Talk:Tenjin no Honji

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Tenjin no Honji/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: MPJ-DK (talk · contribs) 05:36, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

I am going to start reviewing this over the next couple of days, leaving notes as I go. MPJ-DK (talk) 05:36, 1 January 2019 (UTC) Hijiri88 - So after first pass of the article= I am finding a number of problems without even checking against most of the GA criteria. I'll start to outline them below to see if this is something we can pull in the right direction or not. MPJ-DK (talk) 08:08, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

1. General: 1 source, nothing else? It's no referred to in anything else? One source articles can be problematic and are hardly ever "Good Articles"
2. General: None of the Japanese words or terms are translated to English so it's rather hard to read some of this, every time you use a non-English word or phrase it really should be translated. Currently the article does not tell a non-Japanese speaking reader more than half the story. Based on the article I have no idea what "Tenjin no Honji" even means.
3. Lead: It is one line, and it doesn't tell me anything other than it's a "something" written on two scrolls. Per WP:LEAD The lead is the first thing most people will read on arriving at an article. It gives the basics in a nutshell and cultivates interest in reading on - this lead fails to do that
4. Plot: The plot needs a lot of grammatical work in addition to not making any sense with the Japanese terms not being translated etc.
5. Plot: "in the reign of the Engi Emperor" - from clicking the link I can see that Engi is an era with several emperors. The name of the actual emperor is not in the article. Similar to referring to "the president" of the first half of the 20th century. Confuses more than it helps the reader. Why is the actual name in a footnote?
6. Plot: Why is the main character referred to as "The Sugawara Minister"? Especially after his arrest I assume he's most definitely not a minister?
7. Plot: Why suddenly use a different name for the main protagonist? Why use the name "Kan Shōjō" and leave it up to a footnote to explain i? Confuses the reader
8. Plot: Jumps from being arrested and tied up to climbing a mountain - info is missing here, story jumped from A to K abruptly,
9. Genre and date: This feels inadequate, yes it tells us that it's " otogi-zōshi" and that's it, it is basically up to the reader to do their own research as to what that even means, as well as not explaining in what way it's of the otogi-zōshi genre. One piece of advice I got a log time ago in college is "Don't tell me what something is, show it"
10. Genre and date: "Probably" is a weasel work, try to rewrite and perhaps give the reader a date reference to put the Muromachi period in context,
11. Sources and themes: work is clearly based - again you tell me that this is the case, not why or how it is "clearly" this? Show me, don't just tell me.
12. Sources and themes: in particular the Anrakuji-bon textual line - I have no idea
13. Sources and themes: does the "Middle ages" refer to the same time period as in Europe? jus curious
14. General: No mention of the fact that this seems to be a fictionalised version of the life of Sugawara no Michizane? In an article on the scrolls and the story I would have expected to have the inspiration and real world implications included.
15. General: Check your link to Manabu Murakami - I don't think the professional wrestler also did research before he was born
16. dating Keian 1 - I don't understand the phrasing

• That is it so far, a lot of issues that need to be addressed and I've not actually completed my entire review. MPJ-DK (talk) 08:08, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

@MPJ-DK: Huh. You got to this somewhat faster than I expected; most GA nominations I've seen took months to get picked up by a reviewer. I'll thank you for picking it up so fast, although I actually expected to have a little more time to clean it up in advance of any reviewer actually looking at it. I've taken a stab at fixing a few of the problems you mention, working from the bottom up and will take another stab tomorrow. Those I looked at but feel uncomfortable addressing (at least with the sources I have on hand) or needed further commentary are address below.

1: It's always been my understanding that a single source is only a problem when it comes to bias and notability, but given the nature of the source the latter is definitely not a problem and the former ... yeah, I'll head to the library and look for more sources once it re-opens after the New Year holiday. Murakami cites a few sources, but I don't own any of them, they don't appear to be available online, nor could I find any other sources on a quick online search. I Matsumoto's article (see 11, below) verifies a part of this article's text, and I have quicker access to some other sources on otogi-zōshi, which might include material on Tenjin no Honji.

2-4: Thank you for the pointers. I'll work on addressing these, but since fixing the other problems might create more issues I'll address them last (Japanese terms might come and go, making translations either a waste of time or needing to be done over once more are added; editing the body means the summary in the lead might need to change; grammatical problems could sneak in at any time so these need to be checked last).

5-8: My plot summary is a pretty straight translation of Murakami's, so if it jumps around and the like that's probably a problem of Murakami's article, or even the original text. I'll have to re-read Murakami (and it's not exactly an easy read) to check if it's the former, probably tomorrow.

9: I took a stab at this. The version you checked was a straight rendition of what Murakami wrote, but you're the second person in the last few days to tell me that we can't rely on other Wikipedia articles to explain things like what an otogi-zōshi is. I'll need to work on this in general, but for this article I would appreciate if you could clarify whether my change has addressed your concerns.

10: How about this? I don't know of any way I can address this other than simply attributing it to Murakami. Or finding another source that goes into more detail.

11: This is the same as 10, since "clearly based" is Murakami's wording, but he doesn't elaborate. My guess is that he means that the contents are fictionalized and the fictional elements bear a resemblance to those of the other work. Takanobu Matsumoto's article on the Engi in the same encyclopedia says the same thing, but attributes it to both works presenting the suffering of a previous life of a god/buddha; I'll give Matsumoto's article a closer read to see if there's more to it soon, probably tomorrow. (As an aside, it turns out that the Engi has a variant title, Tenjin no go-honji, that is almost identical to this one; I kinda suspect some or all of my recently-added ELs might be wrong, based on this.)

12: Done?

13: Not exactly. A better definition is given in our medieval Japanese literature article, which is also now linked.

14: Will work on this. It's treated by Murakami as a given, so it can't be used; Matsumoto does say it, so I guess this could be addressed by moving the sections around and saying that the work is closely based on the Engi, an elaboration on how the aristocrat Sugawara no Michizane came to be revered as a god. ("fictionalized" is not really appropriate, since it appears to have been taken as basically factual.)

15: Fixed, with more than a little effort.[1][2] The wrestler, at least under his real name, is not a household name in Japan (a Googling brought up mostly pictures of a musician who doesn't even have a standalone article on ja.wiki), and so I had no reason to assume we had an article of that title; normally when I accidentally link an unrelated article on a wrestler or photographer or obscure manga character I notice immediately and fix it, but I appear to have slipped up here.

16: Done?

Sorry again for not having had (most of) this stuff done before you got here, but I'll hopefully be able to fix all of it by next week (not sure exactly when the libraries re-open...) at the latest.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 14:04, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

I picked one at random, so I guess it is the luck of the draw ;) and please do not rush, I got time here so no need to stress out over this stuff. MPJ-DK (talk) 14:25, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

@MPJ-DK: Technically the "one source" issue has now been dealt with, although I'm now gonna have to go through both of these articles (plus two more in books I managed to borrow) and see what can be double-sourced and what can be added to the article, which could be another little while, assuming I don't get distracted by a bear. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 15:56, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

• Hijiri88 - how long do you think? If it'll be more than a week can I suggest that we failed this nomination now, then when you are ready to resubmit for GA you can ping me and I'll do the review? that way you can take your time fixing stuff without a deadline looming over you? MPJ-DK (talk) 22:30, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

@MPJ-DK: It shouldn't take more than a week. I've skimmed Murakami 1966 (the second longest of the four) and it's all about textual criticism, which would perhaps be useful for FAC, but too much detail on a fairly niche aspect of the topic for this -- I didn't GA nominate Textual tradition of Tenjin no Honji. Its specifically supporting the otherwise WP:BLUE claim that the work is a honjimono is good, but I think I won't use it beyond that for this GAN. I'm gonna go through the other three today, tomorrow and maybe Saturday, and the work should be largely done by Monday -- certainly by Wednesday. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:31, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

• Not a problem at all. MPJ-DK (talk) 03:12, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

• I do however have an issue claiming that "it is a honjimono" is as obvious to everyone as "the sky is blue", that to me is not comparable at all. MPJ-DK (talk) 03:14, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

It's a moot point now, since I found a source, but (a) it's title is "the Honjimono of Tenjin" (honji and honjimono are essentially the same thing -- the former is used in the titles of individual works while the latter is the name retroactively ascribed by scholars to the "genre" -- I'm not entirely sure, but I think scholars apply the honjimono label to these works specifically because they have honji in the title -- and Tenjin is the name of a god), (b) it's generally not a good idea to take the assumption that such titles of works are meant to be "subversive" if a reputable encyclopedia article on the topic doesn't explicitly say so (WP:BURDEN means it's acceptable to debate whether Wikipedia can explicitly assume it's not subversive, which is why I added the self-critical comment to the article, which has now been removed), (c) a "honjimono" is defined (in the source I cited in the aforementioned comment) as being X and (d) this particular work is described as being X in Murakami 1983. These four points make it, to me, the kind of statement that some editors would say does not need a citation, which is what WP:BLUE is about -- not literally something that only a blind person couldn't see by looking outside. It's kinda like the statement that Civil War: A Novel of the Marvel Universe[3] is a novel (sorry, I couldn't think of any novel with a Wikipedia entry whose title has "A Novel" in it, and typing "A Novel of" into Google brought that up).

Again, it's a completely moot point, because I'm generally on the side of "We should cite sources for WP:BLUE claims" (at least when it comes to my own WP:BLUE claims) so that even if we agree that the above four points make this a WP:BLUE issue it wouldn't make a difference for the article.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:12, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

FWIW, if someone had only points (c) and (d) I would tag their content with , since that would not be WP:BLUE and would by definition violate NOR (see for example this). There is a crucial difference between having (a)-(d), as well as inserting a WP:COMMENT saying it would be best to have a source, then eventually finding a source, and just having a source that verifies that it fits certain arbitrary criteria and so calling it a honjimono with that source and letting it go. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:18, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

So at this point I'll just say that I disagree, especially in what would be labelled as a "Good Article", do whatever you want with that information. MPJ-DK (talk) 04:21, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

I don't get it -- you disagree with what, exactly? You say "especially in what would be labelled as a Good Article", but there is literally no difference from the article's point of view between your point of view that "This needs a source" and my point of view that "Others might think this doesn't need a source, but I'd prefer to cite one anyway". The information is now reliable sourced to a scholarly publication that says "Tenjin no Honji is a honjimono", and I did that spontaneously before you asked me to do so. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:40, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Doesn't matter, as you said it is moot in this case so let's make progress on an actual article than discuss theoreticals. MPJ-DK (talk) 04:50, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

• Based on the retirement of the nominator and that editor being the only sigificant contributor I am going to go ahead and fail this. If there is an unretirement it can be nominated again. MPJ-DK (talk) 00:39, 11 January 2019 (UTC)