Wikipedia:Featured article review/Tamil language

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[edit] Tamil language

Messages left at Sundar, Ganeshk, India noticeboard, Tamil Nadu, and Languages.

I am far from a regular participant in areas related to featured articles. But I know when something at least comes close to acheiving featured article status. I appreciate the work that has gone into this page, but this, I'm afraid, is far from featured article quality at present. There are justifiable {{fact}} tags littering the intro and pretty much all of the rest of the article, and some of the prose is vague, unsupported and/or weaselish. Examples: "Tamil is one of the few living classical languages and has an unbroken literary tradition of over two millennia[citation needed]." No citation or mention of this at all in the body of the article. "However, there are many purists who would argue against the use of such characters as there are well-defined rules in the Tolkāppiyam[citation needed] for Tamilising loan words." Who's "many"? This barely begins to describe the woes of this article. Grandmasterka 07:09, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

  • The infobox contradicts the lead (giving the rank as 13-17; lead says 18, with cite-needed tag). Only four (!) footnotes for the entire article--the scattered {{fact}} tags Grandmasterka mentions don't even tell the full story...because barely any claims in the article are referenced, not just claims with {{fact}} tags by them. It gets worse, though: all four of those footnotes are from one section, "Legal Status"; more specifically, they're all from the second paragraph of that section. Three of them are citing a single sentence. So for all practical purposes the article cites two claims, those two claims being in two successive sentences. Totally unacceptable. As it stands now, I agree the article is clearly not FA-quality. --Miskwito 02:09, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
    • Actually, there are 7 inline citations I missed, in the form "author (year)". --Miskwito 03:12, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
  • If citations are added, it could still be a featured article. Also there is the issue of red links in the languages of the Tamil Family like Kaikadi. Even if these are tackled, think this could only become a Good article. --Agεθ020 (ΔT • ФC) 02:52, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Please Consider the following references

Tamil has been declared a Classical language by the Indian government. This has been done after an extensive research and a political process. See:

This article assumes some basic Tamil background knowledge from the reader. Continuous literary tradition is well established. Please do some background reading about Tamil literature and, one can understand that statement. The above web site would be of value in that regards.

Counting only the first lanaguage speakers: Tamil is #15, according to the following paper: http://www.frenchteachers.org/bulletin/articles/promote/top%20languages.pdf

If second language speakers are counted it drops to #18, according to Ethnologue. http://www.davidpbrown.co.uk/help/top-100-languages-by-population.html

13-17, probably due to uncertainty or same number of people speaking some other lanuages.

I am an editor at Tamil Wikipedia. This article is well researched, and written by informed contributors. Let me know if I can be of more help.

--Natkeeran 05:49, 26 March 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Vandalism

This article has gone under a very calculated vandalism. The article’s primary monitors are not highly active at this moment. The statements are being manipulated to degrade the quality of this article. I urge those with good spirit to compare the actual FA or a stable recent version (before vandalsim), and the current status and revert the vandalism as much as possible.

I can assure that the quality of the article was much better before. But, now it be being down graded little by little. Particularly, the into and history sections have been badly degraded.

--Natkeeran 06:48, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I responded on the article's talk page. This is the approved featured article version, when the standards were much lower, which still has the more significant problems I pointed out. Grandmasterka 08:35, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
Yes, you are probably right about the references not being adequate, but when the content is being manipulated the references can not match. There is vandalism taking place. I can sense by reviewing the edit history. I have notified other contributors, they may be able to help us improve and/or recover the article.

For example, see the contradition in the following two statements:

External chronological records and internal linguistic evidence, however, indicate that the oldest extant works were probably composed sometime in the 2nd century CE.
The earliest extant text in Tamil is the Tolkāppiyam, a work on poetics and grammar which describes the language of the classical period. The oldest portions of this book may date back to around 200 BCE (Hart, 1975).

--Natkeeran 07:27, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Example 2: Why is the following statement necessary in the first sentence? When did UNESCO became the primary authority to declare a language classical or not. It could be a footnote. Not necessary in the first sentence.

"(Recognized by the Indian Government and still not yet recognised by UNESCO)"

Example 3: The below statement is totally opposite to what was before.

The ordinary form of the modern language used in speech and writing, in contrast, has undergone significant changes, to the extent that a person who has not learnt the higher literary form will have difficulty understanding it.[clarify]

Due to continuity, classical Tamil is understandable with some study. The statement before was “The written language has changed little during this period, with the result that classical literature is as much a part of everyday Tamil as modern literature. Tamil school-children, for example, are still taught the alphabet using the átticúdi, an alphabet rhyme written around the first century A.D.”

In other words, the claim that the modern Tamil writing changed significantly is an arguable claim. The fact that school children are able to understand ancient work with little study shows that Tamil writing has not changed that much; relative to other classical languages.

Example 4: Recently added comments...

"But unfortunately the word "Sangam" originates from Sanskrit word "Sang". This throws some light on origin of Tamil from Sanskrit. The "Aa", the first alphabet of Tamil resembles Semitic "Aleph". Tamil words for house, town etc seems to be originated from Proto-Hebrew. Tamil words for king, life, god etc seems to be originated from Sanskrit. Recent researches show that Tamil is a borrowed complex language than a self-evolved classical language."

[edit] In Short

This article has been vandalized with an intent to demerit Tamil as a classical language, (along with perhaps other motives), and of independent origin of Sanskrit. This is a well established conflict. Please do not engage in this controversy at Wikipedia. Take a 'live and let others live' attitude. Please let your views know in the discussion page before making erratic changes to a FA.

Thank you. --Natkeeran 08:20, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Response to Natkeeran

Please see here. I have responded to Natkeeran's dubious claims. Sarvagnya 10:09, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

His respose has be shown to be inadequate. But he has identified the problem as content dispute, and not random vandalism, which is a good thing. I urge a reasonable discussion.--Natkeeran 20:26, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Comments by Dbachmann

I might give it a {{GA}} in its present state, but only just. Observations:

There were number of stable versions. I will try to note the versions. So, please reserve your judgment.

  • the 'ஃ' section is completely superfluous and belongs merged into Tamil script
  • You may be right, it can be added to Tamil script. However, that letter has cultural significance, and a special use that can justify its own subsection.
  • a clean presentation of a romanization system is missing. Tamil script gives a transliteration scheme, but doesn't identify it. It is imperative that a romanization scheme is introduced before various romanized forms are discussed. Is it National Library at Kolkata romanization?
  • Is a presentation of a romanization system mandatory requirement for all languages. Please explain.
  • the "Sounds" section has a "Phonology" subsection. This should be re-arranged, i.e. the h2 section should be called "Phonology". Create a main article Tamil phonology to stash the gory details. The "tongue twister" link belongs under external links or "see also".
  • Yes, I agree. This section can be improved.
  • the grammar section is fair as it is, but it discusses morphology under a "parts of speech" header for some reason. Treatment of nominal and verbal morphology is very brief compared to phonology.
  • the merit of the "example" section is somewhat questionable (I would merge it into Tamil grammar), it should in any case be cleaned up to get rid of the crappy ASCII transliteration scheme.
  • the Literature section looks fine, but it should perhaps be broken up in a "grammar/lexica" section vs. sociolinguistics studies etc. (compare Arabic_language#References). Which are the standard works used in academia?
  • Which academia? Tamil Literature is an important conceptual scheme in the Tamil context.
  • the pdf screenshot Image:TolkaappiyamExcerpt.png strikes me as useless and unencyclopedic. If we don't have a nice manuscript image, the section is better off without an image.
  • You ignored the content of the image, which was the main part. If you read it. It is very understable to most Tamils. It is there to illustrate the accessibility, and continuity of the Ancient work. Sure, if there is a better way to present it, that would be nice.
  • the "Vocabulary" section needs its citation requests worked out, and should maybe be merged with "History", since it discusses historical layers of loans.
  • The vocabulary section is under a “Content War”. Reference requests are being used as a weapon. But, you are right to point this out.
  • the article absolutely needs a "Literature" section summarizing Tamil literature.
  • Yes, you are right.
  • ah, and of course the intro needs to be kept free of empty hype. The "one of the most ancient languages of the world" statement has no place here, just say it is attested since 200 BCE and be done.
  • Intro is being highly contested at this point. It is not stable.
Overall, your observations are valuable, and positive. You have concretely identified some weakness in the article. I can help address your concerns. But, the Content War must stop. Otherwise, there is no point in the cycle of insert/delete recover/degrade saga.

I primarily contribute to Tamil Wikipedia. There we are working on a Language Article Prototype. We have discussed the following structure.

  • General Intro
  • Language History History of Tamil Language
  • Classification and Language Family
  • Speakers and Geographic Distribution, including Official Recognition
  • Cultural Context and Language's philosophical and/or metaphysical setting (important for Tamil)
  • Language Phonology (spoken language) - Tamil phonology
  • Language Dialects Tamil Language Dialects
  • Language Writing System (Alphabets and/or other systems) - Tamil script
  • (Spoken and literary variants)
  • Language Grammar Tamil grammar
  • Language Vocabulary
  • Language Literature Tamil literature
  • Language Modernity (Use in Science, Technology, Commerce, Politics etc) Contemporary use of Tamil and/or Modern Tamil
  • Language Learning - Tamil Studies or Tamilology
  • Language Institutions Tamil Language Instituions
  • Language Media (can be included with institutions) Tamil Media

You seems to be an expert in the lanaguage front, I would welcome your comments about the above structure. I can suggest this for Tamil language in enWpedia as well. I was not very involved in the early editing, so I am hesitant to make any significant changes. --Natkeeran 20:20, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

dab (𒁳) 16:20, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Content War

Wikipedia allows for multiple view points, but not replacement of view points. The native Tamil view points are being edited out. The purpose it seems to be show:

  • Tamil is not a “global classical language”; which is not true. It is or it can be under any reasonable set of criteria. Please provide the criteria, and one would be able to show whether it is “global classical language or not.”
  • The second attack is from Sanskrit Extremists, who are playing out external political battles in Wikipedia.
  • Why was ranking changed to 20?

If there is a content war, then request for reference becomes a weapon of war. Lets discuss content issues in the talk pages. And not get into insert/delete, recover/degrade cycles.

--Natkeeran 19:23, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

“global classical language”;..... which is not true. It is or it can be under any reasonable set of criteria.
'Reasonable set of criteria'? Would you mind spelling out what that 'set of criteria' is? Would you first start by providing proper references for Classical languages and answering the concerns of other editors on Talk:Classical languages. And I request you to stop your conspiracy theories NOW! Sarvagnya 20:15, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
http://www.ciil-classicaltamil.org/ Centre of Excellence for Classical Tamil; [1]
It is the official Indian government's website. It has some best minds in the field. Visit that website. It is in English. You can get a sense of the entire scholarly and political basis and process behind the assertation that 'Tamil is a Classical language'. If you have a bias, or some dispute, please declare. I can try to help you address your concerns. --Natkeeran 20:38, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
Sarvagnya, the Indian governments criteria for classical language can be a starting point. --Natkeeran 20:58, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
Both of the articles you cited about are in dispute already. If you can provide credible criteria, I can show whether Tamil fits or not. If I come up with or use a criteria that I put forward, you can still accuse me of bias. --Natkeeran 21:11, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Unreasonable expectations - The primary readership of this article includes Tamils

It is unreasonable to expect that all English speakers should understand completely an article about Tamil without any background study. Wikipedia science or technical articles would not expect everyone to understand complex subjects immediately. Similarly, an article about a language has diverse readership.

A primary source of readers about Tamil are the Tamils themselves. It was written in such a way to provide valuable information to Tamils, alnog with others. It is a reasonable assumption. Why Ayutha Eluthu is important can only be understand in its cultural context.

Of course, Wikipedia is open for everyone to contribute. But, it works because there is certain level of respect shown towards other contributors, and there is an effort to learn the contexts of an article. --Natkeeran 19:23, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure why you are bringing this up on FAR. Criteria for the Tamil language article are the same as for any other language article (excepting the English language one, of course, since English is the only language knowledge of which is intrinsically required on en-wiki). Fair examples of language FAs are Swedish language, Aramaic language, Bengali language and Russian language. dab (𒁳) 20:22, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for the examples. I am not sure what FAR stands for, but I must say it is difficult to write articles about a lanaguge. I have tried to address and/or provide some comments about your concerns above. When I say backgrond study, I did not mean language study, but perhaps some knowledge about basic linguistics or and some awareness about the cultural context of the language. --Natkeeran 20:44, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
FAR is "Featured Article Review", which is what you're reading right now. This is a subpage of the main FAR page, which is getting clogged up by this thing. Grandmasterka 21:12, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Comments by Sarvagnya

I feel that the article is well short of FA quality. No doubt it is a well written article and lot of effort has been put into it by editors like Arvind and Sundar. But the article badly needs more solid referencing. I get the feeling that the editors have taken lot of info for granted and have failed to think from the lay reader's perspective. In other words, what might be 'common sense', 'common knowledge' to the editors of the article may not actually be so for the lay reader even if he has some background in history and linguistics. This is just genuine oversight and I am sure it can be remedied simply with the addition of references. I have added some fact tags where I feel references are a must if this article is to be FA quality.

In other places, I feel the language sounds a bit confused and I have added some "clarifyme" tags. For example, the article says,

"The origins of Tamil, like other Dravidian languages, is unknown..." - Does it mean that origins of all non-Dravidian languages are known?

Then it goes on to say, "...but unlike most of the other established literary languages of India, are independent of Sanskrit..."

Kannada is an established literary language in India. Does the above sentence imply that Kannada is NOT independent of Sanskrit? Clarify please and/or at the very least reword.

Sarvagnya, I agree that the sentence could be reworded, but "the other" literary languages excludes Kannada as a preceding clause clubs the Dravidian languages together for exclusion. However, it still would be a problem for an Indian language belonging to a third family. -- Sundar \talk \contribs 14:21, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

And a request to Natkeeran, please sign every single comment of yours and keep your discussions germane. Please spend some time on making your comments intelligible(indenting etc.,.). Thanks. Sarvagnya 22:00, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

To all interested/involved editors, please shift detailed discussion/suggestions (or whatever) to the talk page of the article. Hopefully, all these discussions will result in adequate improvement of the article, so that the article retains the FA status. After or during the improvements, summary of improvements done can be presented here in the review. Regards.--Dwaipayan (talk) 05:09, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Sarvagnya that the article as it stands falls short of FA quality. Not all that far, an expert editor could fix it in one or two hours. I am not sure this is going to happen, however, and it may be better to revoke FA status until the concerns voiced above are addressed. dab (𒁳) 07:20, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
I agree that the FA standards were lower when this article was promoted. I've added a copule of refernce to address {{fact}} tags. I'm contacting Arvind (the primary contributor) asking for help. -- Sundar \talk \contribs 14:15, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm in France on a research trip at the moment, and the only materials I have deal with esoteric points of French legal history, but give me a few days and I'll see what I can do to address the points that've been raised. Let's not be in a rush to de-feature it if it can be salvaged, OK? -- Arvind 17:12, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I've added references and rewritten chunks of the text. The section on Sounds / Phonology still needs a good overhaul. I'd suggest hiving it off into an article of its own and leaving a well-written summary here - any volunteers (hi, Sundar)? The section on dialects could do with a little polish as well, especially re caste-based dialects. Apart from that, are people's concerns starting to be met? -- Arvind 22:53, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for stepping in, Arvind. I've copied the Sounds section to Tamil phonology blindly and have attempted at a modest condensation. Would try summarising it tomorrow. I hope the article will soon meet FA standards with some help from other volunteers. -- Sundar \talk \contribs 15:54, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Progressing well

Great job guys, I never would have thought this would be salvageable anytime in the near future, but I can see a light at the end of the tunnel now. I never expected this outpouring of editors to come along and fix it. I'm still not sure it will be a FA when the smoke clears, but it will at least be relatively close. Grandmasterka 22:59, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I believe it is in very good shape to be retained as FA. If there are still areas of concerns, it is best to point them out here- so that it can be reviewed and addressed. --Aadal 13:29, 29 March 2007 (UTC)--Aadal 13:32, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
I think most issues identified in this page have now been addressed. As Aadal says, if there're any further issues, it would be useful to have them enumerated so we can do something about trying to fix them. -- Arvind 15:30, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I think pretty much all the issues have been addressed. The only thing I'm really concerned with is that the grammar section isn't very referenced, but I don't necessarily think that's a huge, major deal right now. --Miskwito 20:16, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

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