This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | ← | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 |
I made this a new section. Timothy Perper ( talk) 23:08, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
Timothy Perper ( talk) 23:28, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
One of the peer review comments mentioned that there were some serious problems with the dojinshi material currently in the entry. We've just started a new draft section to insert instead of what's there. It's at
User:Timothy Perper/SandboxDojinshi and although as of this moment, there's nothing on it, there will be. there are now some references. As always, everyone is invited over to comment and make suggestions. Thanks.
Timothy Perper (
talk) 15:47, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
Why cutted all images about "pre"history of manga? (These on History of manga.) Is the Museum photo the very important and most meaningful? Can these be here or there is some problem with it? -- Beyond silence ( talk) 02:25, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
-- Beyond silence 17:47, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
Huh? Timothy Perper ( talk) 15:47, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
An anonymous person just added this to the end of the publications section.
I put a "citation needed" tag on it and will leave it for a few days, then remove it unless citations are added. BTW, webmanga is a redirect. Timothy Perper ( talk) 14:16, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
The time has come for me to phase out my major involvement with the manga article. Back in September or so, when Peregrine Fisher and I began a major upgrade of the article, we set ourselves a list of topics and subheadings we wanted to improve. With the addition of the new shonen section, we have reached the end of that list.
I think we succeeded in moving the article closer to GA status, though it may not be there quite yet. We have also addressed some – not all! – of the peer reviewers’ comments, and in the next few days, I’ll complete my check of the references. That will end to my major work on the article.
Peer Review Comments Two major issues we did not address are Farix’s concerns about over-referencing and Fg2’s request that we remove examples.
Farix did not list any references that he thinks are redundant or unnecessary, so there’s really not much we can do to meet his concerns. In an article as dense and fact-filled as this one, Wiki Verifiability policy requires citations, so there are lots of references. References simply come with the territory.
Fg2 made only one suggestion for removing an example – he wanted us to remove Magic Knight Rayearth. Given how popular MKR has been here and in Japan, we did not take his suggestion. In general, examples flesh out abstract or general comments and make them vivid. They also serve to anchor the discussion in work the reader might know, and to introduce new readers to new material. So unless Fg2 gives other cases he wants removed, there’s not much more we can do with the suggestion.
Other peer review comments we have tried to address (accepting most of them). But we can’t guarantee that we got them all.
References I’ve been sounding off about references for some time. Helpful and good faith editors have made contributions, but have also added errors, particularly when they use the citation templates. Unless one knows what one is doing with these templates, they are very tricky to use. They also add length to an already long article.
I’ve corrected many of these mistakes plus others that have crept into the bibliography. However, I do NOT guarantee that the reference list is 100% perfect. I’ll continue to fix errors as I find them.
General It will be worthwhile for other folks to consider how to shorten the article. I do not own this entry and never did. Anyone can edit Wikipedia, so now it’s up to other people to make decisions about what to keep and remove in content and references both. The only advice I’d give is to be very careful with the references, since many of them appear throughout the article. If one removes base references (= references to which the op. cit.’s refer), one can create a real mess, since now the op. cit.’s have nothing to refer to (= orphan op. cit.’s). Playing with the references can severely degrade the quality of the bibliography very quickly.
Wikipedia footnote policy Wikipedia:Footnotes does NOT – repeat: NOT – mandate or require the use of citation templates. They are useful for inexperienced editors unfamiliar with the structure of a reference, but, as I’ve said to be point of distraction, can be sources of serious error if you do not know how to use them. I prefer direct referencing, but others will decide for themselves how to create new references and (re-)format existing references.
I’ll keep this article on my watchlist and make comments or minor edits from time to time. But after I’ve completed the final check of the references, I will phase out my major involvement with the manga article.
BTW, the text without the refs has about 6300 words by actual count. By print publication standards, that is quite reasonable, even a bit on the short side.
Timothy Perper ( talk) 15:18, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
One of the most entertaining features of this article is the endless warfare over Wikipetan. Now she's been put back again—after having been taken out several times and added back several times.
My impression is that the people who put her back this time have no idea at all how many times Wikipetan has been put in and taken out. Dare I suggest that these people didn't read the previous history of this entry? Yes, I dare suggest it. Should they read the previous history?
That's a harder question. I myself would, and perhaps other people would. But no rule on Wikipedia says you have to read about what happened before. So here she is again, folks, Wikipetan in all her glory!
This is genuinely funny.
Timothy Perper ( talk) 00:34, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
Whew, this adult version made me skip a beat. <3 Anyways, SeizureDog's argument does have merit. Yet, for item 1, "She does not come from a manga or any other comic of any kind", manga "discussed" in the article is under generic terms anyways. Though, I suppose that would imply the requirement of a "professional" manga image. Even so, some professionals like Ken Akamatsu have produced some amateur work submitted under doujin using a pseudonym. As for 2 and 3, yea. I agree. KyuuA4 ( talk) 22:46, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm fine with the image being used here as an example. If someone assumes that the example is the ONLY type of manga or anime style there is, then that's their own fault for being stupid. I do want to address one incorrect statement by SeizureDog, though: "moe" style is used in many manga aimed at adults. If you don't think it is, then you haven't been exposed to that much manga. Granted, it's not the only style (just as with children's manga, or young adult manga), but it's not an insignificant style in adult (not necessarily hentai) manga. ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjoe 02:01, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
I like Wikipetan too, but she was put in (this time) as the lead illustration for the whole article. That gives her (or whoever/whatever is in the lead position) the status of representing or symbolizing all manga for the reader. That image is the first thing the reader sees, and it says "Hey, I am manga, me!"
We're going over territory we've discussed before. If we use Astroboy (say), we're saying to the reader that Tezuka's now old-fashioned style stands for all manga since Astroboy; if we use Sailor Moon, we're saying that all manga can be legitimately represented by a single shōjo image; if we use Naruto or Light Yagami, we're saying that all manga can be legitimately be represented by those shōnen characters, and so on. And the same holds for Wikipetan. That was why we decided to use the manga calligraphy example at the start, because the word, in kanji, does represent all manga, and by definition.
That's why I am not in favor of using Wikipetan to introduce the article. I agree with SeizureDog that no matter how common this particular moe style may be, it is not representative of all manga. Nor is she even a manga character, as SeizureDog has said a number of times, and I agree with him. Yes, Wikipetan is cute, but so is Belldandy, Hikaru from MKR, and Chi from Chobits. This is not -- or it should not be, IMO -- a matter of throwing in My Favorite Manga character to stand for all manga.
One of the comments in the Peer Review was that we need more pictures (from User:Gwern). I agree with him, and there are logical places to put different images, including shōjo, shōnen, gekiga, and other images. But the opening image has pride of place, and we need to recognize that. So I agree with SeizureDog,
Timothy Perper ( talk) 14:44, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
-- Beyond silence 17:24, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
I just removed the B&W image of ghosts and other supernatural beings from the Overviews section, where it had been added recently by User:Beyond silence. The image is a detail of a larger woodblock print by the 19th century artist Kuniyoshi that shows a haunted house with its inhabitants scaring the hell out of several hapless people. It's one of Kuniyoshi's masterpieces (IMO) but has nothing whatsoever to do with manga at all, I mean, none. Second, the image was only a detail in B&W, and was not, IMO, a very good quality image (for one thing, it was too dark to show very much). Kuniyoshi has an entire entry of his own, which he deserves, but this image is not related to overviews of the history of manga, which is where the image was located. So I removed it. Timothy Perper ( talk) 15:21, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
Even though this section is not placed as a subsection of "Shōnen, seinen, and seijin manga", it only talks about these themes (Sex and women's roles) in a Shōnen manga context. This has to be fixed, either making "Sex and women's roles" a subsection of "Shōnen, seinen, and seijin manga" or re-wording it to also include info about the role of these themes in Shōjo manga. Personally I prefer the latter option, as it would make the article more balanced. Kazu-kun ( talk) 18:43, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
User:Beyond silence has put Wikipetan back against prior consensus, and without discussion restored an image I removed as poor quality and irrelevant to the text and to the article. My sense is that with these changes the article is heading away from GA. I also sense that User:Beyond silence is not willing to listen to consensus nor listen to the preferences and ideas of editors who have worked on this article for quite some time. He is, in my opinion, acting without consensus. He has also violated, I think, norms of courteous and civil discourse on Wiki, not only by using four-letter words but also by openly expressing his contempt for the editors here. Perhaps he feels that he can outwait us, and, by cursing and sneering, frighten us into accepting his bad manners.
I think this situation might have to be brought to WP:ANI.
Timothy Perper ( talk) 15:03, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure what the issue is here. Since we have some other free images to illustrate manga, we don't really need Wikipe-tan. Keep in mind, I normally encourage the use of Wikipe-tan images, but this is a situation where another image seems to be doing a better job. -- Ned Scott 05:28, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
There haven't been any comments on the peer review for a bit, and I believe all the comments have been addressed (including the applicable automated ones). Anyone have any additional comments or suggestions before we move this to WP:FAC? I think this article is a prime candidate. ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjoe 05:57, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
Fixed four more. So we're down 16 redlinks. Two of these were Japanese names given in the Japanese order in the article, where their Wiki article gives them in Americanized order. The rest are artists. Here's a list, to save time when searching.
Ramiya Ryo, Shungicu Uchida, Hakase Mizuki (be careful, there's another person with same name in Baku (spirit)), Sakurano Minene, Morishige (no other name is used), Johji Manabe (a major artist), Toshiki Yui, Jiro Chiba, Hiroyuki Utatane, Sekihiko Inui, Kei Taniguchi, and Sena Aritou. (N=12) If you search for them in the article, their work will appear.
Timothy Perper ( talk) 19:39, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
Great. Not too much more... and thanks for catching the name inversions. I'm going to update a couple of references -- for example, Katsu Aki's Futari Ecchi was just released by TokyoPop as Futari Etchi: Manga Sutra.
The unfinished ones are Toshiki Yui, Jiro Chiba, Hiroyuki Utatane, Sekihiko Inui, Kei Taniguchi, Sena Aritou, and Toren Smith.
Timothy Perper ( talk) 04:08, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
Going good. One more artist to create is Ebine Yamaji, who is in the article but not redlinked. She's a redisu mangaka. Once she's in, I'll link her in the text. Timothy Perper ( talk) 23:26, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
The FA criteria are listed here. Do we now meet all of them? I'm going to link Yamaji now. ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjoe 06:00, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
Another question: should the "see also" section be above the references? I understood the references are generally at the bottom unless there is an external links section. ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjoe 06:06, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
For FA - I'm going to guess "length" will become an issue. The material under History and Characteristics can be summarized and completely transferred over to the History of manga article, by which the material that's already there can be completely replaced. History of manga then would be instantly improved. Right now, this article is nearing 100 KB. KyuuA4 ( talk) 17:27, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
It's been a couple days since the last comment. Are there any others who wish to make comments before we take this to FAC? ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjoe 01:55, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
I removed a wikilink to odenbo added 08:38, 24 January 2008 by Georgiacatcrimson (see History). The odenbo entry is merely a list of unsourced opinions without any citations and is therefore unreliable original research. Timothy Perper ( talk) 13:32, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
According to the check-external-links program on the FAC discussion page, there were a couple of dubious URLs. I checked them, and fixed one, which now works right. The others were OK. Timothy Perper ( talk) 14:59, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I was reverted because of no discussion, but I don't really see why they would need to be discussed.
Any justification for keeping them?-- SeizureDog ( talk) 20:07, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
On the FAC discussion page, SeizureDog wrote:
I would like to nominate the article for WP:GAC review but I have a question: why are a lot of the accessed dates and the like not wiki-linked? Lord Sesshomaru ( talk • edits) 15:50, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
There are/were several reasons not to use the templates.
(1) It wastes space in the work space by adding many items that will end up blank. We're talking about kilobytes here given that there are so many references. Space and length have been issues with this article from when I started working on it. I personally don't care if the template is used, provided the person using it knows what they're doing. If space isn't an issue for you, then by all means use the template. If it is an issue, set them up manually.
(2) A number of people, well-meaning and in good faith, have tried to "fix" the references. I'll skip the details; some of those people did NOT know what they were doing and ended up deleting references wholesale or inserting the fields incorrectly with the result that translators were named as authors (to give one example). Other things went wrong as well, like getting the name of a website confused with its URL. It was, please believe me, a mess. Unfortunately, none of these folks came forward and said "Oops, let me fix that" but left it to yours truly to manually fix all the mistakes. Which I did. If you try to fix the references, make sure that you use the templates properly.
(3) Not all references fit the templates, for example if a cited source has multiple authors writing something in an edited book. So I did them manually.
(4) The templates were created for users who are by and large not familiar with bibliographic techniques. They provide a "follow the dotted line" model that will get the basic information into the bibliography, but can't handle stuff beyond that. The templates work fine for simple references, but once one is beyond that, well, problems start.
(5) One class of references needs special care, those with "op. cit." in them. The templates do not provide for this and they have to be inserted manually. If you try to delete them, then a whole bunch of statements will either end up without page references (which is useless with long books, like Schodt's books) or will be unsourced (which is even worse).
(6) The Wikipedia guidelines for references do not require the use of the templates, and I found it faster and easier to insert references manually (thereby saving space). But, as I said, that's up to you.
Timothy Perper ( talk) 00:01, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
Okay...it looks like someone just sent this up for GA before we were ready :( AnmaFinotera ( talk) 03:02, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
Sesshomaru left me a note on my talk page:
I don't think the question is offensive. Let me try to answer.
You said I "fixed the references" -- what I did was checked them for accuracy, especially the URLs, but that didn't mean I put them into this or that format. They were at the time all OK, meaning they were accurate. I said then that I couldn't assert the references were 100% accurate but it was pretty good.
Why didn't I format or reformat them? I did some, and several people responded with considerable anger here on the talk page. There's no sense in rehashing that argument, but it certainly convinced me that my efforts were producing hostile responses and not any kind of consensus, let alone cooperation. So I quit doing that, and, in fact, completely stopped editing the article. Nor do I have any plans to return to it in any major way, though I check my watchlist and will respond to questions like this one.
The second reason is time and effort. It takes a lot of work to format/reformat 200+ references (which is what it then was, before Nihonjoe removed a great deal of material from the history and characterization section). It's also a thankless task, literally in this case, and I admit that I am getting tired of being attacked by other "editors" who do not like what I am doing. Well, in a sense, those editors have won the battle -- they got me off this project.
They also stopped me midstream in various efforts to format the references consistently and clearly, but that is no longer my problem. Nor is the issue of this article being FA or GA. Neither nomination was my idea, and I feel that the article as it stands has a variety of quite serious problems. Some sections lack citations completely and are close to OR (e.g., dojinshi, awards). Entire topics are left out, for example an up-to-date discussion of the visual artistry of manga and its characteristic aesthetics. The issue was made worse for me personally because the people criticizing my work were not themselves writing their own contributions to the article. It's like trying to build a house while people on the sidewalk throw stones at you.
I am answering in this much detail because there's a deeper issue involved here. It's how people work together -- or do not! -- on Wikipedia. There is a group of people who feel that being registered on Wikipedia means that they can tell everyone else what's wrong with what the other guy is doing. After a while, working on Wikipedia is a mug's game, as the saying goes -- we can get some things done, but only until someone else removes it all. There is no stability or progress in a Wikipedia entry because all articles are always vulnerable to arbitrary editing and removal of material. For example, in my original discussion of shojo manga, I had included a sentence about Riyoko Ikeda's Rose of Versailles, one of the first genuine masterpieces of shojo, indeed, all manga. Another editor posted a furious criticism of that sentence, and still another editor removed the sentence. So, if you ask "What kind of history of manga leaves out the Rose of Versailles, the answer is, why, the Wikipedia history, of course!"
I am answering more than simply your question about why I didn't format all the references. I'm also explaining why I'm not going to do that nor make any more contributions to this article. It is simply not worth my time or effort battling editors whose main contribution is to attack and remove material. I didn't finish the formatting job because these editors have been attacking me for months.
If the article came up for a GA vote right now, and I could vote, I'd oppose the nomination. The article has a fair amount of OR, it omits crucially important topics, and the reference formatting is a mess. And that is from someone who wrote and referenced most of the what the article now says, all the time inviting people to comment on my Sandbox pages where Peregrine Fisher and I were constructing the new material (see User: Timothy Perper/SDBXIndex for a full list). But, with the phrase "Anyone can edit Wikipedia" comes a responsibility. If you want the article to meet GA or FA standards, you have to contribute systematically and carefully. This article is not my property and I do not own it. So it's now up to you.
I hope that explains a bit more about my experiences and decisions. If not, please ask, and I'll try to explain further.
Timothy Perper ( talk) 16:07, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
One last comment. I just checked the article and the fixed-up references seem OK now. I'm talking only about the ones in the list above, not the general bibliography -- I didn't go over the whole thing. Let me know if there are other ones you want me to look at. Timothy Perper ( talk) 10:27, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
Yes, Sesshomaru asked me to do these "Timothy Perper-style." So I did.
On Sesshomaru's talk page, he asked about the dates on refs 10, 21, 24, and 61. I have no idea how to handle refs #10 and 61, and didn't change anything. The only dates on 21 and 24 are the access dates, which I left alone. Is that what you need to know?
Timothy Perper ( talk) 16:32, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
I see that the kobolds or something are at it again, putting mistakes into the manga article. Well, as I've said before, I'm not doing any more work on this article. For the newbies and kobolds, if you look at the history of this article, you'll find that I wrote and referenced much of it. But no more. If you want it to reach GA status, then you'll have to find the mistakes yourselves. Hint: pull up the complete article and search for "newd." It's going downhill fast, guys. Timothy Perper ( talk) 15:00, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria
Pre-review comment: Before I begin reviewing, I've read through the talk page and am a little concerned with recent discussions, particularly the one immediately preceding this section - comments such as "It's just Wikipedia, don't worry too much about it." don't bode too well for an article about to be reviewed. I will remain as neutral as possible, however I will also be taking those discussions into consideration.
Post-review overview: The fears I had noted above are confirmed. This article needs a lot of help.
Record of edits:
Recently, someone added the words "kanji," "hiragana" and "katakana" adjacent to the Japanese for "manga" at the very start of the article. Person #2 then reverted these three additions as "vandalism." Before that, Person #3 had added the hiragana and katakana spellings for "manga," but then yet someone else removed them also calling the added kana "vandalism."
Both additions -- the two kana plus the names hiragana and katakana -- are correct. They are minor additions, but they are not vandalism. The two people who reverted them acted, I believe, without knowing any Japanese. I added some spaces and semicolons, to make the additions typographically clearer, but these changes are not vandalism.
Please, folks, don't revert something if you don't know what you're doing.
Timothy Perper ( talk) 12:50, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
I didn't put the explanatory terms -- someone else did. I thought and think it was an accurate, if minor, addition, Here's why.
Here's the original (and present, because reverted) version:
If one is familiar with Japanese, then it is obvious that the first two characters are kanji, and are nearly identical to the first illustration in the article. The next three are obviously hiragana, and the final three are katakana. That's if one can read Japanese. If one can't, then this string of 8 symbols means nothing and is useless.
Whereupon someone added the expnanatory terms kanji, hiragana, and katakana, and I added the word "in" and the semicolons, thus:
Manga in kanji 漫画; in hiragana まんが; in katakana マンガ
I didn't put the explanatory terms -- someone else did. I thought and think it was an accurate, if minor, addition. The modified version, which Sesshomaru likes and so do I, is linked to an "Help" article on Japanese orthography, which ought to explain what the terms kanji, hiragana, and katakana mean. OK, the reader who knows no Japanese can say, there are three ways to write Japanese, and here they are.
An informative, if minor addition --nothing more.
So why revert it? Sounds silly when the situation is explained like this, now, doesn't it. My own response is to leave it alone, shrug, and do something else more productive than insult other editors (like AnmaFinotera did with me). This is an issue to be resolved -- a non-issue, I think -- by a few comments like these on the discussion page, and AnmaFinotera no longer has ruffled feathers and no longer thinks my comments are nonsensical and meaningless.
So far as I'm concerned, that's the end of it. Do it the way Sesshomaru suggested, and go on to other things. If the template is being used somewhat differently, so what? Who cares, as long as the reader now has accurate information?
Timothy Perper ( talk) 21:23, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Since there have been no objections or further discussion, I added the hiragana and katakana to follow the kanji for "manga." I also labelled them so the reader knows which is which. It is, as I said, a minor addition at most. I hope it causes no further problems in peoples' minds. Timothy Perper ( talk) 13:52, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | ← | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 |
I made this a new section. Timothy Perper ( talk) 23:08, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
Timothy Perper ( talk) 23:28, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
One of the peer review comments mentioned that there were some serious problems with the dojinshi material currently in the entry. We've just started a new draft section to insert instead of what's there. It's at
User:Timothy Perper/SandboxDojinshi and although as of this moment, there's nothing on it, there will be. there are now some references. As always, everyone is invited over to comment and make suggestions. Thanks.
Timothy Perper (
talk) 15:47, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
Why cutted all images about "pre"history of manga? (These on History of manga.) Is the Museum photo the very important and most meaningful? Can these be here or there is some problem with it? -- Beyond silence ( talk) 02:25, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
-- Beyond silence 17:47, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
Huh? Timothy Perper ( talk) 15:47, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
An anonymous person just added this to the end of the publications section.
I put a "citation needed" tag on it and will leave it for a few days, then remove it unless citations are added. BTW, webmanga is a redirect. Timothy Perper ( talk) 14:16, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
The time has come for me to phase out my major involvement with the manga article. Back in September or so, when Peregrine Fisher and I began a major upgrade of the article, we set ourselves a list of topics and subheadings we wanted to improve. With the addition of the new shonen section, we have reached the end of that list.
I think we succeeded in moving the article closer to GA status, though it may not be there quite yet. We have also addressed some – not all! – of the peer reviewers’ comments, and in the next few days, I’ll complete my check of the references. That will end to my major work on the article.
Peer Review Comments Two major issues we did not address are Farix’s concerns about over-referencing and Fg2’s request that we remove examples.
Farix did not list any references that he thinks are redundant or unnecessary, so there’s really not much we can do to meet his concerns. In an article as dense and fact-filled as this one, Wiki Verifiability policy requires citations, so there are lots of references. References simply come with the territory.
Fg2 made only one suggestion for removing an example – he wanted us to remove Magic Knight Rayearth. Given how popular MKR has been here and in Japan, we did not take his suggestion. In general, examples flesh out abstract or general comments and make them vivid. They also serve to anchor the discussion in work the reader might know, and to introduce new readers to new material. So unless Fg2 gives other cases he wants removed, there’s not much more we can do with the suggestion.
Other peer review comments we have tried to address (accepting most of them). But we can’t guarantee that we got them all.
References I’ve been sounding off about references for some time. Helpful and good faith editors have made contributions, but have also added errors, particularly when they use the citation templates. Unless one knows what one is doing with these templates, they are very tricky to use. They also add length to an already long article.
I’ve corrected many of these mistakes plus others that have crept into the bibliography. However, I do NOT guarantee that the reference list is 100% perfect. I’ll continue to fix errors as I find them.
General It will be worthwhile for other folks to consider how to shorten the article. I do not own this entry and never did. Anyone can edit Wikipedia, so now it’s up to other people to make decisions about what to keep and remove in content and references both. The only advice I’d give is to be very careful with the references, since many of them appear throughout the article. If one removes base references (= references to which the op. cit.’s refer), one can create a real mess, since now the op. cit.’s have nothing to refer to (= orphan op. cit.’s). Playing with the references can severely degrade the quality of the bibliography very quickly.
Wikipedia footnote policy Wikipedia:Footnotes does NOT – repeat: NOT – mandate or require the use of citation templates. They are useful for inexperienced editors unfamiliar with the structure of a reference, but, as I’ve said to be point of distraction, can be sources of serious error if you do not know how to use them. I prefer direct referencing, but others will decide for themselves how to create new references and (re-)format existing references.
I’ll keep this article on my watchlist and make comments or minor edits from time to time. But after I’ve completed the final check of the references, I will phase out my major involvement with the manga article.
BTW, the text without the refs has about 6300 words by actual count. By print publication standards, that is quite reasonable, even a bit on the short side.
Timothy Perper ( talk) 15:18, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
One of the most entertaining features of this article is the endless warfare over Wikipetan. Now she's been put back again—after having been taken out several times and added back several times.
My impression is that the people who put her back this time have no idea at all how many times Wikipetan has been put in and taken out. Dare I suggest that these people didn't read the previous history of this entry? Yes, I dare suggest it. Should they read the previous history?
That's a harder question. I myself would, and perhaps other people would. But no rule on Wikipedia says you have to read about what happened before. So here she is again, folks, Wikipetan in all her glory!
This is genuinely funny.
Timothy Perper ( talk) 00:34, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
Whew, this adult version made me skip a beat. <3 Anyways, SeizureDog's argument does have merit. Yet, for item 1, "She does not come from a manga or any other comic of any kind", manga "discussed" in the article is under generic terms anyways. Though, I suppose that would imply the requirement of a "professional" manga image. Even so, some professionals like Ken Akamatsu have produced some amateur work submitted under doujin using a pseudonym. As for 2 and 3, yea. I agree. KyuuA4 ( talk) 22:46, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm fine with the image being used here as an example. If someone assumes that the example is the ONLY type of manga or anime style there is, then that's their own fault for being stupid. I do want to address one incorrect statement by SeizureDog, though: "moe" style is used in many manga aimed at adults. If you don't think it is, then you haven't been exposed to that much manga. Granted, it's not the only style (just as with children's manga, or young adult manga), but it's not an insignificant style in adult (not necessarily hentai) manga. ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjoe 02:01, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
I like Wikipetan too, but she was put in (this time) as the lead illustration for the whole article. That gives her (or whoever/whatever is in the lead position) the status of representing or symbolizing all manga for the reader. That image is the first thing the reader sees, and it says "Hey, I am manga, me!"
We're going over territory we've discussed before. If we use Astroboy (say), we're saying to the reader that Tezuka's now old-fashioned style stands for all manga since Astroboy; if we use Sailor Moon, we're saying that all manga can be legitimately represented by a single shōjo image; if we use Naruto or Light Yagami, we're saying that all manga can be legitimately be represented by those shōnen characters, and so on. And the same holds for Wikipetan. That was why we decided to use the manga calligraphy example at the start, because the word, in kanji, does represent all manga, and by definition.
That's why I am not in favor of using Wikipetan to introduce the article. I agree with SeizureDog that no matter how common this particular moe style may be, it is not representative of all manga. Nor is she even a manga character, as SeizureDog has said a number of times, and I agree with him. Yes, Wikipetan is cute, but so is Belldandy, Hikaru from MKR, and Chi from Chobits. This is not -- or it should not be, IMO -- a matter of throwing in My Favorite Manga character to stand for all manga.
One of the comments in the Peer Review was that we need more pictures (from User:Gwern). I agree with him, and there are logical places to put different images, including shōjo, shōnen, gekiga, and other images. But the opening image has pride of place, and we need to recognize that. So I agree with SeizureDog,
Timothy Perper ( talk) 14:44, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
-- Beyond silence 17:24, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
I just removed the B&W image of ghosts and other supernatural beings from the Overviews section, where it had been added recently by User:Beyond silence. The image is a detail of a larger woodblock print by the 19th century artist Kuniyoshi that shows a haunted house with its inhabitants scaring the hell out of several hapless people. It's one of Kuniyoshi's masterpieces (IMO) but has nothing whatsoever to do with manga at all, I mean, none. Second, the image was only a detail in B&W, and was not, IMO, a very good quality image (for one thing, it was too dark to show very much). Kuniyoshi has an entire entry of his own, which he deserves, but this image is not related to overviews of the history of manga, which is where the image was located. So I removed it. Timothy Perper ( talk) 15:21, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
Even though this section is not placed as a subsection of "Shōnen, seinen, and seijin manga", it only talks about these themes (Sex and women's roles) in a Shōnen manga context. This has to be fixed, either making "Sex and women's roles" a subsection of "Shōnen, seinen, and seijin manga" or re-wording it to also include info about the role of these themes in Shōjo manga. Personally I prefer the latter option, as it would make the article more balanced. Kazu-kun ( talk) 18:43, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
User:Beyond silence has put Wikipetan back against prior consensus, and without discussion restored an image I removed as poor quality and irrelevant to the text and to the article. My sense is that with these changes the article is heading away from GA. I also sense that User:Beyond silence is not willing to listen to consensus nor listen to the preferences and ideas of editors who have worked on this article for quite some time. He is, in my opinion, acting without consensus. He has also violated, I think, norms of courteous and civil discourse on Wiki, not only by using four-letter words but also by openly expressing his contempt for the editors here. Perhaps he feels that he can outwait us, and, by cursing and sneering, frighten us into accepting his bad manners.
I think this situation might have to be brought to WP:ANI.
Timothy Perper ( talk) 15:03, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure what the issue is here. Since we have some other free images to illustrate manga, we don't really need Wikipe-tan. Keep in mind, I normally encourage the use of Wikipe-tan images, but this is a situation where another image seems to be doing a better job. -- Ned Scott 05:28, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
There haven't been any comments on the peer review for a bit, and I believe all the comments have been addressed (including the applicable automated ones). Anyone have any additional comments or suggestions before we move this to WP:FAC? I think this article is a prime candidate. ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjoe 05:57, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
Fixed four more. So we're down 16 redlinks. Two of these were Japanese names given in the Japanese order in the article, where their Wiki article gives them in Americanized order. The rest are artists. Here's a list, to save time when searching.
Ramiya Ryo, Shungicu Uchida, Hakase Mizuki (be careful, there's another person with same name in Baku (spirit)), Sakurano Minene, Morishige (no other name is used), Johji Manabe (a major artist), Toshiki Yui, Jiro Chiba, Hiroyuki Utatane, Sekihiko Inui, Kei Taniguchi, and Sena Aritou. (N=12) If you search for them in the article, their work will appear.
Timothy Perper ( talk) 19:39, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
Great. Not too much more... and thanks for catching the name inversions. I'm going to update a couple of references -- for example, Katsu Aki's Futari Ecchi was just released by TokyoPop as Futari Etchi: Manga Sutra.
The unfinished ones are Toshiki Yui, Jiro Chiba, Hiroyuki Utatane, Sekihiko Inui, Kei Taniguchi, Sena Aritou, and Toren Smith.
Timothy Perper ( talk) 04:08, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
Going good. One more artist to create is Ebine Yamaji, who is in the article but not redlinked. She's a redisu mangaka. Once she's in, I'll link her in the text. Timothy Perper ( talk) 23:26, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
The FA criteria are listed here. Do we now meet all of them? I'm going to link Yamaji now. ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjoe 06:00, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
Another question: should the "see also" section be above the references? I understood the references are generally at the bottom unless there is an external links section. ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjoe 06:06, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
For FA - I'm going to guess "length" will become an issue. The material under History and Characteristics can be summarized and completely transferred over to the History of manga article, by which the material that's already there can be completely replaced. History of manga then would be instantly improved. Right now, this article is nearing 100 KB. KyuuA4 ( talk) 17:27, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
It's been a couple days since the last comment. Are there any others who wish to make comments before we take this to FAC? ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjoe 01:55, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
I removed a wikilink to odenbo added 08:38, 24 January 2008 by Georgiacatcrimson (see History). The odenbo entry is merely a list of unsourced opinions without any citations and is therefore unreliable original research. Timothy Perper ( talk) 13:32, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
According to the check-external-links program on the FAC discussion page, there were a couple of dubious URLs. I checked them, and fixed one, which now works right. The others were OK. Timothy Perper ( talk) 14:59, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I was reverted because of no discussion, but I don't really see why they would need to be discussed.
Any justification for keeping them?-- SeizureDog ( talk) 20:07, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
On the FAC discussion page, SeizureDog wrote:
I would like to nominate the article for WP:GAC review but I have a question: why are a lot of the accessed dates and the like not wiki-linked? Lord Sesshomaru ( talk • edits) 15:50, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
There are/were several reasons not to use the templates.
(1) It wastes space in the work space by adding many items that will end up blank. We're talking about kilobytes here given that there are so many references. Space and length have been issues with this article from when I started working on it. I personally don't care if the template is used, provided the person using it knows what they're doing. If space isn't an issue for you, then by all means use the template. If it is an issue, set them up manually.
(2) A number of people, well-meaning and in good faith, have tried to "fix" the references. I'll skip the details; some of those people did NOT know what they were doing and ended up deleting references wholesale or inserting the fields incorrectly with the result that translators were named as authors (to give one example). Other things went wrong as well, like getting the name of a website confused with its URL. It was, please believe me, a mess. Unfortunately, none of these folks came forward and said "Oops, let me fix that" but left it to yours truly to manually fix all the mistakes. Which I did. If you try to fix the references, make sure that you use the templates properly.
(3) Not all references fit the templates, for example if a cited source has multiple authors writing something in an edited book. So I did them manually.
(4) The templates were created for users who are by and large not familiar with bibliographic techniques. They provide a "follow the dotted line" model that will get the basic information into the bibliography, but can't handle stuff beyond that. The templates work fine for simple references, but once one is beyond that, well, problems start.
(5) One class of references needs special care, those with "op. cit." in them. The templates do not provide for this and they have to be inserted manually. If you try to delete them, then a whole bunch of statements will either end up without page references (which is useless with long books, like Schodt's books) or will be unsourced (which is even worse).
(6) The Wikipedia guidelines for references do not require the use of the templates, and I found it faster and easier to insert references manually (thereby saving space). But, as I said, that's up to you.
Timothy Perper ( talk) 00:01, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
Okay...it looks like someone just sent this up for GA before we were ready :( AnmaFinotera ( talk) 03:02, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
Sesshomaru left me a note on my talk page:
I don't think the question is offensive. Let me try to answer.
You said I "fixed the references" -- what I did was checked them for accuracy, especially the URLs, but that didn't mean I put them into this or that format. They were at the time all OK, meaning they were accurate. I said then that I couldn't assert the references were 100% accurate but it was pretty good.
Why didn't I format or reformat them? I did some, and several people responded with considerable anger here on the talk page. There's no sense in rehashing that argument, but it certainly convinced me that my efforts were producing hostile responses and not any kind of consensus, let alone cooperation. So I quit doing that, and, in fact, completely stopped editing the article. Nor do I have any plans to return to it in any major way, though I check my watchlist and will respond to questions like this one.
The second reason is time and effort. It takes a lot of work to format/reformat 200+ references (which is what it then was, before Nihonjoe removed a great deal of material from the history and characterization section). It's also a thankless task, literally in this case, and I admit that I am getting tired of being attacked by other "editors" who do not like what I am doing. Well, in a sense, those editors have won the battle -- they got me off this project.
They also stopped me midstream in various efforts to format the references consistently and clearly, but that is no longer my problem. Nor is the issue of this article being FA or GA. Neither nomination was my idea, and I feel that the article as it stands has a variety of quite serious problems. Some sections lack citations completely and are close to OR (e.g., dojinshi, awards). Entire topics are left out, for example an up-to-date discussion of the visual artistry of manga and its characteristic aesthetics. The issue was made worse for me personally because the people criticizing my work were not themselves writing their own contributions to the article. It's like trying to build a house while people on the sidewalk throw stones at you.
I am answering in this much detail because there's a deeper issue involved here. It's how people work together -- or do not! -- on Wikipedia. There is a group of people who feel that being registered on Wikipedia means that they can tell everyone else what's wrong with what the other guy is doing. After a while, working on Wikipedia is a mug's game, as the saying goes -- we can get some things done, but only until someone else removes it all. There is no stability or progress in a Wikipedia entry because all articles are always vulnerable to arbitrary editing and removal of material. For example, in my original discussion of shojo manga, I had included a sentence about Riyoko Ikeda's Rose of Versailles, one of the first genuine masterpieces of shojo, indeed, all manga. Another editor posted a furious criticism of that sentence, and still another editor removed the sentence. So, if you ask "What kind of history of manga leaves out the Rose of Versailles, the answer is, why, the Wikipedia history, of course!"
I am answering more than simply your question about why I didn't format all the references. I'm also explaining why I'm not going to do that nor make any more contributions to this article. It is simply not worth my time or effort battling editors whose main contribution is to attack and remove material. I didn't finish the formatting job because these editors have been attacking me for months.
If the article came up for a GA vote right now, and I could vote, I'd oppose the nomination. The article has a fair amount of OR, it omits crucially important topics, and the reference formatting is a mess. And that is from someone who wrote and referenced most of the what the article now says, all the time inviting people to comment on my Sandbox pages where Peregrine Fisher and I were constructing the new material (see User: Timothy Perper/SDBXIndex for a full list). But, with the phrase "Anyone can edit Wikipedia" comes a responsibility. If you want the article to meet GA or FA standards, you have to contribute systematically and carefully. This article is not my property and I do not own it. So it's now up to you.
I hope that explains a bit more about my experiences and decisions. If not, please ask, and I'll try to explain further.
Timothy Perper ( talk) 16:07, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
One last comment. I just checked the article and the fixed-up references seem OK now. I'm talking only about the ones in the list above, not the general bibliography -- I didn't go over the whole thing. Let me know if there are other ones you want me to look at. Timothy Perper ( talk) 10:27, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
Yes, Sesshomaru asked me to do these "Timothy Perper-style." So I did.
On Sesshomaru's talk page, he asked about the dates on refs 10, 21, 24, and 61. I have no idea how to handle refs #10 and 61, and didn't change anything. The only dates on 21 and 24 are the access dates, which I left alone. Is that what you need to know?
Timothy Perper ( talk) 16:32, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
I see that the kobolds or something are at it again, putting mistakes into the manga article. Well, as I've said before, I'm not doing any more work on this article. For the newbies and kobolds, if you look at the history of this article, you'll find that I wrote and referenced much of it. But no more. If you want it to reach GA status, then you'll have to find the mistakes yourselves. Hint: pull up the complete article and search for "newd." It's going downhill fast, guys. Timothy Perper ( talk) 15:00, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria
Pre-review comment: Before I begin reviewing, I've read through the talk page and am a little concerned with recent discussions, particularly the one immediately preceding this section - comments such as "It's just Wikipedia, don't worry too much about it." don't bode too well for an article about to be reviewed. I will remain as neutral as possible, however I will also be taking those discussions into consideration.
Post-review overview: The fears I had noted above are confirmed. This article needs a lot of help.
Record of edits:
Recently, someone added the words "kanji," "hiragana" and "katakana" adjacent to the Japanese for "manga" at the very start of the article. Person #2 then reverted these three additions as "vandalism." Before that, Person #3 had added the hiragana and katakana spellings for "manga," but then yet someone else removed them also calling the added kana "vandalism."
Both additions -- the two kana plus the names hiragana and katakana -- are correct. They are minor additions, but they are not vandalism. The two people who reverted them acted, I believe, without knowing any Japanese. I added some spaces and semicolons, to make the additions typographically clearer, but these changes are not vandalism.
Please, folks, don't revert something if you don't know what you're doing.
Timothy Perper ( talk) 12:50, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
I didn't put the explanatory terms -- someone else did. I thought and think it was an accurate, if minor, addition, Here's why.
Here's the original (and present, because reverted) version:
If one is familiar with Japanese, then it is obvious that the first two characters are kanji, and are nearly identical to the first illustration in the article. The next three are obviously hiragana, and the final three are katakana. That's if one can read Japanese. If one can't, then this string of 8 symbols means nothing and is useless.
Whereupon someone added the expnanatory terms kanji, hiragana, and katakana, and I added the word "in" and the semicolons, thus:
Manga in kanji 漫画; in hiragana まんが; in katakana マンガ
I didn't put the explanatory terms -- someone else did. I thought and think it was an accurate, if minor, addition. The modified version, which Sesshomaru likes and so do I, is linked to an "Help" article on Japanese orthography, which ought to explain what the terms kanji, hiragana, and katakana mean. OK, the reader who knows no Japanese can say, there are three ways to write Japanese, and here they are.
An informative, if minor addition --nothing more.
So why revert it? Sounds silly when the situation is explained like this, now, doesn't it. My own response is to leave it alone, shrug, and do something else more productive than insult other editors (like AnmaFinotera did with me). This is an issue to be resolved -- a non-issue, I think -- by a few comments like these on the discussion page, and AnmaFinotera no longer has ruffled feathers and no longer thinks my comments are nonsensical and meaningless.
So far as I'm concerned, that's the end of it. Do it the way Sesshomaru suggested, and go on to other things. If the template is being used somewhat differently, so what? Who cares, as long as the reader now has accurate information?
Timothy Perper ( talk) 21:23, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Since there have been no objections or further discussion, I added the hiragana and katakana to follow the kanji for "manga." I also labelled them so the reader knows which is which. It is, as I said, a minor addition at most. I hope it causes no further problems in peoples' minds. Timothy Perper ( talk) 13:52, 10 April 2008 (UTC)