User:SSEA333/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?

I'm evaluating the article on Arabic Miniature, which is rated as a stub-class article.

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?

I'm not sure why I chose this article -- it was one of the first that I saw in the Arabic Art category, and I clicked the link to see what was being said about it, and there are no conversations happening in the Talk page. The page itself has been edited fairly regularly since its creation in 2017 -- at least, more regularly than another page I checked out on Arabic poetry, which has been edited about 30 times since its creation in 2006 despite its "High Importance" rating in the Arab World WikiProject. (I am now looking to contribute to that article as well, probably after this semester.) Most of the edits for Arabic Miniature came from less than 10 contributors. I think that this number should be higher. I also think that this topic, more than the others, would overlap nicely with the content of the other class I'm taking this semester on Arabic literature.

Evaluate the article

   Does the lead include an introductory sentence that concisely and clearly describes the article's topic?

-- Kind of -- needs to be rewritten slightly for clarity, and maybe be more specific than "paintings on paper". Even calling them illustrations means more than just "paintings", because it implies that they're a visual accompaniment to a text.

   Does the lead include a brief description of the article's major sections?

-- Not really. Just looking at the lead, I had no idea that there would be a "Materials and Techniques" section, or a "Types" section.

   Does the lead include information that is not present in the article? (It shouldn't.)

-- Yeah actually -- there's a sentence at the end of the lead about most surviving Arabic manuscripts being in western museums, and while it is true, it shouldn't be standalone information in the introductory section. It could be its own small section.

   Is the lead concise or is it overly detailed?

-- Lacks information about later sections and for some reason contains a short description of Maqamat and its narrative, which would be better placed in the section that covers 13th century literature. This isn't an article about the literature itself, but the illustrations that can be found accompanying it.

Content

-- While I appreciate the fact that someone made a table for all the colors that could be used in Arabic miniatures, I think that it could be a much smaller section listing the most common ingredients/materials and processing methods available at the time. If a reader wants to really get in the weeds of how paints were made during this era (which I am), they will follow the source listed (which I did).

-- More weight is given to "Non-figurative ornaments in early Mus'hafs" than to the figurative miniatures noted in "Development" or "Types" -- in other words, there is more information present about the lead-up to the emergence of these miniatures than to the existence of the miniatures themselves.

Tone and Balance

-- There's a lack of neutrality in the clause "Nearly all forms of Islamic miniatures... owe their existences to Arabic miniatures" -- it might be more neutral to say that these miniatures could trace their visual origins to Arabic miniature, or that the Islamic miniature of non-Arabic cultures likely took inspiration from Arabic miniatures.

The author/s of this paragraph claim that the mere existence of Islamic miniatures in non-Arabic countries is due to commissions/demand by Arab patrons. All 6 sources for this paragraph and its claims are listed at the end of the paragraph. I will be checking all 6 of these sources and placing them after the clauses or claims they correspond to; beyond that, though, I do think that claiming that other cultures' miniatures owe their existence to another culture's is not neutral and likely needs to be revised for neutrality or framed as a specific (cited) scholarly stance one could take.

-- Lack of neutrality in "Arab miniaturists absorbed Chinese and Persian influences brought by the Mongol destructions, and at last, got totally assimilated and subsequently disappeared due to the Ottoman occupation of the Arab world." While these statements may be true, their tone is neither objective nor cited within the actual statement. It would be more objective, also, to speak on the qualities of the art that remains (as these can be seen by the reader) rather than the fact that Arab miniaturists "absorbed" -- we can't ask the artists themselves about their stylistic choices, and unless there are accounts of the artists speaking about their art, it's conjecture to say that they absorbed anything. It could be just as likely that Mongol commissioners wanted art that more closely resembled the Chinese and Persian miniature style of the time.

Sources and References

-- Some facts and claims are not sourced at all, and some are sourced at the end of an entire paragraph with every other source for that paragraph. Very frustrating. I wish the contributor had not done this.

-- Sources are not current; see 3rd source listed.

-- Sources are diverse in that a few are written in languages that are not English.

-- In third paragraph of "Origins" section, source #22 leads to a FAQ page for the Birmingham Qur'an manuscript. Given that the source appears at the end of a paragraph with 2 other sources, I'm not sure exactly what information the source is specifically a reference to; however, the paragraph is about the script (I think) used in the Qur'an and the kinds of marks used for different vowels, so I think there are better sources for this exact information.

   Check a few links. Do they work?

-- The first external link leads to a RESEARCH GUIDE and not the actual SOURCE OF INFORMATION! So I am going to say MANY OF THEM PROBABLY DO NOT!

-- The second link is broken.

-- The third link is broken. I was unable to find it on the Wayback machine, either with the URL or with keywords. I WAS able to find the full text on JSTOR. It was published in 1933, but based on a few searches on the CSU library database the literature on this topic might be so limited that this 90 year old source is still relevant.

-- I think I'll have to check every link.

Organization and writing quality

-- There are some places I would edit the article for clarity of speech -- for example, "usually book or manuscript illustrations but also sometimes separate artworks that occupy entire pages" should be its own sentence, and read something like: "These miniatures are most often book or manuscript illustrations [citation], but can also be large enough to occupy its own page [cite]." This might be an assumption on my part -- it is unclear whether "large enough to occupy its own page" means that these miniatures are standalone pieces outside of books, or if they're large enough to occupy their own page or series of pages within books. Maybe both.

-- Comma splice in final sentence of first paragraph -- should be a period after "...illuminated manuscripts in the Caliphate", then "It wasn't until the 14th century that the artistic skill reached the non-Arab regions of the Caliphate." Probably others but this peer review is getting long.

-- Huge comma splice in third paragraph of "Origins".

-- In my honest opinion, the article is not well-organized. There is an introduction section whose first paragraph I think needs to be reworked entirely. The "Origins" section includes examples that go as late as the 12th century, and includes "Emergence of Arabic Miniatures" and "Rise" subsections (not to mention "Rise" as a title is incredibly vague -- rise in demand? quantity? quality?), while "Development" picks up with the beginning of the Abbasid caliphate (well before the 12th century). Then there is the "Decline" section (with "Mongol rule" and "Last traces" subsections), and inexplicably after the Decline section (nowhere near the "Origins" or "Development" sections) are Influences. I don't want to single-handedly Ship-of-Theseus this article but I do think it needs some major reconstruction.

Images and Media

-- Several images in first section share the caption "Various examples of pages from Arabic illuminated manuscripts". I think that at the very least these images' shared caption could include the range of dates in which they were created, and then be ordered chronologically; at best, they could be pared down somewhat (6 is a lot for an introductory paragraph) and given their own captions including their name/manuscript, date of creation, media, dimensions, and (if available) artist's name.

-- "Single Folio from a Qur'an" is not very informative. Where was this folio found? Do we know whose Qur'an it was, or what year it was created?

-- As far as I can tell, all images are either Public Domain or able to be shared under their CC license.

-- Images are a little cluttered, and especially strangely laid out under the "Influences" section.

Talk page discussion

-- There are no conversations happening on this article's Talk page.

-- This article is rated "Low-importance" in the Arab world project, and has no rating in the Visual arts project.

Overall impressions

-- Article is rated "Stub-class".

-- The sheer volume of visual examples is a strength.

-- Writing, sourcing and content organization could be improved. Some paragraphs are well-written and properly sourced; others are poor in grammar and content, and the fact that many paragraphs have every source for that paragraph listed at the end of the paragraph makes it difficult to fact-check. Overall, I think this article has a lot of room for improvement.