Talk:Oral history

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[edit] General Cleanup

I'm going to edit the external links, clean them up, and put them in alphabetical order. I'm also removing the "Storytellers" section since (a) none of the people are actually storytellers, in the oral tradition of storytelling sense of the word, and (b) storytellers should be listed in the wikipedia entry on storytelling, not under oral history. --Dalejarvis (talk) 14:32, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Took off unsourced tag, because, in addition to the reference in the reference section, there are a ton of references in the external links section. - Jb? 11:40, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] proposed merger with oral history & oral tradition

  • Don't merge oral history with oral tradition - they are two different things. history is the use of oral tradition, they aren't actually the same thing. Rick. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.38.200.156 (talk • contribs) 23:52, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Don't Merge. It's as simple as the difference between "history" and "tradition". Each is a unique term, commonly used in its own right.--Keefer4 19:43, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
  • No, no, no the page on oral history is confusing enough without muddling tradition and history any further. The problem in the first place is that the definition of oral history is inaccurate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.38.176.184 (talk • contribs) 20:54, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
  • this article is quite poor. It mostly describes 'oral tradition'. Oral history is not "something passed down by word-of-mouth", it is the recorded interviewing of those who experianced certain historical events first-hand by a trained historian. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.196.29.69 (talk • contribs) 13:01, 14 February 2007 (UTC
  • What? No. Merger of any of the three topics is a very bad idea. These are distinct topics. Just because they both include the word "oral" and relate to the past in (different) ways ... oral history is people's individual personal histories and recollections of the past. It's an academic discipline. Oral tradition or oral culture is the social tradition of transmission of cultural knowledge within a particular group of people. It's a social practice, not an academic discipline. Oral literature can include recitations of oral culture, but is also about performance art, the art of storytelling, etc. --lquilter 13:23, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Removing the merge tag. Clearly distinct categories and merge-proposer never bothered to explain or articulate a proposal or justification. --lquilter 13:31, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Oral history contained a lot of stuff about oral culture, presumably because "oral transmission of history" is one type of oral tradition and "oral history" is an old term for that. I deleted extraneous material from Oral history, moved it to Talk:Oral tradition, explained the distinction on Oral history and linked to Oral tradition.
  • Added a clarifying sentence to the top of Oral tradition that explained that it was different from oral history.
  • Oral literature seems fine to me; I don't see how it would be confused with oral tradition or oral history. The editor who suggested merger said "that's an oxymoron" but it's clearly explained in the brief entry. The article could do with some fleshing out, though.
(cross-posted to all 3 article talk pages) --lquilter 14:15, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] External links section

The external links section is way too long, especially compared to the rest of the article. Remember WP is not a link farm. It should be pared down, but I am not the person to make the judgements. The section could also be organized with subsections. --Blainster 16:32, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I removed the excessive external links tag. There are not that many links and all of these are to government, university, or oral history professional sites. These are proper links and should remain. LarryQ 13:50, 22 April 2007 (UTC)