Wikipedia:Peer review/German–Japanese relations/archive1

German–Japanese relations
This peer review discussion has been closed. I've listed this article for peer review because…I substantially contributed to it during the past weeks and would love to see it being featured one day. Now, it not only presents a gapless evolution of German-Japanese relations, but is also well-organised and appropriately illustrated.

Thanks, Gliese876 (talk) 20:45, 5 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Mcorazao comments:
 * Don't have time for a full review at the moment but here are some observations:
 * References:
 * Referencing is not bad but more is needed.
 * Done --Gliese876 (talk) 00:10, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Each paragraph should have at least one citation.
 * Done (With the exception of one or two paragraphs. I think it's not necessary to explicitly reference the German date of surrender for instance) --Gliese876 (talk) 00:10, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
 * A lot of citations reference entire books. Page numbers have to be specified (otherwise other editors cannot practically verify what is being said).
 * Inline citations should go after the periods, not before.
 * Also, if the books are available on Google Books it is valuable to provide a link.
 * The lead section is too short. WP:LEAD says that it should summarize the entire article.
 * Images:
 * Lots of good images. Good staggering of the images left and right.
 * Some images do not have enough information to verify that they are being legally used (e.g. OshimaHiroshi.jpg).
 * Done --Gliese876 (talk) 00:10, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
 * In general do not put images on the left when there is indented text (e.g. lists). The formatting doesn't look right.
 * Try not to let images cross from one section to the next. The formatting looks ugly. Reorganize the images so the image is entirely in one section.
 * The images are lacking alt text.
 * Quotes:
 * Avoid unless you are actually doing a "pull" quote. The right template to use is.
 * In general block quotes (quotes that are separated from the prose and indented) should only be used for longer quotes (the usual guidelines is a quote of 4 lines or longer). Some of the block quotes in the article are only a single line and are better just kept with the rest of the prose.
 * Done --Gliese876 (talk) 00:10, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Use double quotes ("), not single quotes (') unless you have quotes inside quotes.
 * Done --Gliese876 (talk) 00:10, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Book titles should be in italics, not in quotes. E.g. "Nippon, Archiv zur Beschreibung von Japan"
 * Prose:
 * Some sentences here and there are rather long making them a little tedious to parse. Some general copy-editing, perhaps from a third party, would be good too.
 * Done (That is... as far as I was able to on my own) --Gliese876 (talk) 00:10, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
 * "Despite pre-dating cultural contacts, official German-Japanese relations started in 1871 with both the modern German and Japanese states being founded – through the foundation of the German Empire under the leadership of Prussia and the "abolition of domains and foundation of prefectures" ordinance in Japan." A bit long and awkwardly phrased. Also "Despite pre-dating cultural contacts" This can be interpreted different ways (is pre-dating a gerund or a participle?). I think you are trying to say, "Despite the fact that there were cultural contacts before this time".
 * Done --Gliese876 (talk) 00:10, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
 * "Japan and Germany state the second and fourth largest economies" What does "state" mean here? Are you saying that they claim to have the 2nd and 4th largest economies (the word respectively should be included)? Preferably this should simply say they have the 2nd and 4th and ideally say "according to ...".
 * Done --Gliese876 (talk) 00:10, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
 * "not taken in the strict sense of the modern nation state" Be careful about adding too many qualifiers to your statements. It makes things harder to read. If you are having to qualify too much it probably means you need to rewrite a little. Perhaps the "not taken in the strict sense" qualification should be made as a separate sentence.
 * Done --Gliese876 (talk) 00:10, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
 * "was active in supplying weapons to the force favourable to the Shogunate." This phrasing is unclear. Does this mean he supplied the armies loyal to the Shogun? Also, this is an example of a sentence which appears a little out of context. There is no transition between this statement and the previous one.
 * Done --Gliese876 (talk) 00:10, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
 * "infamous 'unequal treaties' Japan was forced into"
 * Use double quotes for "unequal treaties".
 * Done --Gliese876 (talk) 00:10, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The way this is stated it does not exactly sound like NPOV. For one there is not even an explanation of how they were "forced". Regardless, it is better to quote or paraphrase a notable historian or some other expert when trying to present these kinds of judgements.
 * Done --Gliese876 (talk) 00:10, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
 * "Knackfuss painting" An example of a case where the prose alludes to something without explaining it.
 * Done (Removed the reference on the Knackfuss painting and included the respective image in the article Yellow peril) --Gliese876 (talk) 00:10, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
 * "With Hitler fearing a stalemate with Great Britain, commencing to seriously plan for an invasion of the Soviet Union and Germany facing a shortage in raw materials and food[19], Berlin was also interested in a stronger alliance with Japan." Example of a long, awkward sentence.
 * Done --Gliese876 (talk) 00:10, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Some of the sections are a bit short. In general if a section has only one paragraph it probably should be merged.
 * Done --Gliese876 (talk) 00:10, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Some cases of non-English style creeping in. E.g. "700.000" instead of "700,000". Also "+15.4% to the previous year" is better phrased "15.4% more than 2005" or something similar.
 * Done --Gliese876 (talk) 00:10, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Make sure the dates follow WP:dates. E.g. "27 September, 1940" should be either "27 September 1940" or "September 27, 1940".
 * Done --Gliese876 (talk) 00:10, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Hope that helps.
 * --Mcorazao (talk) 06:40, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your comments! I'll try to address those issues over the coming weeks. I'd be happy to have a native-speaker rechecking my contributions here and independently correcting any errors or odd sounding bits. No matter how well one claims to speak English, it's quite difficult from time to time to ascertain whether a phrase sounds "awkward" or not. After all, I'm German - and we love excessively long sentences ;p --Gliese876 (talk) 14:22, 18 January 2010 (UTC)