Wikipedia:Featured article review/Portuguese language/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was removed 01:32, 9 March 2007.

[edit] Portuguese language

[edit] Review commentary

Messages left at PedroPVZ, FilipeS, José San Martin and WikiProject Portugal.

Message left at Languages. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:38, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

The article is suffering from rather large gaps in terms of references. The list of sources seems somewhat incomplete, even if it appears as if a lot may be found here. Unforunately I don't read Portuguese, so I can't really tell. It seems as if the sections on history, geographic distribution and at least some parts of the section on classification aren't really verifiable. While I don't favor the recent obsession with footnotes after just about every sentence, a mere 5 for such a comprehensive article does seem a bit minimalistic.

On a somewhat more subjective note, the history section is also rather miniscule and could most likely be expanded.

Peter ^Isotalo 00:06, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - External link farm needs to be pruned. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:11, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Besides the external link farm, references are not correctly formatted, there are citation needs (example: The Portuguese present perfect has an iterative sense which is unique among the Romance languages; as well as cite tags), and there are one-sentence sections. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:22, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - The article was only just recently moved to FA status. Why the flip-flop? FilipeS 17:09, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
  • It was nominated on May 22nd 2004 and promoted around June 3rd. I wouldn't say that the article has actually degraded since then, but it hasn't kept up with current demands. / Peter ^Isotalo 17:24, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
    • "Current demands"? You mean your demands, right? Anyway, you are probably thinking of the GA, not FA status. The article only got the latter on January 29th, 2007. FilipeS 17:28, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
      • The article doesn not meet current WP:WIAFA standards. The statement about GA above makes no sense: GA is not conferred to FAs. If the article is listed at both, it should be removed from GA. The review period is two weeks - please use that time to work on issues identified, including 1b, 1c, and 2 (WP:EL, WP:NOT). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:47, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
        • Just to clear things up, here's the diff from June 3 2004. / Peter ^Isotalo 18:44, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
      • And here's the diff for the Portuguese language article from January 29, 2007. FilipeS 19:41, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
        • All the link from January 29, 2007 shows is that previously the WikiProject Portugal template on the talk page was wrong. Here's the link showing when the article was featured: June 3, 2004. It's been a featured article for 2½ years, and now is a good time to see if it still meets the featured article criteria (which have changed in that time). —Angr 20:37, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

• There are other problems besides the ones Peter mentioned, but first I would disagree with him that the History section is too scanty. The article at 51 kB is quite long enough already (not really too long, but it shouldn't get much longer); any expansion should go into History of Portuguese rather than the History section of the main article. By the same token I would say the Dialects section is too long; the list should be moved to Portuguese dialects. The Grammar section is a mess; rather than being divided up into sections on the genetic constituents Portuguese belongs to and what it has in common with them, it should be divided simply into "Phonology" (which is a part of grammar and so should be a subsection), "Morphology" and "Syntax", with brief summaries of the the articles Portuguese phonology and Portuguese grammar. —Angr 00:38, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I do agree that the article needs work, though obviously I have a different opinion on what should be changed. For example, I do not think the grammar section is "a mess". It gives a summary of the interesting features of Portuguese. On the other hand, there is a host of redundancies in the first sections of the article and the intro, the history section and the vocabulary section could be improved, the "lexical stress" section is written in intractable jargon, and the phonetic transcription of the sample text in Brazilian Portuguese is full of errors (I'm surprised no linguistic whiz noticed this yet!)

As for the Classification and Related Languages section, it doesn't seem much larger than the one at Spanish language, about which I see no complaints. Still, perhaps it could be trimmed down. In fact, I did just that a while ago. One thing I always thought was too much was that comparison of sentences in different Romance languages (what's that got to do with Portuguese, anyway?) Besides, Romanian language has the same kind of thing. But when I suggested that this duplication should be avoided, Peter Isotalo, who is otherwise fond of deletions, seemed to get his panties all tied up in a knot, for some reason. FilipeS 20:10, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

• I don't agree with Angr's suggestion about merging the phonology with the grammar, since this represents a highly academic perspective on language; it makes sense to linguists, but not to the average readership. But the grammar section could use some work.
• I was the one who called for the dialect section to be reinstated with the maps and all, btw, but if someone can offer a summary which isn't as brutal as the last one, I can certainly acquiesce.
• Filipe, that diff was nothing but a mistake, as I'm sure you know that I don't engage in mindless vandalism. My reason for requesting a shorter classification section was that it would allow for other sections to be expanded without making the article too big. And let's keep unrelated articles that haven't even reached GA-status out of this discussion. The requirements for FAs are supposed to be higher, not lower, than the average article. / Peter ^Isotalo 13:43, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concerns are insufficient references (1c) and comprehensiveness (1b). Marskell 11:44, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

• Remove per 1c. LuciferMorgan 22:19, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
• Remove per 1a (the Grammar section is especially poorly written); 1c (AFAICT no references have been added since this FAR began; the Grammar section appears to be mostly original research); 2b (the heading hierarchy is wrong, as the article places Phonology outside Grammar); 3 (Image:Iilp.png has no fair-use rationale, the relevance of Image:Estação da Luz.jpg to the article isn't clear); and 4 (Summary style is not used correctly). —Angr 22:58, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Sorting "Phonology" under "Grammar" still doesn't seem to serve any purpose as an objection here. It doesn't make any sense in an encyclopedia (that isn't intended just for linguists), it's not recommended by the language project, and it's not even used in any of our language FAs. Peter ^Isotalo 07:49, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
    • What's recommended by the language project is not to use the ambiguous term "Grammar" at all, but to have three separate sections called "Phonology", "Morphology", and "Syntax". I'd support that for this article, except that the current "Grammar" section barely discusses syntax or morphology. But if a language article does have a section called "Grammar", it's simply lying to the readers to put Phonology outside of it. —Angr 07:57, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
      • You recommended it at the language template and I disputed it. There was some discussion on the issue, but that was pretty inconclusive. There needs to be a lot more discussion about this before we start talking about clear recommendations. Until then, it seems rather obvious to go for the traditional (and seemingly most common) encyclopedic description of grammar. / Peter ^Isotalo 10:49, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
        • It doesn't seem obvious to me at all to go for the outdated and completely unscientific definition of grammar, as opposed to the definition called "contemporary" in our own article Grammar. —Angr 11:00, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
          • To me it seems as if you're not all that concerned if anyone outside your own discipline actually understands articles about languages or linguistics. But we obviously need to involve more users in this discussion to establish a reasonable consensus recommendation and this is clearly not the place to do it. Drop a note at my user page if you want me to announce a broader discussion on the issue. / Peter ^Isotalo 14:13, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

• Remove per 1b, 1c, 2a, 2b and to some extent 4 (the dive into lengthy discussions of other languages seems uncalled for in a main article). / Peter ^Isotalo 07:49, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
• Remove — 1a, 1b, 1c, 2a, 2b issues. — Deckiller 09:53, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.