Wikipedia:Peer review/Manga/archive1

Manga

With the significant work to reference this article within the past couple of months, it is an easy Good Article candidate. It just barely missed being a Good Article because of one few unreferenced section, which has now been fixed. However, I want to go one step further and see just how close this article is to being a Featured Article and what needs to be improved to reach that status. My main concern is that it may be over referenced.

Thanks,

Farix (Talk) 16:50, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Reply You may be right, but without more details about what references might be excess, unnecessary, or redundant, there weren't any guidelines for removing citations. So they were all kept pending such input. Timothy Perper (talk) 16:54, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

• A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style. If you would find such a review helpful, please click here. Thanks, APR _t 01:12, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

• A stub or something for Kyoto International Manga Museum would be nice.

Reply It already exists. Timothy Perper (talk) 16:54, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Why no pre-WWII pictures? In fact, this goes for the entire article. The subject is intensely subjective and visual - it's about art! - and so too many pictures is not enough. A picture of a manga cafe would be good too, or perhaps a picture on a train where everyone is reading manga. It's one thing to say it's a major part of modern life, and another to actually show it.

Reply Not enough room to put in all the pictures we need. There have been discussions about this for months, but no simple solution has emerged. Timothy Perper (talk) 16:54, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Also, it seems to have an odd focus. In the post-WWII section, we have 2 sections on Shojo (which is all well and good since Shojo is a very important category of manga) and then we jump straight to '3 Manga publications'. ...what? There are other important genres to be covered, from shonen to American-style murder mysteries and suspense to the early sci-fi and mecha stuff, too.

Reply This has been fixed by inserting completely new, heavily referenced sections on manga for male readers and on gekiga manga. Timothy Perper (talk) 16:54, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Reply Added later. The new sections are major additions to the article, not merely a sentence or two. Timothy Perper (talk) 20:39, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

In general, I'd like to see more pictures/screenshots, particularly if they are spaced out in time such that you can see the evolution from the most primitive '40s era manga art-style to the slickest modern one, or if they illustrate the various 'styles' of manga (like 4-koma or full page spreads like Blade of the Immortal uses, etc.);

Reply Not enough room for the pictures. I wish there were room. Timothy Perper (talk) 16:54, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

a section on the intertwined relationship of anime and manga; and a finer-grained breakdown of sections - they are pretty monolithic.

Reply Again, not enough room to go into anime-manga connections.

--Gwern (contribs) 02:11 22 December 2007 (GMT)

• Under the dōjinshi section, I find the part about omakes to be out of place especially because it's mentioned before defining dōjinshi. Omakes is not only a part of dōjinshi. Maybe move the omake part under publications? Toothpyx (talk) 17:51, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Reply I agree that the dojinshi section -- the whole publication section, in fact -- needs a lot of work. But it's not my area of expertise, and I can't do it. Someone else will have to fill in here. Timothy Perper (talk) 16:54, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

• A few things about the article, in no particular order.

First, there's some excess detail. In statements like "Another example is CLAMP's Magic Knight Rayearth, whose three young heroines, Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu, are magically transported to the world of Cephiro to become armed magical warriors in the service of saving Cephiro from internal and external enemies." the names of the planet and the heroines should be removed to focus the reader's attention on what matters. Perhaps the example should be removed entirely. I suggest searching for other places where the article gives too much detail.

Reply It seemed unwise to remove Magic Knight Rayearth, since it is one of the most popular manga in both Japan and the US. Removing the heroines' names deletes only a few words. But without more details about other examples you consider excess, unnecessary, or redundant, there wasn't much else I could do about this issue. Timothy Perper (talk) 16:54, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Second, there's a fruit salad of orthographic styles. The same name is written variously, for example with or without macrons, or with long vowels written as ou. Japanese words suffer the same fate (shojo and shōjo, for example). Is "Aikawa Minwa" correct? There's a spelling error in the transliteration of Versailles.

Reply Yes, Aikawa Minwa is correct. Versailles has been fixed. Sometimes the macrons are missing in the original titles and references, and we can't add them without getting those titles and references wrong. Perhaps you yourself could correct other mistakes when you find them? Timothy Perper (talk) 16:54, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

The article should be proofread with the goal of bringing it into accord with Wikipedia:Manual of Style. The abbreviation "lit." is unnecessary even if the explanations are kept (see "Do not use unwarranted abbreviations" in Wikipedia:Manual of Style). There are a few slashes. See "Avoid joining two words by a slash" in the Manual of Style. There are variations on styles (quotes, italics, no styling) the article uses for titles, foreign words, and words as words. There are several mixed citation styles (with inline citation and a footnote number), for example, "(Schodt 1986, p. 88)⁶ " . Are these dual-format citations required, or should they be simplified? "Bande Dessinée" has capital letters in one place where it should have lowercase. There are various abbreviations of "United States" (I noticed "U.S.A." and "US.") Spaces around a dash in the sentence "All of these innovations – strong and independent female characters, intense emotionality, and complex design – remain characteristic of shōjo manga up to the present day." result in a line beginning with a dash (when I view it on my screen). The Manual of Style specifies no spaces around dashes.

Reply Fixed these.

I don't think it's fruitful to explain "image-centered" as "pictocentric" and "word-centered" as "logocentric" in this article. Can we remove the explanations, which don't appear elsewhere in the article, and don't clarify (at least to me) the simpler terms?

Reply Those two words aren't explanations, they're the words used by the author being quoted. I think this is a matter of taste, actually, and I left them. Timothy Perper (talk) 16:54, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Some sentences need editing. "In 1969, a group of women mangaka later called "The Magnificent 24s" made their shōjo manga debut (the term comes from the Japanese name for 1949, when many of these artists were born)." (Which term?) Reply: fixed this. "Although sometimes manga are drawn centering on previously existing live-action or animated films.[17][18] (e.g. Star Wars)." I'm not sure of the point of the sentence "Although U.S. Occupation censorship policies specifically targeted art and writing that glorified war and Japanese militarism,[6] those policies did not prevent the publication of other kinds of material, including manga." Is it saying that policies permitted manga, or that policies permitted glorification of war and Japanese militarism in manga (but not in other forms of expression)?

Reply I changed "targeted" into "prohibited." Timothy Perper (talk) 16:54, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

English could substitute for a lot of foreign terms. Do extended glosses like "redisu / josei 女性 じょせい" really add to the word "ladies'" or should they be removed? Do we need a repeat ("This "Ladies Comic" subgenre (in Japanese, redisu レディース, redikomi レヂィーコミ, and josei) has dealt with themes of young adulthood")? Reply: fixed this. How many times is the German word bildungsroman necessary, and can the English term "coming-of-age," which it explains, substitute for it? In the English Wikipedia, most of these foreign-language terms should be removed, especially in articles to which Manga links, when the terms are explained in the article.

Reply: Bildungsroman is the correct technical term, and the one used by Wikipedia itself for the article. It is defined in an endnote. Timothy Perper (talk) 16:54, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Are all the people called "scholars" scholars? One is Takashi Murakami. He well might be; I don't know. Having skimmed the article on him, I don't get the impression of a scholar, but perhaps I missed something, or the article on him omitted his scholarship. (It covers artistic and entrepreneurial activities and mentions that he left a doctoral program.) The same word also describes Frederik L. Schodt. However, the article on him says that he is a writer, translator and interpreter famous for translating manga. Again, he might be a scholar, but writer, translator and interpreter don't add up to scholar. A scholar could write a book with a title like "Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics" but writing a book with that title doesn't automatically make him a scholar. Critical examination of the roles of these authors can help bring this article to the next level.

Reply I changed the word "scholar" to "author" and "writer" since it serves no purpose to debate Schodt's scholarship. Yes, he is a scholar, and one of the best in this field, but that's not the point here. Timothy Perper (talk) 16:54, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Separate from the word used for Murakami and Schodt, the quality of the references should be examined. For Good and Featured articles, Wikipedia wants sources that are progressively more reliable. When sources are marginal, ask whether the statements they support are important to the exposition. If they are, find better sources; if they're not, remove or reword the statements to avoid the need for those marginal sources. Aim for works that provide scholarship, rather than armchair sociology.

Reply The citations used are all of high reliability. Without a list of references you believe to be "armchair sociology," there isn't anything I can do about this issue. At another time, we can discuss my own credentials for making the choices I did, but not here. Timothy Perper (talk) 16:54, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Also, notes about the Constitution of Japan related to censorship reference Kodansha; it seems more useful to reference the Constitution itself (see the article on it for a link to Wikisource in English).

Reply This puzzled me at first, since the Kodansha encyclopedia citation we used takes one precisely to the Japanese Constitution itself, but then I realized that you probably don't know the encyclopedia. I added some page references and clarified the issue, I hope. Timothy Perper (talk) 16:54, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

The "Publications" section, prior to "Magazines," has no citations. Many of the statements could reasonably be challenged. The section is close to the border of what Wikipedia calls "original research."

Reply I agree. I did no work on this section, except for the Gegika section (which was completely rewritten and referenced). Several times on the discussion page, I've recommended that it be removed (except Gekiga) or moved to another article, but there has been no consensus on the issue. Future editors will have to take up this problem, since I will be making no further major additions or changes to the manga article. Timothy Perper (talk) 16:54, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Links need checking. The phrase "Mixx Entertainment/TokyoPop" contains two separate links to redirects that both lead to Tokyopop. Although it's not necessary to fix every indirect link in Wikipedia, I'd hope that editors aiming to bring an article to Good or Featured standing would make them all direct.

Reply. Fixed these.Timothy Perper (talk) 16:54, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Most of these are minor points. A thorough proofreading is time-consuming and tedious, but it can address many of the issues I've raised. This article is interesting, informative, and accessible. I'd like to see you pick the nits and get it the recognition it deserves. Fg2 (talk) 07:26, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestions, everyone. They have been very helpful, and I regret that I wasn't able to use all of them. Future editors will doubtless find them very useful.

I will now no longer be making any further major additions or changes to this article. Back in September 2007, when Peregrine Fisher and I started to work on it, we had a list of topics and headings we wanted to upgrade. That list is now complete, and I believe we were successful in significantly improving the article by adding quality writing and references (we added over 200 solid, reliable references). But that job is done now, so it is now up to other people to continue to work on this entry.

The only advice I'd pass on is that dealing with the bibliography may be tricky if you start deleting references wholesale or without asking if they are mentioned in other references (e.g., in what is known as an "op. cit." = opus citandum reference).

As some of you have guessed, I am what Wikipedians sometimes call an "expert." It is not alway a term of praise on Wikipedia, where -- I'm saddened by this, actually -- experts are treated sometimes scornfully, sometimes with hostility, and sometimes with outright dislike. Some editors are exceptionally welcoming, but not all by any means. So this has been a mixed experience for me, sometimes good, but often not pleasant at all. I frankly doubt if I will do any more detailed editing on Wikipedia again. Too much hostile, pointless bickering, too much petty backbiting, and too many naive wannabes trying to call the shots about things they don't know. But I will say it has been interesting.

Good luck with this article. Timothy Perper (talk) 16:54, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Timothy Perper (talk) 16:54, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

• Reply We've addressed many of these issues and concerns, but where do I describe them? Here? I'd like to comment immediately after the place each problem is mentioned. Please advise! Timothy Perper (talk) 14:57, 7 January 2008 (UTC)