Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of National Treasures of Japan (crafts: swords)/archive1


 * 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 Dabomb87 21:55, 24 September 2010.

List of National Treasures of Japan (crafts: swords)

 * Nominator(s): bamse (talk) 21:16, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

This is another list of National Treasures of Japan. It has been modelled after the featured lists of national treasure paintings, sculptures, temples, shrines, residences, castles and archaeological materials. Unfortunately there are not many (a total of two) pictures of usable pictures of national treasure swords available and more are likely not going to be available in the near future. This is probably due to the fact that many of the swords are owned privately or located in museums where photography is restricted. Furthermore relatively high quality pictures would be necessary to show the differences between the listed blades, which makes the task of finding images even more difficult. For these reasons there is no "Image" column in the tables, unlike in other national treasure of Japan lists. bamse (talk) 21:16, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Following on the comments at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 116, I really think the article name should be changed to something along the lines of "List of National Treasures of Japan (crafts: swords)". The use of the hyphen here is rather ambiguous and does not comply with WP:HYPHEN. Dabomb87 (talk) 21:48, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
 * OK, can I just move it to the new name, or would I have to restart the FLC? bamse (talk) 06:25, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
 * With an FLC involved, this will be easier if done by an admin. Tell me where you think it ought to go, and either I or Dabomb can move it. Courcelles 09:11, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks. The name suggested by Dabomb seems fine: List of National Treasures of Japan (crafts: swords). bamse (talk) 10:03, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Move complete. Courcelles 10:26, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you. bamse (talk) 15:38, 28 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Support – This is an interesting and well written article. The introduction to each list within the article provides excellent background to the list. Although there are a number of red links, in my opinion these are to subjects that are notable and should be written. I used check links to add access dates. I also converted an external link that redirects to a non-redirecting link. Overall, this is excellent list that fully meets all the criteria for a feature list. Great job! --Dan Dassow (talk) 16:56, 28 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Comment–no dead external links. Dablinks says there is still a link to the old title, which is now a redirect pointing back here, but I can't find it, even after running the entire article through Special:ExpandTemplates; it might be a server lag issue. Ucucha 09:05, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Gone now; I guess I was right. Ucucha 09:12, 29 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Comments 10:17, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I know I've asked this before, but why do we have to have a bunch of squares in the tables (presumeably they are japanese characters, but that doesn't show in IE). I think it's highly confusing and they ought to be moved out of table. If access is truly that important, squares could be in footnote and I believe a warning should be in the top of the article stating something along the line that this article uses japanese characters which might just display as squares etc. Sandman888 (talk) 10:17, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
 * You want a warning at the top of the article? Aren't the few dozen links to Help:Installing Japanese character sets enough?  Good raise  10:26, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Which links? Sandman888 (talk) 17:00, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I think Goodraise is referring to the small superscript "?" created by the nihongo templates. bamse (talk) 18:27, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
 * To someone who hasn't spent ages on wikipedia, a small hyperlinked question mark is not the most intuitive solution. I doubt my grandfather would even recognize them. Sandman888 (talk) 20:26, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
 * To answer your question for the reason of having Japanese in the table. Basically there are two types of reasons:
 * "Signature" column: The signature on the sword is written in Japanese, so in my opinion it is a must to have the original (in Japanese) signature here.
 * "Swordsmith" and "Present location" columns: Japanese text in these columns only appears if there is no wikipedia article for a swordsmith or a museum or other institution. I will happily remove it as wikipedia articles are created for the respective smiths and museums. At present the Japanese text allows to better identify a certain smith or museum/institution. Due to ambiguity in reading of Japanese characters, there are various ways of spelling a certain name in Japanese and in fact there are smiths with the same (English) name that are spelled differently in Japanese. Providing the original name alongside the (English) name helps to avoid ambiguity. Similarly not all museums/institutions have a definite English name and the Japanese names help to clearly identify the locations. bamse (talk) 14:31, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
 * An old similar discussion has been archived here. bamse (talk) 14:36, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
 * How about template:Contains Japanese text? Seems made for this list Sandman888 (talk) 17:00, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Added it. I am neutral towards this particular template. Basically I think it is a good idea to put such warning, but don't really like its layout, especially the look together with right-aligned intro pictures (which are kind of required for FLC). It seems to have been under discussion with a rather negative result, though there are some positive opinions as well. If I remember correctly, this template was removed once by a bot from one of the articles I put it in... bamse (talk) 18:27, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I think the spirit of it is good, I can see your layout concerns but that's an argument for improving the template rather than removing it. I fixed the hyperlink in the template per the discussion you linked to (which seemed to be the crux of the debate). Perhaps it should just render the text in italics in the start of the article? Sandman888 (talk) 20:26, 1 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Note. In light of the above development, I have asked for input from WT:MOS-JP.  Good raise  21:10, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't know if its always redundant. It is redundant for articles primarly about Japan, its history, culture, religion, etc. An article about word origins that mentions a Japanese word as contributing to modern usage isn't and where the Japanese text is appropriate isn't necessarily redundant there. This article not only is primarily about something Japanese, it says so it the title. common sense should prevail that an article about something in Japan that has squares where one presumes there should be text should lead to the conclusion that if it occurs that person is missing the Japanese text and the ? symobol next to it is there for help in this regard. 陣 内 Jinnai 21:37, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I think per WP:ACCESS and per | elements of the lead, the lead, perhaps, is not the appropriate place for the Japanese text box because the lead has very little Japanese text. I've never had a formatting problem with any of these articles, but if one does exist, and consensus is the add the box, it might be better to add it elsewhere. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 21:54, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I think it's fine in topics which are not primarily about a Japan-related topic but which happen to have some Japanese in them. However, including it in every article with Japanese in it is excessive and pointless. People viewing topics which are primarily Japanese are going to expect Japanese to be in them, and the box becomes as pointless as the thankfully long-gone spoiler tag. The box simply clutters up the article, especially when the article contains multiple languages and multiple "contains x text" boxes start being added to the article. If someone could make one which far less intrusive and perhaps allowed use of one box with multiple languages specified (perhaps a Contains non-latin text template?), I might begin to warm up to using it. ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WikiProject Japan ! 22:53, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Based on these comments, I have removed the "Contains Japanese text" template. bamse (talk) 16:38, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Nihonjoe's comment seconded (though probably too late to make any difference). -- Hoary (talk) 10:33, 7 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Support (but with the disclosure that I've made copyedits to the article). Although all the lists in this series are impressive, I find this one to be particularly comprehensive, and meets the criteria for feature list. I made some suggestions for improvement to Bamse before the list was submitted for review; the fixes have been incorporated, and I'm happy to support. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 14:59, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Question Why all those ... templates? (Why not instead have just one ... for the first Japanese script in any major section, and a less obtrusive ... template for the rest?) -- Hoary (talk) 10:33, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Not sure I understand your suggestion. As far as I can see, the nihongo2 template is for the kanji part only. I'd still have romaji and English to put somehow. Also, in which way do you consider the nihongo2 template "less obtrusive"? Are you referring to the nihongo templates in a particular table column or to all nihongo templates? bamse (talk) 18:14, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Compare (a) "Tegai Kanenaga (手掻包永)" = "Tegai Kanenaga (手掻包永)" and (b) "Tegai Kanenaga (手掻包永)" = "Tegai Kanenaga (手掻包永)". The former adds  ?  . -- Hoary (talk) 23:11, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I see what you mean. Does the additional stuff slow down page loading considerably? From an editor perspective, using the nihongo template is easier, since I don't need to think how to format the kanji/romaji/English. I also like it because it keeps things together: with the nihongo template, it is structurally clear that the three parts (kanji/romaji/English) belong together. If I use the nihongo2 template this is lost. (just like in LaTeX versus MS Word...) I noticed that the nihongo2 template has an option "help=yes". Can we have a "help=no" option for the nihongo template? bamse (talk) 23:50, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Surely we can't have such an option any time very soon. I don't suppose all this bloat adds up to many bytes by today's standards of graphics-laden (not to mention Flash-dehanced) websites. I see what you mean about structural clarity, but this is only in the Mediawiki preformatting and is lost in the XHTML, where the only useful part (in my view) of the nihongo template is the announcement to the browser that one part is in Japanese script. And you get that with the nihongo2 template. To me, it just looks like clutter: having lots of underlined question marks is rather like linking every single instance of "Japan" or "sword" or "museum". No, the huge drawback of agreeing with me that nihongo2 is preferable is that once you have a great number of nihongo tags then conversion to nihongo2 either requires programming or is a lot of work. I've done the work before but I'm not offering to do it here and I'm certainly not demanding it of you. I was just wondering if there was a reason I'd overlooked (and if there isn't, then nudging you toward nihongo2 in the future). -- Hoary (talk) 03:25, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for not being demanding (-). As you wrote, conversion is a lot of work and I'd rather not do that. I will keep nihongo2 in mind for future articles though. If somebody comes up with a script/bot/whatever way to automatically convert the nihongo to nihongo2 templates, I am happy to change it. bamse (talk) 09:30, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
 * OK then! -- Hoary (talk) 11:53, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Comments: Here are a few concerns which may need addressing. I apologize if they have been brought up already as I only skimmed the comments made above.
 * In the Ancient swords (jokotō) section, a shrine is listed as "Komura Shrine (小村神社), Hidaka, Kōchi". If the shrine is called "Omura Jinja" in Japanese, why is it listed here as "Komura Shrine"? Also in the same section, Shitennō-ji is linked twice in a row in the table.
 * Fixed double-linking to Shitennō-ji. Refs 14 and 36 have the name of the shrine as "Komura", while the Japanese wikipedia has it as "Omura". I changed it to "Komura jinja". bamse (talk) 18:54, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
 * It would seem that those refs just have the name of the shrine wrong. The train station right by the shrine is named Omura-Jinja-Mae Station, and shrine itself refers to itself as "Omura Jinja". I would recommend changing them to "Omura Shrine" and including a note explaining the contradicting romanizations. It seems silly to use an incorrect name simply because two sources couldn't be bothered to get it right. ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WikiProject Japan ! 20:02, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Changed it back to "Omura". The strange thing is that one of the references appears to be by a Japanese author and the other by a Japanese co-author. Could there be an alternative spelling? bamse (talk) 21:18, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, 小村 can be read both "Omura" and "Komura", so you often have to research how it really is read. ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WikiProject Japan ! 07:37, 20 September 2010 (UTC)


 * In the Yamato Province section, is there a reason why The Society for Preservation of Japanese Art Swords is redlinked twice in a row in the table? In fact, there are many instances of multiple linkings to the same article (or not-yet-existing article). Should some of these links be removed or the number of them reduced to avoid overlinking?
 * Per this, "each row should stand on its own", so multiple linking is permitted unless it occurs in the same table row. bamse (talk) 19:15, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay, that makes sense then. ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WikiProject Japan ! 20:02, 19 September 2010 (UTC)


 * There seems to be inconsistency in redlinking (at least to me). Some swordsmiths are redlinked many times, while others are not linked to at all. Is there a reason why some are linked (even if they are redlinked) and others are not?
 * I linked the more famous/important smiths, i.e. those that are more likely to get an article on en-wiki soon. As far as I understand that is how red-linking should be done. For the same reason I did not red-link some of the locations such as "Tsuchiura City Museum". (also see: MOS (red links)) bamse (talk) 19:08, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay. I think that if any of the smiths have a reasonably-developed article on jawiki, we should include a redlink here. Otherwise, I'm fine with having them unlinked. ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WikiProject Japan ! 20:02, 19 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Capitalization in the nihongo templates is not consistent with WP:MOS-JA. The capitalization of words should be the same as if those words were in English, i.e., proper nouns should be capitalized. For example, The Society for Preservation of Japanese Art Swords (日本美術刀剣保存協会) should be written The Society for Preservation of Japanese Art Swords (日本美術刀剣保存協会).
 * Done. Capitalized (hopefully) all such instances. bamse (talk) 21:08, 19 September 2010 (UTC)


 * This list seems to have fewer images than the previous national treasure lists you've created. Is this due to lack of images to include, or some other reason?
 * It is due to a lack of images. Please have a look at the very top of this page for the reason. bamse (talk) 19:08, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay, that makes sense. No worries, then. ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WikiProject Japan ! 20:02, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Outside of the above, I think this is a very well done list and I would support it becoming a featured list once these items are addressed. ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WikiProject Japan ! 17:47, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I think I addressed all of them. bamse (talk) 21:19, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Looks good. I Support this candidacy now. ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WikiProject Japan ! 07:37, 20 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Support Extremely thorough list on the topic, great work.  Jujutacular  talk 00:04, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Support Fascinating read, meets the standards. Courcelles 02:02, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


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