Talk:Khalili Collection of Islamic Art

Primary tag

Well, it's a bit of a shock to see an article of this quality having a "Primary" tag slapped on it, but on inspection it's plainly correct -- a large number of the sources are commissioned by Khalili and are thus not independent.

On a closer look, the reason for that becomes apparent: most of the article is descriptive of the collection, i.e. "this is what it contains", and that can hardly help being primary.

What is missing, therefore, is not just secondary sources per se, but secondary accounts and analysis of the collection's value, purpose, implementation, issues, relationships to other collections, and matters of that kind. Those would naturally fall into one or more separate sections which might be headed "Reception" or "Scholarly analysis". Such sources are what Wikipedia takes as demonstrating notability, WP:N; I am not about to slap a Notability tag on the article, but the text is at the moment, er, notable for its paucity of reliable secondary and tertiary sources, so that's the issue. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:34, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

@Chiswick Chap: Thanks very much for this input. There has been a lot of scholarship published about the collection and the present article is tiny compared to what there could be based on reliable sources, but I'm facing a practical difficulty at the moment in getting physical access to the published books. I'll do another comb through relevant scholarly papers. I think there are more third-party sources cited in this than in a typical Wikipedia article, but in the context of the sheer quantity of citations this article has it may appear not to be many. I agree with you that the notability of the topic is not in question. MartinPoulter (talk) 16:51, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

I've made a symbolic start (more a tithe of mint and cumin than anything substantial, I'm afraid). I thought you'd have free access to Khalili's library... maybe post-Covid. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:58, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

@Zoozaz1 and Chiswick Chap: I've removed some citations to the KC web site (which were often redundant anyway), put in more third-party sources, and added to the sections "Khalili Collections" and "Reception". Like Chiswick Chap says, I think we need to cite the official web site to get the most up-to-date counts of types of object in each part of the collection. The linked pages on the official web sites are almost always extracts or summaries from volumes of the official catalogue, which are books with ISBNs by credentialled experts. So I hope things are at least moving in the right direction. I want to ask Chiswick Chap about the comment added under the Activities section. Can you give a more concrete example of what you imagine the lists of exhibitions and publications would be like if not "from Khalili Collection's point of view"? The publications can be verified by third-party sources like library databases and the exhibitions usually got media coverage, but the list from the official site is more complete. Cheers, MartinPoulter (talk) 14:41, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

What it would be like would be a 3rd-party scholar, journalist or author writing about or reporting on what Khalili was up to, its good points, and its issues (how about we report someone saying "great having a brilliant set of artefacts, now how about making them available to the public", etc.), rather than just Khalili staffers documenting what there is. The latter is of course necessary but it doesn't establish notability (WP:N, a core policy, requires secondary sourcing - it's not too long, and is well worth reading), nor does it do anything to provide a rounded picture. For a political analogy, if we were to write on Donald Trump using nothing but official statistics and Trump press statements, we'd have a distinctly one-sided article, no? All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:03, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

I do agree with many of these concerns (I originally tagged it as having too many primary sources). One source I added that could be used more (which has already been done to an extent) is "The Khalili Collection of Islamic Art" which is a good example of a secondary source and an outside perspective that I don't think was commissioned by Khalili. Zoozaz1 talk 15:21, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

@Chiswick Chap: Thanks for your feedback and your improvements to the article. Could you clarify if your concern is about the article as a whole or about those lists? For the record, in the present version of the article references 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 15, 16, 17, 19, 24, 26, 28, 34, 39, 41, 45, 46, 55, 67, 80, 81, 82, 91, 94, 96, 97, 100, 101, 102, 103, 105, 106, 107, and 108 are from "a 3rd-party scholar, journalist or author". Most of the rest are from official scholarly catalogues of the collection which, as you've pointed out, are necessary for writing about the collection. I've asked you specifically about the lists in the Activities section but your response describes the article as though it doesn't have third-party secondary sourcing at all.

There's definitely an issue of where the fair balance is between independent third-party sources and Khalili publications in sourcing this article, reasonable people can differ, and I'm looking for feedback to establish that right balance. This isn't a notability question; it's clear that the topic of the article is notable according to WP:N. I direct you to the parts of that policy that say "Notability is a property of a subject and not of a Wikipedia article." and "Notability guidelines do not apply to content within articles or lists". There are third-party reviews of the books, and you can see yourself that I've cited those in the article wherever possible, albeit usually in the section about the relevant collection rather than the section about publications. Can I take it that if the Reception section is expanded with more use of third-party perspectives (like the one User:Zoozaz1 suggests (thanks!)) it will meet the notability criterion in your view? There are third-party sources with more detail about how Khalili has toured exhibitions, so there can be more about "availability to the public" if you think the article doesn't cover that aspect enough. On that theme, the Khalili Collections also have a partnership with Google Arts & Culture although I haven't put that in for the exact reason that it seems to lack third-party sourcing. Cheers, MartinPoulter (talk) 14:11, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

I think we're talking past each other.

The "third-party" sources you cite seem to me to do very little to further the impression that the article is balanced and neutral. For instance, refs 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19 may be penned by third parties, but all they do is report what Khalili has said or done, without independent comment. Refs 3, 4, 5, and 6 seem to say the collection is "important" and "comprehensive" (whatever that is) without adding anything to the adjectives; Ref 26 is used to say there is a specific folio in the collection, i.e. it's again purely a description of what is there, without third-party comment. There is a pattern here, no? Let's look at one or two more, just to check: 103, 104, and 105 are again purely descriptive; 106 offers praise from Apollo, at least independent thought, though a little more (critical?) detail would be useful. On clearing the WP:GNG, yes, the article has some non-Khalili sources so it passes that (extremely low) molehill; that doesn't make it non-primary or balanced, however.

As for ref 108, I added it, so thanks for citing it back to me; your adding 107 is however an improvement to the reception section, and the right direction for the article: more of that is what is needed. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:41, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

On the lists, since you insist, I personally think they do nothing for the article; I normally remove such things from article's I'm working on, either deleting them or splitting them off as list articles on the off-chance that anyone will want to read them. My personal view is that despite the very weak statements in policy, list items should be cited like anything else; after all, if anyone can add an uncited list item, how do we verify it's not nonsense? i.e. WP:V says that the statements in other policies about lists don't make a lot of sense, really. If you like, I can say I'm challenging your lists under WP:V, and then you're mandated to cite them. Or if you like, don't mention it, and I won't either.

There remains a very strong primary feeling to this article. If there are so many independent voices, where is all the criticism? Most of the non-Khalili sources remain purely descriptive, so they may be independent, and some of them may even be scholarly, but they are being _{terribly quiet} at the moment. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:41, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

@Chiswick Chap: Thanks for the requested clarification; we were indeed talking past each other. You raised your concerns about Notability in the context of a question about the list parts of the article. We've now agreed that the topic of the article clears the Notability criterion by a wide margin. The "pattern" you've found is that the claims of the article are substantially based on third-party secondary sources as required by WP:N. Going back to the point with which you started this thread, you're right that it's more important for us to summarise descriptive facts about the collection than what people think of it, so it's no surprise that most of the sources of the article are used to support factual statements. (Do you think that being secondary implies making evaluative statements? That would explain the misunderstanding.)

Now you've specified a concern about neutrality (which is WP:NPOV rather than WP:N). It's fair to ask for more evaluative content in the article, but how do we do this without making it look more unbalanced? Take a look at the first paragraphs of the source Zoozaz1 linked — which we've agreed is a suitable third-party secondary source. It's positively hagiographic in a way that would be inappropriate for Wikipedia, although certain factual statements can be summarised from it, which I am still doing. Where there's commentary, a lot of it follows the pattern you've observed of calling the collection "important", "comprehensive" etc. I'll continue to add quoted evaluative statements like I did with ref 107. Cheers, 16:06, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by SL93 (talk) 05:25, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

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• Comment or view
• Article history

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Astrolabe in the Khalili Collection

• ... that the Khalili Collection of Islamic Art includes an exceptionally large 17th century astrolabe (pictured) commissioned by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan? "[T]he astrolabe was produced between 1648 and 1658 [...] This astrolabe is now with the Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art at London [...] It is amazing that, in spite of the huge dimensions of the astrolabe, all the lines, arcs and circles are flawlessly engraved [...]. Finally, it will be shown that the astrolabe was created for no less an exalted personage than Shah Jahan himself." [1]

• Reviewed: Open university

Note that a small portion of this article (the lists under Exhibitions and Publications) is copied from an existing document but this is allowed as it is free content. The source document has a CC-BY-3.0 licence and an attribution template is included at the top of the References section.
Moved to mainspace by MartinPoulter (talk). Self-nominated at 16:24, 11 May 2021 (UTC).

• This article is new enough and long enough; the original text was copied from the article Khalili Collections (3936 B) and this needs to be five-times expanded, and in fact it has been. The hook facts are cited inline, the article is neutral, and I detected no copyright issues (although Earwig produced a 90.4% likelihood of violation). The image is appropriately licensed and a QPQ has been done. The outstanding issue is with the tags. Ping me when the issues have been addressed, and I can complete the review. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:24, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

• This nomination is now good to go. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 05:37, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

Location Data Lacking

Could we get some accurate location as to where these collections are located. Seems like a major gap in the article. Thanks! Hoktiwe (talk) 04:17, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

@Hoktiwe: For collections that are on public display, the location would be very relevant but in the case of a private collection we wouldn't expect their location to be public information. In effect, that would be asking a public individual to say where they keep their most valuable posessions. The headquarters of the Khalili Collections are shown in the overview article; are you saying that information needs to be in the article about each collection? MartinPoulter (talk) 10:09, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Art 353 Art of the Islamic World

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 16 January 2024 and 14 May 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Dana-11223 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by A-zheng97 (talk) 23:21, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Dana-11223 Hi, I've undone this edit that you made to the article. On Wikipedia, we don't make recommendations or interpretations like "It is important to understand...", just description. We also need to take care to use proper spelling and grammar. I recommend finding something that a third party has said about the collection and summarising that. Best wishes, MartinPoulter (talk) 10:29, 5 May 2024 (UTC)