Wikipedia:Featured article review/Bengali language
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[edit] Bengali language
Notified WikiProject Bangladesh, WikiProject Languages, WikiProject Bengal, WikiProject India, Shmitra, Ragib, SameerKhan, and Zaheen
This article fails the FA criteria on multiple levels. First, it does not meet criterion 2c. Many paragraphs in "Writing system" remain unreferenced (including the entire "Spelling-to-pronunciation inconsistencies" section. A paragraph in "Consonant clusters" is unreferenced, as is the "Verbs" section. The "Vocabulary" section only contains three references, backing up a total of two sentences. Furthermore, the article has an inconsistent referencing style. In some references, Harvard style referencing is used, while in others, {{cite book}} is used. The article also fails 1c because some unreliable sources are used in the article (e.g. http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/translation/articles/bengali-language.html and http://web.archive.org/web/20070212100431/http://www.sanskrit-sanscrito.com.ar/english/sanskrit/sanskrit3.html).
Second, this article does not meet criterion 2a. The lead does not sufficiently serve its purpose. The lead is supposed to summarize the topic and "prepare the reader for greater detail in subsequent sections". The lead does not cover the Bengali writing system, vocabulary or grammar. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 03:12, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
- {{cite book}} is not used in the article at all. It only uses citation templates for web sites and newspaper article. Whether one or the other is preferable, I don't know, but either way it has no impact on readability, which is their primary purpose. If a standard should be followed, I recommend removing citation templates altogether since they add virtually nothing for the average reader but inject excessive amount of code, making it much more difficult to edit articles. Standardizing the small amount of information displayed in footnotes can easily be done without clunky templates.
- I completely agree with the comment about the lead, though. There should be at least a minimal summary of the basic features of the language in the lead. Compare with Nahuatl, Swedish language and Turkish language.
- Peter Isotalo 06:48, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
About citations "backing up" sentences: How does one decide which sentences need to be backed up and which ones don't? --Zaheen (talk) 10:05, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
- There is no standard, only differing (and often hotly debated) interpretations ov WP:V. Not all statements require detailed citations, but it's generally agreed that all direct quotes need to be cited in great detail. One generally needs to weigh readability (a jungle of footnote makes reading difficult) against how controversial or obscure the facts are ("Moscow is the capital of Russia" should not require a footnote). A paragraph can contain one reference or a dozen. What matters is that all the facts can be backed up by what ever is cited, no matter if the reference is to entire books or individual pages.
- As far as I see it if there is a citation which is reasonably comprehensive and accurate in relation to what it's supposed to back up, it's up to whoever asks for more citations to explain why the existing references aren't sufficient.
- Peter Isotalo 11:36, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
- A citation at the end of a paragraph is perfectly acceptable, as long it backs up all the information in the paragraph. The references in those article don't do that; they are only used to source one or two sentences at most. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 14:12, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
- "Any statements likely to be challenged", that is, any statements which you think yourself somebody might question. And if you see a sentence without a ref, even if it is completely obvious, you can challenge it and it has to get a ref, though I wouldn't reccomend that because it would seriously damage your reputation...--Serviam (talk) 13:12, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
Nishkid, please point out the sentences that you think are in need of citations. The article contains fairly standard, descriptive, unambiguous statements about the Bengali language, and there's a lot of them in there. One would have to cite the same sources, those mentioned in the bibliography, over and over again, if one is determined to insert a citation after every such sentence or even after every paragraph. AFAIK, this is not standard in Linguistics literature. The linguists just describe the language, insert citations for very esoteric features, and finally provide a bibliography for further studies. I am not sure if this is standard for general encyclopedic articles either; neither Britannica nor Encarta follows such strict norms. --Zaheen (talk) 16:15, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
- We're going by standards of Wikipedia articles. There are entire sections in this article that do not contain any citations. This is unacceptable for a featured article, even if the subject is a language. If you want me to add {{cn}} templates, I'll be glad to do so. Note that I already highlighted the unreferenced areas in my initial argument. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 16:29, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
- About the "Spelling-to-pronounciation inconsistencies" section - most (if not all) of the information there can be found in the book Teach Yourself Bengali. I'm (sort of) willing to cite that book, but how should I cite it? That is, should I say, "This information can be found on this page, this other information can be found on that page," etc.? Or should I just put one citation for the book somewhere in that section (and, if so, where in the section)? --Kuaichik (talk) 18:02, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
- Any chance we could use sources of a slightly higher academic standard than a language course for beginners?
- Peter Isotalo 18:36, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
- Yes, we probably could. The article on Bengali by Bhattacharya (http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~uclyara/bong_us.pdf), cited under the "References" section (along with Teach Yourself Bengali), has at least some of this information, too :) --Kuaichik (talk) 23:31, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
- About the "Spelling-to-pronounciation inconsistencies" section - most (if not all) of the information there can be found in the book Teach Yourself Bengali. I'm (sort of) willing to cite that book, but how should I cite it? That is, should I say, "This information can be found on this page, this other information can be found on that page," etc.? Or should I just put one citation for the book somewhere in that section (and, if so, where in the section)? --Kuaichik (talk) 18:02, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
Nishkid, you merely said there are "many paragraphs" here or "one paragraph" there in the article that are unreferenced and you want references for them. There's a problem with this approach. The information in the article (or at least the sections you are referring to) is not structured in a way so that a paragraph neatly corresponds to some information source. How can one cite a source for a particular paragraph in that case? These are basic, observable facts that can be found in any decent linguistic description of the language. And most of them are listed in the References section at the bottom. --Zaheen (talk) 18:34, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
- Inline citations (or an author-date style) are mandatory for featured articles. I didn't request you have one generic source that covers all the information in a particular paragraph. Add citations for controversial text and factual matters as you see fit, and you should be fine. Instead of arguing about sourcing (when it's quite obvious to any FA regular that some sections of this article are seriously lacking in attribution), I suggest you just add references where appropriate. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 20:50, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
- But I don't see any need to add inline citations. There's no controversial text in there. It's fairly standard, generic stuff about Bengali. It is not obvious to me exactly what you want. Please be more precise. --Zaheen (talk) 00:12, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
- I would also like to add that it seems to me, at least in this case, that providing citation is more of a stylistic issue than anything else. If I can resort to an analogy: the information presented here is as obvious as statements like "A water molecule is made up of one Oxygen and two Hydrogen atoms. Under normal atmospheric pressure, water boils at 100 degrees Celsius, etc." Now there is a good deal of this sort of statements that one can write on water that may go on for more than one paragraph in an article on water. But does one really have to include inline citations for such obvious stuff? --Zaheen (talk) 00:21, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
- But it's not just controversial statements that are sourced in Wikipedia, right? For example, the first sentence on the actual article Water begins with a very well-known fact, but it is still sourced.
- Also, at least in the case of this article, we have to realize that readers are not necessarily going to be familiar with what we are talking about and that "obvious" is relative. Imagine for a moment you knew very little about Bengali, nowhere near as much as you actually do. You happen to be reading this article (for whatever reason), and you notice a sentence like "The [inherent] vowel can be phonetically realized as [ɔ] or [o] depending on the word, and its omission is seldom indicated, as in the final consonant in কম [kɔm] 'less'."
- Even something this simple could seem quite odd. Bengali does have a way of writing IPA [o] (as in the word shoNar "golden"), so why should the "inherent vowel" be pronounced like that? How do you know somebody didn't just make this up? How do you know it's reliable information? After all, anybody can edit Wikipedia, and maybe this is an error no one spotted.
- The reader wouldn't know that this kind of information is sourced unless we provided a source. Maybe this isn't a good argument, but basically, I think: If we need sources to maintain this as an FA article, let's put in the sources instead of arguing about whether they are needed in the first place. It should be easy enough to do. --Kuaichik (talk) 01:12, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
- Zaheen, citations aren't used just for controversial text. I made that clear in my previous statement. I asked you guys to add citations to factual statements, even if they may seem obvious (they might not be obvious to outsiders). I'll add {{cn}} templates if you still don't understand my point. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 02:11, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
- @Kuaichik, I don't think yours is a particularly convincing argument. Virtually any sentence on Wikipedia can be made up. But that doesn't mean we have to provide a citation for each and every sentence. As I said, the sources are already provided in the References section. One can nitpick till the end of time until every sentence has been verified with a citation. That's just silly. That's not how encyclopedia articles are written, as far as I know. Or are we creating entirely new standards of writing general reference encyclopedic articles here?
- Take an example from the article on Water you just mentioned. Yes, I can see that the first sentence "Water is a common chemical substance that is essential for the survival of all known forms of life" is actually sourced to some journal article published in 1997 (as if we needed any confirmation on that; I find this hilarious). But there are dozens of statements in the same lead section that contain similar obvious facts about water, yet they are not sourced at all. What is the standard here?
- As for your example of inherent vowel (I think you were just playing the devil's advocate there), it's counter-intuitive to ask questions like why the inherent vowel is pronounced like that. It just is. It's an objective description of one of the features of the language. There may be yet to be discovered historical linguistic reasons behind why the inherent vowel can assume the pronunciation of [o], but that is beyond the scope of this article.
- It seems to me that visual style plays a big part in the inclusion of references in a featured article. The main argument seems to be that if a section doesn't have any sources, it somehow looks bad and there must be something wrong with the information. --Zaheen (talk) 02:26, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
- @Nishkid, you seem to be quite assured of yourself in this area. I understand your point, but I also think it's hardly that obvious. --Zaheen (talk) 02:26, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
- I'm quite sure of myself because I've successfully nominated multiple articles to FAR before and I am an FA writer. Zaheen, these are standards that current featured articles need to meet. See WP:FACR, which states that the article must have "consistently formatted inline citations using either footnotes or Harvard referencing". Given that there is clearly an inconsistent use of inline citations, it is up to you and your fellow editors to add references where appropriate. I don't doubt that the article is inaccurate, but for the readers' sake, I would recommend you include a citation every few lines. If more inline citations aren't added to the article in appropriate locations (like in the unreferenced sections described above), then the article will be defeatured. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 03:44, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
- Zaheen, citations aren't used just for controversial text. I made that clear in my previous statement. I asked you guys to add citations to factual statements, even if they may seem obvious (they might not be obvious to outsiders). I'll add {{cn}} templates if you still don't understand my point. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 02:11, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
Nishkid, I don't doubt for a moment you are the ultimate maestro of FA writers and the glorious torch-bearer of the FA standard. :-) But I think you are misinterpreting the FA standard here. The part of the standard you just quoted say that the citations themselves must be consistently formatted. It doesn't say anything about inconsistent/consistent use of inline citations in the article, and I am not sure whether that has even been defined anywhere.
And furthermore, since it was you who brought up this issue, it is up to you to indicate which lines need to be referenced and why. And you have been quite vague about this from the very beginning of this discussion. Like I said, it is not that obvious at all. Surely we could all pretend that it is obvious and just put in some references here and there. But that would be, imo, shoddy scholarship. --Zaheen (talk) 04:37, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
- If anyone asks for more footnotes and the primary author asks for a specification of the demands, the requester should be prepared to discuss the merit of citing specific statements on an individual basis. Citing policy and engaging in vague discussions about referencing generally leads nowhere. Basic facts that are easily referenced in the literature already provided does not generally require specific citations.
- Peter Isotalo 06:44, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
- I told Zaheen I would add {{cn}} templates, but he never told me to do so. Pardon me for citing the wrong part of WP:FACR earlier. I meant to point at criterion 1c, not 2c (2c is part of the stylistic criteria). 1c states, "claims are verifiable against reliable sources, accurately represent the relevant body of published knowledge, and are supported with specific evidence and external citations; this involves the provision of a "References" section in which sources are listed, complemented by inline citations where appropriate". Wikipedia:When to cite should clarify my point. As I stated before, I requested citations for controversial statements and some factual statements (which as the page states might be counterintuitive). I suggest you take a look at Tamil language: from a quick glance, inline citations are used to back up some pretty specific facts about the language (e.g. "Tamil is a diglossic language", "In India, the ‘standard’ koṭuntamiḻ is based on ‘educated non-brahmin speech’, rather than on any one dialect", "Similar to other Dravidian languages, Tamil is an agglutinative language.", etc. I will add {{cn}} templates to statements that are controversial or highly subject-specific (in which case, even people familiar with the subject may not know a certain fact). Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 14:47, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
- Furthermore, note that referencing isn't my only concern here. The lead and the referencing style, as described above, don't meet the FA criteria. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 14:48, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
- I don't think you quite understand the issue here, Nishkid. There is no easily defined standard for what should or shouldn't be cited. For every rather footnote-heavy FA there is always an example which isn't as pedantic in referencing. Just because one article author decided that basic facts easily found in the references has to have a separate footnote doesn't mean that everyone else has to follow suit to maintain FA standards. There's a balance between good referencing and proper style that should be respected, and Tamil language does not manage that balance particularly well.
- I noticed that you added fact-tags to the article, but I see no motivation for any of those tags. I think it would be better for everyone if you tried to motivate your concerns more precisely instead of just adding random, anonymous fact tags. Pointing at seemingly random fact statements and claiming they need a citation (without an explanation) is a very unilateral method of deciding how an article should be written.
- Peter Isotalo 19:08, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
- I understand that there is no easily defined standard for citing here. But explain to me how this article has around 45 inline citations, while similar language articles have two or three times as many? What's the cause for such a discrepancy? Why does Tamil language (an article of similar length, with 84 inline citations) have a poor balance between good referencing and proper style? What do you think of other articles which include 100-200 references for a 50-75KB article? What's the problem there? Also, my tag-adding is not random. I added tags to statements for controversial statements, stats/data, and some subject-specific facts. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 19:20, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
- Furthermore, could someone explain what the standard for citing is in this particular article? Some inline citations have been added to reference seemingly indiscriminate facts (e.g. "The Bengali abugida is a cursive script with eleven graphemes or signs denoting the independent form of nine vowels and two diphthongs, and thirty-nine signs denoting the consonants with the so called "inherent" vowels", "The script has been adopted for writing the Sylheti language as well, replacing the use of the old Sylheti Nagori script.", "Bengali is the national and official language of Bangladesh and one of the 23 official languages recognised by the Republic of India.", "Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, a British grammarian, wrote a modern Bengali grammar(A Grammar of the Bengal Language (1778)) that used Bengali types in print for the first time."). Why were these particular sentences referenced? Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 19:31, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
- And look what happened here. My "random" tag-adding resulted in the discovery of an inaccurate statement in the article. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 19:36, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
- "Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, a British grammarian, wrote a modern Bengali grammar(A Grammar of the Bengal Language (1778)) that used Bengali types in print for the first time." - I remember why the citation was added to this sentence, because it is the first time Bengali types in print was used.
- Coming to Nishkid's adding citation needed tags, while some tags were very well placed (like the tagging of official language status in Andaman), some were, IMO, not needed. For example, Tagore was the author of the national anthems of both India and Bangladesh. Another is, "Bengali exhibits diglossia between the written and spoken forms of the language" (because the whole section then describes the diglossia itself, with refrences. It was just a introductory sorta sentence).
- Anyway, I am not taking part in this balancing debate. Trying to add some references, as demanded. But it would be great if your demand is somewhat less :)--Dwaipayan (talk) 20:10, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
- Regarding Halhed, I only brought that up because it just seems like an ordinary fact. From my understanding, it appears Peter believes that this ordinary fact wouldn't need a citation. I apologize for adding the fact tag to diglossia; it was only after that I realized the subsequent statements explained why the language was diglossic. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 20:14, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
- And look what happened here. My "random" tag-adding resulted in the discovery of an inaccurate statement in the article. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 19:36, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
- Furthermore, could someone explain what the standard for citing is in this particular article? Some inline citations have been added to reference seemingly indiscriminate facts (e.g. "The Bengali abugida is a cursive script with eleven graphemes or signs denoting the independent form of nine vowels and two diphthongs, and thirty-nine signs denoting the consonants with the so called "inherent" vowels", "The script has been adopted for writing the Sylheti language as well, replacing the use of the old Sylheti Nagori script.", "Bengali is the national and official language of Bangladesh and one of the 23 official languages recognised by the Republic of India.", "Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, a British grammarian, wrote a modern Bengali grammar(A Grammar of the Bengal Language (1778)) that used Bengali types in print for the first time."). Why were these particular sentences referenced? Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 19:31, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
- I understand that there is no easily defined standard for citing here. But explain to me how this article has around 45 inline citations, while similar language articles have two or three times as many? What's the cause for such a discrepancy? Why does Tamil language (an article of similar length, with 84 inline citations) have a poor balance between good referencing and proper style? What do you think of other articles which include 100-200 references for a 50-75KB article? What's the problem there? Also, my tag-adding is not random. I added tags to statements for controversial statements, stats/data, and some subject-specific facts. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 19:20, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
- I told Zaheen I would add {{cn}} templates, but he never told me to do so. Pardon me for citing the wrong part of WP:FACR earlier. I meant to point at criterion 1c, not 2c (2c is part of the stylistic criteria). 1c states, "claims are verifiable against reliable sources, accurately represent the relevant body of published knowledge, and are supported with specific evidence and external citations; this involves the provision of a "References" section in which sources are listed, complemented by inline citations where appropriate". Wikipedia:When to cite should clarify my point. As I stated before, I requested citations for controversial statements and some factual statements (which as the page states might be counterintuitive). I suggest you take a look at Tamil language: from a quick glance, inline citations are used to back up some pretty specific facts about the language (e.g. "Tamil is a diglossic language", "In India, the ‘standard’ koṭuntamiḻ is based on ‘educated non-brahmin speech’, rather than on any one dialect", "Similar to other Dravidian languages, Tamil is an agglutinative language.", etc. I will add {{cn}} templates to statements that are controversial or highly subject-specific (in which case, even people familiar with the subject may not know a certain fact). Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 14:47, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
