Wikipedia:Peer review/Obi (sash)/archive1

Obi (sash)

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A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for March 2009.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because…

I have just completely rewritten it as a translation from the Finnish version
the article has a Good Article status in fi.wikipedia, so I thought this might not be far from attaining the status either and I'm actually aiming for it — my only real concern is the language since while I can get my points across and get fancy with prose, I haven't had much exercise in writing encyclopaedic text. There might also be embarrassing botches since the article is so long.
the texts are longer in Finnish, so the pictures may need to be made fewer. I'd like other people's opinions on what should be ditched.
about the references and footnotes: I added them in the original Finnish version so they should be all right

Thanks, Pitke (talk) 14:24, 19 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Finetooth comments: I found this article interesting and informative, although it needs a good deal of work to meet the guidelines in the Manual of Style and to make the prose flow smoothly. Here are a few suggestions for improvement.

Lead

The ideal lead summarizes the entire article and introduces nothing that is undeveloped in the main text sections. The existing lead is more like an essay introduction than a summary. A good rule of thumb is to include at least a mention of each of the main ideas in the text sections. The existing lead says nothing about "History" or "Children's obis", for example.

Images

The JPG format is best for photographs. It was OK to crop the original JPG for Image:Kimono-kyoto-derivative.png but not to convert it to PNG. WP:IUP#Rules of thumb says, "Use JPEG format for photographic images; SVG format for icons, logos, drawings, maps, flags, and such; PNG format for software screenshots and when only a raster image is available; GIF format for inline animations; and Ogg/Theora for video." Since SVG (I think) requires special expertise or uncommon software, I think PNG is generally acceptable for the icons, logos, drawings, and maps but not for photographs.

Thank you for all your hard work. Before I get into improving the article, I will have to say that I disagree about the claim that JPEG would be the best format for photos. It might be lighter than PNG but the quality of the picture suffers with every save whenever cropping etc. JPEG noise is a sure way to detract from the usefulness of pictures. I see no reason why some of the pictures being in PNG format would be a flaw. Pitke (talk) 08:47, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I did not know that except in a vague general way. I've been relying on the rules of thumb mentioned above and commons:COM:COWN#Step 3: File format for making the claim about JPGs as the preferred format. In light of what you are saying, I will try to learn more about the underlying reasons for the format preferences. Finetooth (talk) 16:04, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Image:Tsuke 021008.png has the same PNG problem. Also, the source information for the image should say that the image is the uploader's photograph, if it is, or it should say that the uploader scanned it, if that is the case. If it's a scan or another kind of derivative work, then the source from which it was scanned or derived must be included with a link to it if it's on-line or bibliographic information if it's a book or other off-line publication.

Fixed Pitke (talk) 08:47, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

On the other hand, Image:Yukataobi.jpg is a JPG, and the license includes all the information a fact-checker would need to verify the license tag. So this one looks fine to me.
Image:HanaYukataInari.jpg has a personality-rights warning tag on its license page. I have not run into this before, but I imagine the issue to be whether it's fair and legal to distribute the young woman's likeness in a medium that allows others to use it on, say, T-shirts sold commercially. The question is about her rights as a person rather than the photographer's rights.
I'll stop here with my review of the licenses.
The images themselves look good to me and are generally essential to understanding the material in the article.

Lead

WP:MOSNUM says that metric quantities in Wikipedia articles should generally be expressed in imperial units as well. The primary unit in this case is metric. A handy way to do the conversions is with the {{convert}} template, which gets the spellings and abbreviations right as well as the math. Thus "10 cm wide at most" becomes "10 centimetres (3.9 in) wide at most... ". These should be converted throughout the article.

Done. Pitke (talk) 18:49, 27 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"The fanciest and most colourful obis are for young unmarried women[1][2]." - Punctuation here and throughout the article should come before the citation numbers rather than after; that is "... women.[1][2]"

Section heads

The Manual of Style advises against repeating the main words of the article title in the section heads and subheads. "Obi" should therefore not be used in any of the section heads. Perhaps just shortening the first section head under "History" to "Women" would do. Also, the section subheads should not repeat the language of the section heads or duplicate one another. Under "Women", you might use "Types" and "Accessories" rather than repeating "Women's". Lower down, you might have to use "Kinds" to avoid repeating "Types", and so on.

Vague time

"The most formal of obis are about to become obsolete. The heavy and long maru obi is nowadays used only by maikos and brides as a part of their wedding outfit. The lighter fukuro obi has taken the place of maru obi. The originally everyday nagoya obi is the most common obi used today... ". - Words like "nowadays" and "today" and "about to become" are inherently vague because they refer to no particular time. Where possible, it's better to specify a date or date range or to quantify or to say when a thing changed from X to Y.

Unfortunately there are no exact times available. Stuff like obi fashion fluctuates at decade pace and drawing lines is hard. I'll see to these and try to fix them... That'll be some job. Pitke (talk) 09:11, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Bolding

The Manual of Style generally deprecates bolding except for the title words in the lead and the bolding that's added automatically to section heads, infoboxes, and a few other things. I would suggest removing all the bolding from the lists. For example, Darari obi should just be "Darari obi".

The original idea was to have the lists done in subtitles, but it would have cluttered the article hugely. I think the bolding is rather necessary since it is the only way to keep the lists even remotely navigatable — unless there is another way to highlight the keywords. One option is to separate the women's obi section into a main article and maybe have subtitles there (alluring thought since it would also enable linking to specific obis). Do you have any recommendations? Pitke (talk) 08:47, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I understand your point, but my inclination was in the other direction. If I were the main contributor, I'd remove the bullet points as well as the bolding and turn the section into straight prose. I'd keep the alphabetical order, and I'd try to expand the extremely short paragraphs by at least one sentence. Each kind of obi would retain its own paragraph. Since the names of the obi are non-English words, I'd put them in italics, which would make them stand out as foreign and important. These are just my ideas, and other solutions are possible. Finetooth (talk) 15:44, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Copyediting

This is not a complete sentence-by-sentence review. I noticed many small errors as I went. I fixed a few but certainly not all. It would be good idea to ask someone to copyedit the article from top to bottom, after any revisions rather than before.

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 23:46, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]