles should be in italics
 * What is "The Palace Museum "Yin, Yang and the Five... "? A book? Magazine article?
 * LIkewise, the Palace Museum "Hall of Supreme Harmony", "Hall of Central Harmony" and "Hall of Preserving Memory"?
 * What is current ref 58 ("Working People's Curltureal Palace" china.org.cn?) Looks like a website but not link provided.
 * Likewise current ref 59 (Zhongshan Park China.org.cn)?
 * What are current refs 66, 67, 68, 69, 71, 72? (Palace Museum "Collection Highlights...)?
 * What is current ref 73 ("The 5th Avenue Theater" "Our Historic...)
 * Current ref 70 Laufer, Berthold needs a page number
 * Current ref 74 is lacking a publisher
 * Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:17, 26 December 2008 (UTC)


 * All books which are in Chinese are noted as such.
 * The cite web template seems to be malfunctioning. I'm not sure why the URLs are not showing up as links. This will need to be fixed. Hold on. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 08:51, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

And, lots of text squeeze between images, see WP:MOS. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 17:26, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Comments - Just from glancing through the article, so I may have more to add. &mdash; Mattisse (Talk) 01:46, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Re: use of "some"  - Regarding the use of the word "some" commented on above by User:Redtigerxyz, see MoS:Subset terms for an explanation as to why not to use vague terms like "some".  Words to avoid might help also. &mdash; Mattisse  (Talk) 01:07, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
 * There are many scholarly books in English on Chinese architecture that include in depth analysis of the architectural elements of the Forbidden City and how they evolved.  Suggest that you include information from these books for a more in depth description of the Chinese aspects of the architecture, rather than a tourist guide view. You could also include more of the distinctively Chinese style that for thousands of years has distinguished it from Western architecture.
 * Suggest that you expand the "Religion" section and include a more in depth description of the interweaving of religious and architectural elements so important to Chinese architecture.
 * Suggest you remove tangential sections, such as "Surroundings" which, again, is more like a travel guide approach.
 * Suggest that the "Symbolism" section be written in prose (the bullet points removed) and expanded, as this is a very important element of the Forbidden City, not just a side note.
 * The "Influence" section could be expanded to reveal more of the significance of the Forbidden City to the Chinese.
 * Also, "Depiction in art, film and literature" and "As performance venue" seem tangential and could be removed entirely.
 * Perhaps the "Collections" section should be spun off into another article, much as the History of the Forbidden City has been (which seems more important than "Collections") as "Collections" takes up a large percentage of the article.
 * Seems like there are too many images relative to the text, but this may be a personal preference. (I don't think images from the "Collentions" are necessary unless they illustrate a point pertinent to the city's architecture or history.
 * Thanks for those comments Matisse. Much appreciated. As to the issue of collections, my understanding is that this article deals currently with the Forbidden City as an architectural complex *and* as a museum, hence a description of its collections. There is already a main article on the museum collections, which is linked from the Collections section, at Collections of the Palace Museum. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 08:51, 27 December 2008 (UTC)


 * The cite web template is not working properly in the article, which is why a lot of the references are not displaying correctly. This may take some time to clear up. Should this be withdrawn until that's fixed? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 08:53, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
 * That's interesting, and potentially important to other articles. Can you list three or four examples, please? Ling.Nut (talk&mdash;WP:3IAR) 20:41, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.