Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Jewellery/archive1

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Jewellery[edit]

I spent over 2 weeks planning out how I was going to make major improvements to the article. I feel I have efficiently improved the article to a FA standard. I've provided citations, insights into the way different cultures view & use jewellery, good info & I've used entirely free use pics, no fair use ones in sight. This is a core topic & I feel it is good enough to make it to the main page... Thanks, Spawn Man 02:59, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I recognise that the article needs a LOT of work before it can become an FA. So, because of this, I withdraw my nomination. My ithdrawl is also partly to my soon to be on-off-absense on Wikipedia, so I will not have the time to fix requests... I'm sorry if this has inconvienienced anyone. Thanks, Spawn Man 00:51, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]


  • Argh! The balance of topics is all wrong:
    • Very little attention is given to a description of jewelry in general (e.g. types, materials, manufacture); much of this material is only briefly mentioned in the lead.
    • Strict splitting by continents is fairly counterproductive. A better approach would be to discuss Ancient Mediterranean jewelry in consecutive sections.
    • The choice of countries seems arbitrary (and, frankly, somewhat incomprehensible). Why France and England? And why do they get so much more treatment than the jewelry of the Ancient Near East (Sumeria, Assyria, Israel), which seems a rather more significant topic. The Padaung get more space than major civilizations. No mention of Russian jewelry (e.g. Faberge) at all. And so forth.
    • Tiffany & Co. gets a section longer than some countries?!
    • Nothing on the economics of modern jewelry?
    • No mention, as far as I can tell, of much of the seminal archaeology in the field, such as Schliemann's finds in Mycenae, Pu-abi's tomb at Ur, etc.
  • Plus, lots of uncited and rather questionable statements (e.g. "By the 5th century BC, the Celts had become the finest jewellers in Europe" or "At the present time, jewellery has never been so varied"). This really needs a lot more work before it's up to FA standards. Kirill Lokshin 03:30, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Is this an oppose? The "Jewellery by country/continent" theme was one which was discussed not by myself, but other editors & they thought it would be a good idea. I'm in no way suggesting we send the article to the main page in its present form, but instead by getting suggestions from on here, to improve it so it can meet criteria. I did the research to show a varied variety of different cultures. The page is already at 47 kbs long, & if we brought in russia, incas, inuit, island, thai, japanese, infact most other county's designs, the page could be extremely long. I tried to provide a selection of different times, major civilisations (hence England/China/France etc...), & different uses, (The padaung tribe use their jewellery for body modification, rather than pure decoration). I feel the content about materials etc is allowable. I've created a list of different types of jewellery on a separate page, which was approved by other members. I'll work on the lead, but there's not too much more to say other than what is there (eg, jewellery is anything used to adorn one'sself & is made out of any & ever material on earth.) If we split the article up into time periods, we'd still have to go into what each country's jewellery was like due to the fact that each country's pieces are different. The countries seclected are all in sections of time (eg, Egyptian jewellery goes from 5,000 years ago until recently when Islam rose). I will try & add a Russian section. I actually couldn't find much info on Middle Eastern designs at all would you believe!! The tiffany reference is being disscussed & will most likely be deleted or merged into a section on important jewellers in america. I only included it as the americas didn't turn up much info & I thought you americans would be insulted if I didn't inlcude lots of american stuff or one of their most important jewellers. The "celts were the finest jewellers" quote is referenced ya know. And the "jewellery has never been more varied" quote is probably true, as we now know designs from most time periods & have access to many more techniques & materials than ancient civilisations. I've made sure 90% of the article is sourced. For the rest of your comments, such as economy or special findings, I don't have the resources to write about them. For the findings, I thought you didn't want the article to be focussed on a single subject or place? To document those singular finds on here while neglecting others would be biased, & to write all of them out could take a life time... Thanks & I'll try & fix your concerns... Spawn Man 05:24, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think a lot of the size concerns come from the insistence on a split by countries in the first place. I would go with broader regions/periods, as follows:
  • Ancient Europe & Middle East
  • Asia
    • China
    • India
    • Islamic jewelry
    • Other Asian stuff (early Russia would go here, if there's anything meaningful to say)
  • Pre-Columbian Americas (keep this one fairly short)
  • Europe
    • Non-Roman European tribes
    • Middle Ages
  • Modern (no need to explicitly break down by country here; that level of detail is more appropriate to Jewelry of France than the main article)
    • Post-rennaissance Europe (including Romanov Russia)
    • American jewelry
That would be a significant rearrangement, but would, in my opinion allow you to save a lot of space by making use of the similarities in jewelry of various periods/regions. Kirill Lokshin 05:50, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I wont be able to do it soon, but later I'll give it a shot.... BTW wrote a brief-medium length piece on Russian jewellery from sources & a bit I missed in my own one... Thnaks,, Spawn Man 06:01, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • It can be improved by reducing links to solitary years. A monobook tool allows this to be done with one click on a 'dates' tab in edit mode. You can then accept or reject the changes offered and/or do more editing before pressing 'Save'. Simply copy the entire contents of User:Bobblewik/monobook.js to your own monobook. Then follow the instructions in your monobook to clear the cache (i.e. press Ctrl-Shift-R in Firefox, or Ctrl-F5 in IE) before it will work. Hope that helps. bobblewik 19:50, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Huh? Spawn Man 22:36, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Don't worry about it, I took care of it. Bobblewik: you might consider writing a separate page with those monobook instructions and linking to it in these FACs; it's a bit confusing. Mangojuicetalk 00:17, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • In my opinion the structure of this article needs a rethink - the third section (history) is like 90% of the article and there appears to be little substantive info compared to that. Also, saying it "probably" has been around the dawn of man without attribution in the lead, plus the lead itself strike me as inadiquite for the article. RN 06:16, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. In its current state, this is not representative of Wikipedia's best work. It spends so much space on history and culture surrounding jewelery that it doesn't really cover anything else readers might be interested in very well: for example, what role jewelery plays in modern society, who are some of the well-known jewelery makers, famous pieces of jewelery, jewelery in fiction, et cetera. I echo the concerns that there is too much (in an absolute sense) in the sections that go country by country. I think this would be very hard to do, but I think a good encyclopedia article on jewelery would tie together all cultures, mentioning various ones as it needed to to make its points about the history of jewelery. Each individual section is informative, but what's important in the history of jewelry are the big picture things: what it was made from, what it was used for, and how that changed over time. There are surely many parellels between the various cultures; if these were discussed first, the differences could be brought up and would stand out. What you're written is great stuff, though, it should just be forked out to some other articles. Another way of doing it might be to divide it up by material and/or form; this would flow more organically. Also, I'm not that big a fan of the pictures in the article. Specifically, I don't like the "woman with orange jewelery" picture; it's out of focus and doesn't illustrate something particularly interesting. I also don't like the hope diamond picture; for a 2.8 meg picture, it's awfully grainy and doesn't seem to have the right color balance. I am asking for a lot here, I know; probably too much to do during this FAC, but I wanted to offer useful suggestions for next time. Let me know if you want more specific feedback on a future draft. Mangojuicetalk 00:17, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
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