Wikipedia:Peer review/Gbe languages

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[edit] Gbe languages

Nukaé nyé Gbe languages? If that's your question, go read this article and find it out. Don't forget to come back here to put in some words of advice. I wrote all of it, so it would be nice if someone else looked into it. I'm aiming for FAC eventually and I wonder how much remains to be done. As I'm not a native speaker of English, you might want to check the article for EAL-related issues. Babíá kaé le asíwó? (Any questions?) Please ask them below! — mark ✎ 17:35, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Earlier request at Wikipedia:Peer review/Gbe languages/Archive1. Either no-one looked at it that time, or it was so good that no-one dared to comment. In any case, it's still a tabula rasa.

• Well that certainly warrants a comment. I know nothing about the subject, but the article looks great. The only thing I could think of that would make it better would be some form of footnoting. There appear to be a lot of inline citations, but they are hard to find. Something like Wikipedia:Footnote3 or Template_talk:Inote makes them much easier to find. If you do that each time you discuss a text and or put a (Foo 1989) in there it really helps the verifiers. :) I know those systems are not perfect, but they do help. I guess the other thing is the lead notes Reduplication, which makes me think it is a pretty important facet of the language. But it's coverage looks pretty short, and I had a hard time understanding it. A clear explanation before the example would be great. Maybe something else about how common, pervasive, or important it is would be good too. With those fixes, I'd say this is a FAC for sure. - Taxman 04:36, May 8, 2005 (UTC)
  • Thanks for commenting. Re Reduplication: on second thought I've removed the sentence in the lead; the phenomenon is pervasive, but it should be treated in Kwa languages (of which Gbe is a branch) instead since it's found wider than the Gbe languages alone.
    • Actually I disagree with that. It is good to cover topics at their most logical spot, but if this language group displays that as an important characteristic, it should be covered in this article too. Briefly if needed though. That is part of being comprehensive--covering all important facets of a topic. - Taxman 22:55, May 8, 2005 (UTC)
      • I agree with you there (I wasn't clear); that's why I didn't remove it from the article altogether. I only removed it from the lead section to avoid creating the impression that there would be a whole section on it. Regardless, I'll see if I can prepare another paragraph and some examples, because I agree with you that it's coverage is pretty short anyway. — mark ✎ 23:27, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
  • As for the citation system, I have to think about that. I suppose I would have to knock over the References section and convert citations to footnotes or something? I can think of a few inline citations that would better be converted to footnotes, but I don't think it would work to make all of them footnotes. The way I think about footnotes versus inline citations is shown in my use of both at Logba language (in short, notes are for just that, 'notes', while inline citations refer to a work in the References). Would it work to do it the same way for Gbe languages? — mark ✎ 11:43, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
    • There is no consensus for how it is done, its just better as long as it is done to some degree. I think having a bit of both is fine, especially if a source is a general source good for nearly all the information on the page, then it is good to note it as a general reference. The more specific citations the better though, since that makes verification easier. So just leave the references section where it is and convert the inline cites to some form like the two I gave above and it should be great. Someone else may prefer another system, but like I said, something is better than nothing. - Taxman 22:55, May 8, 2005 (UTC)
      • I'll give it a shot! (done) Thanks again for commenting! — mark ✎ 00:21, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

• Ok that was all great so I looked for a few more things. As it is I think it will be ready for FAC soon if not now, up to your judgement. 1) Were the external links really all used as references too? If so they should be formatted as such according to the rules for webpages at Wikipedia:Cite sources. If not, the should be their own ==Heading== so they aren't a part of the references section. 2) The lead section is very short for the length and level of detail of the article. Aim for one more paragraph, and make sure the lead summarizes all of the most important facets of the topic. 3) The map has the word "lects" on it. I assume that is dialects, but its not totally clear. Can you spell out the full word or add some explanation of why that is the usual way or whatever. - Taxman 23:17, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
  • 1). Fixed now, by adding retrieval dates (I rechecked them just now). 2) I'm not sure about that one; I think it summarizes the important things nicely. I'll look if something's missing though. 3). I'm going to remove that word from the map, it's redundant — thanks for bringing it to my attention. (Lect is just a politically correct term used by linguists who don't want to choose between 'language' and 'dialect'). — mark ✎ 00:16, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Map updated. I've removed the superfluous 'lects' and I've added Ketu, which was missing. It's the first map I ever made for Wikipedia so I'm not sure if the layout is all that perfect, but it's clear anyway, I guess. — mark ✎ 16:50, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Ok, but I think a lot of people on FAC will say the lead is too short. Most people expect a 2-3 paragraph lead section for a FA of reasonable detail. Think of it as what the article would say if that was the only part printed in a paper format. - Taxman 19:17, May 11, 2005 (UTC)
    • I expanded the lead, and I agree it looks better this way. — mark ✎ 19:19, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Comprehensive, Mark! It looks almost daunting due to size, but when actually reading it's very good. Sincere complements. But as this is the place to test the patience of even the most competent and busy Wikipedians, here's my beef:

• I am firm believer that references should be kept to a minimum. Unless there are some very serious and heated debates among scholars as well as protesting Wikipedians, I don't think we should have a single footnote. I have no problems with footnotes myself, but it makes the article look less like encyclopedic and too academic. A reader of an encyclopedia (even wiki) wants the facts served on a platter, not academic hum-'n'-haws (unless professors are giving each other black eyes over it ^_^). I think you should consider moving most references to the talk page. It might sound drastic, but every in-text reference and footnote that isn't deemed absolutely necessary should in my opinion be moved to the talkpage. Your research seems so thorough that the average reader shouldn't be burdened with notes. Those with special interest can (and will) look for sources if they feel that it's necessary.

Peter Isotalo 18:09, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your review and your tweaks and copyediting! I hope you don't mind I changed the structure back; I found the four-way division into Languages, History, Linguistics features and References more intuitive and more esthetically pleasing. I think the references don't hurt, and function as a nice bibliographical overview. I agree however that some of the footnotes are not absolute necessary, so I have converted some notes that were merely for attribution (e.g. the example sentences from Aboh 2003/4), to invisible ones using Template talk:Inote. I will take another look at the 'References' section; maybe some of the 'other sources' could be pruned. — mark ✎ 22:11, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Peter, your opinion is very contrary to the Wikipedia:Verifiability policy. Though if your biggest beef is with footnotes breaking up the page, invisible notes solves that problem. The references section needs to stay (check the featured article criteria) and it should list as many sources as possible that were used to add material for the article. Referencing is the only way to combat the critics most substantive claim that Wikipedia cannot be trusted because anyone can edit it. I for one look at a Wikipedia article and think why should I trust any of the facts in this article to be correct? If I see references my confidence is increased that it is not a complete fabrication at least. Anyway, like I said, the inotes keeps them out of the way. - Taxman 23:17, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

Mark

You're welcome, and I promise that there will be more scrutiny and tweaking soon enough. I noticed there was a slight tendency for technical jargon like "phylum". I consider myself quite the lingonerd, but I had to look that one up. Same goes for generally advanced vocabulary like "subsumed". It can usually be replaced with more common words.

I'll let you have the final call on section structure, but I've never liked empty section headers when the actual sub-sections aren't identical to one another. E.i. there's only one "Sounds", "Classification", etc. Consider having text instead of just empty dividers.

If possible, consider reducing the amount of "linguist X says A, and linguist Y claims B". With the exception of SIL (which seem to be consistently rebellious to most scholarly consensus), I think you'll do fine with just saying "A is B" without mentioning names. Your text is good enough to stand on its own.

• As for structure, I'm fine with empty section headers if they help structure the information. I think I'll ask a non-linguist to look the article over for needless linguistic jargon. I've got a few other ideas that I might be able to carry out this evening. — mark ✎ 16:50, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Taxman

Footnotes are as far as I know unheard of in encyclopedias, and if some bitter critic complains about us not having them, then I say to Hell with them. I'm quite convinced that the average reader will be put off by the academic aura that surrounds extensive use of footnotes and scholarly namedropping (even when justified). The occasional footnote is okay, but only when absolutely necessary, such as concerning notoriously controversial issues.

I'm not against listing references, but I think the amount of individual works of literature listed as references in one article should never be more than 10. If anything it should stay around the magic number 5 unless absolutely necessary. After all, too many references can make it so much harder to actually know which sources to check...

Peter Isotalo 23:55, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

There are a lot of important reasons why you are wrong, including that Wikipedia is different from other encyclopedias, but you'll eventually see them all and agree with me :). In any case this is not the place to discuss it. The two links I gave you would be better. The simplest pragmatical answer is that the featured article criteria calls for references and inline citations, so to qualify, articles need them. - Taxman 19:17, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

But I'm not questioning the merits of any of the policies; I'm just saying we shouldn't overdo it, and I certainly don't want to propose rigid limits (instruction creep!) to Wikipedia:Verifiability. If you look at most of the linguistic FAs, most of them have about 5-10 referenced works and even fewer, if any, footnotes, and the same seems to be true for most of the other FAs as well.

I'm absolutely not going to object to an eventual FAC just because I feel there are a few too many footnotes, but I'm trying to encourage Mark and others to go easy on the academia, since I can see for myself that the article is very well researched. It's important to balance the need for proper verifiability with availability to the average reader, no matter how obscure the topic may seem.

Peter Isotalo 08:18, May 12, 2005 (UTC)

Ok so we mostly agree. But I'll say the importance of the policies is enough that it would be difficult to overdo. A longer list of references at the bottom is something that doesn't get in the way in the least for someone that doesn't care about them. They are easy to ignore. In fact if anyone was picky it would be easy to have an option in the preferences to not even display that section for that user, just like for tables of contents. The same is possible to be done with footnotes, which I agree can be off-putting to someone that just wants the gist of the material. But luckily that is solved with something like the invisible notes tool. You say you notice the article is well researched, but that is apparent only because it is well researched, and a lot of sources were consulted. All of those should be listed and important facts should be cited. Yes, most articles on Wikipedia completely fail to meet the verifiability policy but that has no bearing on whether it should be pursued going forward or not. Be careful not to discourage something so important as good research and citing just because you think too many superscripted footnotes is distracting. That is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Especially when that only drawback can be easily avoided. - Taxman 15:48, May 12, 2005 (UTC)

Mark, I'm sorry I'm being slow and getting distracted. A little pedantry to start with: I trip over the statement that the Gbe languages are a dialect continuum, defined as a range of dialects spoken across a large geographical area. Qué? So are they languages or dialects?
I'm bemused by the discussion of old Kwa and new Kwa under "Classification", I think you need to say either more or less about it to get me to understand it.
I don't think you can have those italicized placenames in the History section, they strike me as non-standard. If they mean "notice these names a lot", bold is probably more the wiki thing. But I would be sparing of that formatting, too.
References: "Gbe in general" and "Other sources" is not a good pair. Is it important to subdivide the sources into two categories at all? I don't understand what distinction you're making.
If something's both a reference and an external link, it goes in the References section. You've used the Ethnologue, and even refer to it, so it's a reference. The "External links" section is for online further reading.--Bishonen | talk 01:01, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Welcome to the middle of the film--my remaining nit is that I agree with Taxman about the Lead being short. The prose in it is also slightly The Cat Sat on the Mat--the sentences need more interlinking for more flow.

Btw, on my screen, many (though strangely not all) of the characters in the vowel and consonant tables show up as question marks. Also something scary happens near the end of "The vowels i ĩ u ũ e o ɛ̃ ɔ ɔ̃ a ã are attested". That's in Mozilla 1.6 for Mac OSX 10.2. I'm done copyediting (=dumbing down), great article, it'll be an ornament to the Main Page! --Bishonen | talk 22:55, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Thank you, Bishonen, for your work! As for smoothing the reading experience by joining sentences, that's a lesson I'll sure try to put in practice in the next article. I have a few other remarks: (1) The Gbe language can be viewed upon as five related dialect clusters, and since they do not make up your garden variety dialect continuum anyway, I've done away with the 'dialect continuum' thing. (2) The same holds for the Kwa/New Kwa thing — that's something that belongs to the Kwa languages article and the reader should not be troubled by that in this article; in fact, I don't know why I added it here. (3) I've de-italicized the place names except for Amedzofe and Mawufe, which are more than just place names. (4) Good point about the References. The idea behind distinguishing between general and other sources was that the 'Gbe in general' would be a sort annotated bibliography of general sources on Gbe; 'Other sources' would list sources that were also consulted in writing the article but which I deemed to be not relevant to someone specifically interested in the Gbe languages. I still would like to distinguish between those general, introductory ones and the more specialized linguistic ones, but I don't know how exactly — any thoughts? (5) I labelled the external 'Online sources'. Is that better, or should I just put them between the other references? (6) Special characters — I wrote the bulk of this article in my first weeks here, when I didn't know of things like Template:IPA yet. I'll add it and see if that helps. (7) In the next few edits I'll try to respond to the commented out questions you left. Thanks again! — mark ✎ 11:19, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the IPA-template does not solve the problem with the tonal accent diacritics. I have the same problem with Firefox for OS 10.3.9, and I frankly don't know why. It works fine on my PC running XP and Firefox, though. I think this is something that needs to be adressed in the template talk or perhaps at the talkpage of the phonetics project. It has to be some sort of incompatibility with certain fonts. Mind you, this doesn't seem to work on OS X when adding accent marks to Cyrillic characters either.

Peter Isotalo 11:48, May 15, 2005 (UTC)

Grammar layout In the explanations of syntax, examples such as this one are used:

• àxwé yé Kòfí tù   (house FOC Kofi build:PERF)   Kofi built A HOUSE   (Gengbe, focus)

Is it possible to make the linguistic notations that use <small></small> a different color to make them stand out a bit? It would make them a lot easier to discern from the plain text.

Peter Isotalo 14:22, May 16, 2005 (UTC)

In general I don't think those linguistic notations should stand out from the plain text. Or do you mean the gloss corresponding to the highlighted morpheme (in the example above, yé and FOC? In other articles I have sometimes highlighted those by underlining instead of bolding the text. Let me try:

• àxwé yé Kòfí tù   (house FOC Kofi build:PERF)   Kofi built A HOUSE   (Gengbe, focus)
• àxwé yé Kòfí tù   (house FOC Kofi build:PERF)   Kofi built A HOUSE   (Gengbe, focus)

What's better? I don't know. I have the feeling that changing the color makes them stand out just too much from the other text in the article, but that could be a matter of choosing the right color. — mark ✎ 16:28, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, the color looks good — don't like the cluttered code though; do we have wikisyntax for colors? Or don't we have that for a reason? — mark ✎ 19:19, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

No, I just meant the FOC and the other grammar abbreviations. Even if you're looking for them they can be somewhat hard to discern. The colored one looks very good to me. Blue (or perhaps green) doesn't seem as it would steal too much attention.

Peter Isotalo 21:17, May 16, 2005 (UTC)

Oh, no, not more about references

1.OK, the one essential distinction to make is between a) references/sources, that have been used for the article, and b) "further reading", that has not. So please bear with me: you are saying there is no further reading there? All the items listed are references/sources?

2.For anything else, once you've taken care of 1), the organization of references can be varied according to circumstances and preference, there are no rules. I see that the distinction you wanted is gone now, but I say you should just go ahead and have the section divisions bring out any kind of classification of references that you consider of value for the reader.
Mind you, I still don't understand quite what it was, though. How can there be more general sources on Gbe, versus more specialized linguistic sources not relevant to someone specifically interested in the Gbe languages. I'm sorry, I'm just experiencing static, could you please try again? (Is there a "not" too many..?)

3. The reader needs the lists to be complete. Anything footnoted should also be listed under References (it isn't now). OK, the list will take an inch more of scrolling that way, but think how much more convenient it'll be. It's the universal principle in academe, actually not for pedantry but for reader convenience.

4. Dividing refs into printed and online, as you do now, is purely a matter of taste. It's unnecessary, as the reader can see at a glance which refs are links. So just do it if you like it. (For myself, I don't like it.)

On another note, I think the Lead is absolutely great now! --Bishonen | talk 23:15, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

(1) All are sources. I always use the label 'Bibliography' for sources I did not consult; 'References' are sources I actually did consult.

(2) Take Ansre (1961) — that's a source of no special interest to someone looking for general info on the Gbe languages as a whole, since it's only about the tonal system of Ewe. Or take the inverse situation, Stewart (1989), which is an overview of the Kwa languages, the branch in which Gbe is situated. Even broader: the article refers to Greenberg (1966), which is a general classification of African languages. Such sources differ from things like Capo's output, which is often on Gbe and Gbe alone. Currently wondering if it's important enough to re-introduce the distinction.

(3) Good point, I've fixed this.

(4) I think I agree with you here — there are only two 'online sources' anyway.

Thanks for reviewing! — mark ✎ 15:56, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks again for the detailed reviews! I'm bringing it to FAC. — mark ✎ 21:18, 25 May 2005 (UTC)