This article is about a language spoken in Cameroon by around 10,000 Nizaa people. I have significantly expanded this article from a one sentence stub to a GA. The main concern I have is the lack of media in the article; however, I think this is due to a lack of free-license images in general, not because I haven't added them. Nevertheless, any suggestions would be appreciated.
Comment as GA reviewer (see review). Given my past involvement with the article and lack of familiarity with FAC (as a first-time contributor to an FAC discussion), I won't attempt to do a full review, but I just want to mention a couple of things that might be relevant for this review: firstly, the TheilEndresen-1991 source is fully accessible to users of The Wikipedia Library. Secondly, a couple of the sources are from University of Oslo (UiO) scholars, and UiO's online repository has (fairly recently, I think) been restricted to members-only access until the content has "been migrated to the national research archive (Nasjonalt vitenarkiv) during fall 2025" (according to the 403 error message). Because of this, Kjelsvik-2008 is currently only accessible via ResearchGate and Pepper-2016 is only accessible via archive link. Kjelsvik-2002 is available via CORE as well as ResearchGate. I hope this helps! Also, I'm not sure whether consistently-formatted dates are a requirement for FA, but just in case they are, it might be worth standardising them throughout the article; I was going to do this myself based on WP:DATEVAR, but looking at the early edits it isn't clear what would be classed as the original format, so I'll defer to @PharyngealImplosive7 on that one!:) Pineapple Storage (talk) 22:39, 1 July 2025 (UTC)
I've gone ahead and standardized the dates to mdy, just because that's the format I'm most used to. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 23:04, 1 July 2025 (UTC)
A further note from me: unless there's another source that I've missed, as far as I can tell the name 'Mengaka' is only attested in one source (well, technically two—Ethnologue 1988 and Ethnologue 1992—but these are consecutive editions of the same publication with the same editor so they don't necessarily represent consensus among sources) and is actively questioned by another source (Theil Endressen 1991). It's then not even listed as an alternative name in Ethnologue 2005; this entry (p. 72) is under Suga as the primary name, with alternatives listed as "Nizaa, Ssuga, Galim, 'Nyamnyam', 'Njemnjem', 'Jemjem'". Given that the attestation for 'Mengaka' as an alternative name is pretty dubious, might it be worth removing it from the bolded list of alternative names in the first sentence of the lead? Obviously it would still be discussed in §Name, but it would just deprioritise it in comparison to the widely-attested names, and potentially avoid having to hatnote Mengaka language for disambiguation. I'd be interested to hear what others think about this issue! Pineapple Storage (talk) 14:06, 24 July 2025 (UTC)
One other point that we discussed in the GA review was that §Kinship system might be a bit out-of-place in §Grammar, as it's more of a vocabulary feature, but we agreed that having a whole §Vocabulary section just for the one paragraph on kinship terminology might be a bit OTT. Does anyone else have any thoughts on what the best option is re FA layout criteria? Pineapple Storage (talk) 17:00, 24 July 2025 (UTC)
I've made a few tweaks to the article (see this edit summary), so please check these over to make sure they're all okay! One other minor note from me: §Morphology currently says "the root vowel lowers to /a/ in Nizaa." Is there an existing article that could be linked to here? Raising (sound change) is linked to later on in the paragraph, so it might not be ideal to duplicate this link, but it's something to consider. Maybe even creating a redirect at Vowel lowering to Raising (sound change)? I don't know. Anyway, really good work on this @PharyngealImplosive7! Well done. Pineapple Storage (talk) 15:23, 22 August 2025 (UTC)
Your tweaks to the article look fine; as for the redirect, since lowering is mentioned at the target article, I've created a new redirect. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 15:29, 22 August 2025 (UTC)
Looks good! There's a couple of other points I forgot to mention... §Tonology currently says:
Endresen groups the tones into "primary tones" and "secondary tones".
I feel like the wikilink here is unnecessary, as technically a "tone group" appears to be a slightly different thing (), and anyway it redirects to Tone (linguistics) which is already linked elsewhere. Later in that paragraph, it says:
The "secondary tones", which include rising (HM), falling (HL, MH, and ML), and peaking (LHM)
This is a bit confusing, as HM (high to mid) would appear to be falling, and MH (mid to high) would appear to be rising. Endresen (1991) p. 176 doesn't actually classify them further than Primary and Secondary, so it might be worth reworking this bit? Pineapple Storage (talk) 17:36, 22 August 2025 (UTC)
I've removed the wikilink and fixed the error where I classified HM as rising. Endresen (1991) on page 176 does mention the tone groups:
The first four tones, that is H, M, L and LH, are the Primary Tones, which are found on all types of syllables. The flve remaining tones, that is HM, HL, MH, ML and LHM, are the Secondary Tones, which are only found on word-final syllables; they can be interpreted äa Primary Tones plus an addition: 5. H+M, 7. M+H, 8. M+L, 9. LH+M. More details will be given in Endresen (forthcoming).
Yes for sure, he discusses primary vs secondary, all I meant is that within those groups he doesn't further group them into rising and falling etc. (at least not within that passage, anyway).MH is still listed as falling in the article? The "secondary tones", which include falling (HM, HL, MH, and ML), and peaking (LHM) tonesPineapple Storage (talk) 23:49, 22 August 2025 (UTC)
@Pineapple Storage: Yeah, nice catch for the MH tone classification. It should be fixed now. As for rising, falling, and peaking tones, those are just definitions based on what tones make up the contour. Should I remove the classifications or add a source? – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 23:52, 22 August 2025 (UTC)
No I think it's okay now! I was just concerned before that I might have missed something or maybe there was another location within the source that should be cited here, but now that the HM/MH thing has been cleared up, the classifications are all pretty intuitive so I don't think a further citation is needed.:) Well done again on this!! Pineapple Storage (talk) 00:08, 23 August 2025 (UTC)
File:Map_of_the_Mambiloid_languages.svg: see MOS:COLOUR. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:02, 2 July 2025 (UTC)
@Nikkimaria: I've modified the alt text for the images that have it. In terms of the MOS:COLOR issue, should I go ahead and remove the image or do something else (sorry, I'm not too familiar with MOS:COLOR). – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 04:33, 2 July 2025 (UTC)
The alternatives would be to expand the legend to cover all the languages included, or add some kind of pattern or symbol to the map itself. Nikkimaria (talk) 23:55, 2 July 2025 (UTC)
I've gone ahead and requested someone at WP:GL/M to add a legend/pattern to the map. For now, I have removed the image. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 01:09, 3 July 2025 (UTC)
Refs 24, 27, 31 and 34 don't point to any citation.
" Older speakers of Nizaa also pronounce /ɛː/ is also pronounced as the sequence /ar/" This feels a little wordy/confusing.
"...in one word root (xag or 'to clear one's throat'), and is not consequently, is represented the same as /h/ in the orthography." Also feels very wordy.
For ref 19, I can't find where it says in the given page for the source that says "extensive documentation began in the 1990s".
The text mentions "orthography" a lot but I don't really see anything that elaborates on what that is for WP:TECHNICAL.
Overall very nicely written aside from those few nitpicks above. Sophisticatedevening🍷(talk) 18:33, 3 July 2025 (UTC)
All of those should be fixed. Refs 24, 27, 31, and 34 just needed "Theil Endresen" as the last name instead of "Endresen" in the sfns. I fixed the two awkward sentences as well and defined what orthography was the first time it was mentioned in the phonology and orthography section. I also removed the claim about the classification doubts resolving in the 1990s. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 18:49, 3 July 2025 (UTC)
The article seems quite reliant on Kjelsvik 2002, which is a "Candidate of Arts and Letters" thesis; I'm not familiar with the Danish academic structuring, but this seems about equivalent to a PhD thesis. WP:THESIS advises to use such theses which "have been cited in the literature, supervised by recognized specialists in the field, or reviewed by independent parties"; as this is a potential FA, I'd like to see evidence that Kjelsvik 2002 meets at least two of those three criteria. Thanks, ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:10, 11 July 2025 (UTC)
@AirshipJungleman29: For the have been cited in the literature requirement, Pepper (2016), Pepper (2010), and Phillip (2011) seem to cite it (which are all the non-Kjelsvik-authored sources that I could find published about Nizaa after 2002). As for supervised by recognized specialists in the field, Kjelsvik (2002) states I must thank my knowledgeable and always patient supervisor, Rolf Theil Endresen, which suggests that Endresen supervised over Kjelsvik's work. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 19:46, 11 July 2025 (UTC)
Works for me. Comments to follow if I have time. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 19:55, 11 July 2025 (UTC)
I would expand the lead a bit to properly summarize the article
Nizaa has a complex phonetic inventory consisting of 65 consonant phonemes as well as numerous tones; in terms of grammar, it preserves verbal morphology much more than is typical for the Mambiloid languages. – The leas has to be as accessible as possible, and this is, I think, too technical (see WP:MTAU). Any chance to explain this for a general reader? In particular, jargon such as "verbal morphology" strikes me as possibly unnecessary; do you simply mean that verbs change? In the body, you could probably avoid quite some jargon, too.
The language is currently endangered – I don't think we need the "currently" here. Is this for implying that the classification is only temporary? But then, you don't use that word in the article body.
The language is classified as endangered. – "Classified" implies some formal decision to me, so who did classify it?
The Atlas Linguistique du Cameroun (ALCAM) estimated only 2,000 speakers however, – It would be important to note in the text when this was published.
Bjørghild Kjelsvik – you red-link her in the lead but there is no red-link in the body. Would she meet Wikipedia:Notability (academics) to warrant an article to start with?
Endressen (1991) – This academic notation may feel unfamiliar to readers, and we usually write "In 1991, Endressen" or similar.
'Sewe' may also be another alternate name for the language, while 'Baghap' is the Nizaa for themselves – Can't follow – the Nizaa call themselves "Baghap", or what? But you stated that the endonym is "Nizza".
traditionally, it was thought that these animals helped a clan go through some stressful situation in the mythological past – "it was thought" means that they do not believe in this anymore, but that does not seem what the source says?
though some do practice Christianity or traditional African religions – I do not think that "traditional African religions" does this justice. Africa is a continent. Can we be more specific? Also, this implies that these people practice more than one African religion; is that really the case?
in research that was supported financially by the Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture – I don't think that is relevant?
However, his research was not published until 1991.[5] Before this, no comprehensive documentation of Nizaa had been undertaken, – This is somewhat poor wording, and the "Before this" part seems redundant since you already started the paragraph with The language was first studied extensively from 1979 to 1984.
Furthermore, because another language exists in Adamawa Region also called 'nyamnyam' – "the Adamawa Region that is also called" might work.
Leaning oppose: I am just through the first paragraphs and there are just too many issues, particularly concerning prose, but also concerning WP:MTAU. The article is in need of polishing. Hope these examples help. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 21:09, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
@Jens Lallensack: Thank you for the detailed feedback first of all.
I've tried to reduce the complexity of the article as you've suggested (as I'm familiar with the jargon, it's more natural for me to use, but I digress). A few comments specific points you brought up:
Bjørghild Kjelsvik - I'm really not sure if she meets notability guidelines?? Her papers have been very helpful in the niche field of Nizaa linguistics, but I'm not sure if that really meets criteria one of WP:NPROF. I don't think whether an article for her exists or not is really relevant to the FA nom though.
That was just a minor point, I complained that linking is inconsistent (linked in the lead but not in the body). Unlink and I'm happy. If you instead red-link consistently in lead and body, note that a red-link is saying "Hey, we lack this article, please create it", so we should only red-link if we are sure that that new article we would actually comply with our notability guidelines. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 04:30, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
Understood, I've unlinked her name in both the lead and body. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 04:38, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
'Sewe' may also be another alternate name for the language, while 'Baghap' is the Nizaa for themselves - I've removed the Baghap claim considering that neither Endresen nor Kjelsvik nor Blench mention it and because Grimes (1988) was published in 1988 may have outdated information.
though some do practice Christianity or traditional African religions - that was an error on my part; it doesn't really seem like they practice those types of religions anymore.
@Jens Lallensack: I've tried to reduce the technicality of the article by adding descriptions for most linguistic terms. Would you be able to do another review of the article and see if you understand it more this time? Thanks – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 18:24, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
@Jens Lallensack: (sorry for the repeated pings) The article has been significantly revised (see Aspet's comments below). Would you consider re-reviewing the article or rescinding your oppose vote if you don't have time to do another review. Thanks – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 20:22, 24 July 2025 (UTC)
CommentUser:PharyngealImplosive7, I disagree with User:Jens Lallensack on the usage of phoneme. The current lead (with sounds instead of phonemes) reads sloppily. Phonemes are a very basic linguistic term without which linguistics articles cannot be written. I say revert to "65 consonant phonemes". I would rename "History" to "Background", as I expected a diachronic analysis of the language in that section. It would be nice if you could give examples under "Nouns and pronouns". Finally, I wonder where you got "Nizaa preserves verbal morphology in general much more than most ..." from. The source seems to say (page 30 is 3 pages from the end, right?) that only Nizaa preserves strings of extensions. I'm not familiar with the term extension, but I assume it means suffix or morpheme. In that case, I don't understand it as supporting the claim that Nizaa "has more verb forms". Please, enlighten me if I misunderstood anything. It's a very important article, and good job with it so far! Aspets (talk) 18:48, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
I did not criticize the usage of phoneme explicitly, but I do think it warrants explanation; it's the lead, and when on the main page, it will be seen by many people without any clue about linguistics. You could write phonemes ("sounds"), providing the term but also offering a short explanation in a bracket, and that will be of much help to readers. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 19:03, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
@Aspets and Jens Lallensack: I've re-added "phoneme" (with an explanation in the lead of what it means). I've also revised the verbal morphology claim to instead say that Nizaa is the only Bantoid language that supports strings of verbal suffixes. Finally, I've added examples of nouns and pronouns to the article. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 20:08, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
@PharyngealImplosive7 I think a secondary concern would be that we do not infringe on Kjelsvik's copyright. I will not claim any expertise in this, but for example, are the listed nouns all of those which Kjelsvik gives? If we only list a few of her's, we should be fine. Just do not list every single noun she lists.
In the phonology, you refer to the "phonetic representation", so I assume that the table lists phonemes according to their normal phonetic pronunciation. Then, older speakers do not have any phoneme /ε:/?
I assume that Kjelsvik gives the forms for the tenses? I would add those. I would also like to get a further description of the mechanisms of the two perfects (or, if it's not very important, just a note that there exist two perfects). Currently, the description mystifies.
Please move the "Nizaa is ... permits strings of verbal suffixes" down to the same paragraph as, probably just before "A stacking of up to three suffixes to a single verb is grammatical in Nizaa". Either that or as the following sentence. Aspets (talk) 20:28, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
@Aspets: I did not list all of the nouns she provides, though I listed every pronoun. I'm not sure if that would infringe on copyright though, and if I removed some pronouns, the list would feel incomplete.
Yes, older speakers don't pronounce /ε:/. I've put its symbol in parentheses in the table to emphasize that.
I've moved the information about the perfects down to a footnote; let me know if I should add more information in the footnote itself. I've also add every tense form. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 20:43, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
@PharyngealImplosive7 Yes, I think the way you did it was ideal. Of course we need to list all the pronouns, I was just afraid of the nouns. I think I've read enough of the article to actually review it, so I will add a new section shortly. Aspets (talk) 20:50, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
Yes, that's probably a better approach. Aspets (talk) 20:10, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
Second look
Most of the language's speakers live in and around the village of Galim, a village in the department of Faro-et-Déo. – Do we have to mention twice that it's a village?
Nizaa has a complex phonetic inventory consisting of 65 consonant phonemes (sounds) as well as eleven tones and features an oral-nasal contrast in its vowels. – I still wonder if we cannot formulate this more plainly. What about: "Nizaa has a complex sound system with 65 consonant phonemes, eleven tones, and a contrast between oral and nasal vowels"? This way, you might not need the explanation "sound" anymore, because you already make clear that it's all about sounds and the reader will be able to follow even if they are not familiar with the term "phoneme".
I think you need more wikilinks. I personally would link "vowel", "suffix", "verb", and more.
Nizaa was first extensively studied and documented in the 1980s, by Norwegian linguists – I would remove that comma
helped a clan go through some stressful situation – maybe "helped a clan overcome a difficult situation"?
The writing system of Nizaa also has not widely been adopted by the Nizaa people – You don't discuss this writing system anywhere; who invented that, and on what writing system is it based? Arabic? Or is it just the romanization system that was recently devised by that scholar?
Many also know Hausa, another regional language, or French, due to their historical colonization of Cameroon. – Do they really know French because of the colonization, or because French is one of the official languages in Cameroon today? Germans also colonized Cameroon yet they don't speak German.
Certain imprecise details of Nizaa were known as early as 1932, – Is this the best wording? "Imprecise" is the opposite of "detail", no? And if you say "certain", that somehow implies that we know what these details were, so I would expect to read about them – maybe just say "Several details of Nizaa were known …"?
Because another language exists in Adamawa Region also called 'nyamnyam – I commented on that one above already
linguists often confuse the two languages – "confused"?
Mambiloid – needs to be linked in body, too.
Finally, Roger Blench in 1988 classified the Mambiloid languages, along with another language family in Nigeria's Adamawa State, the Dakoid languages, as members of the Northern Bantoid languages, which are a subdivision of the Bantoid language family. – Link "language family". This sentence implies that there are families within a family, is that correct?
which is where the present classification originates from. – Is that sentence just superfluous? I do not see what it adds.
However, another linguist, Bruce Connell, in 1997, disagreed with this classification. He suggests – stick with one tense
genetic relationship between the Mambiloid languages and the Dakoid languages are weak. – singular/plural mismatch
That was the first half of the article, again. I will try to get to the rest of the article if time allows. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 21:02, 24 July 2025 (UTC)
@Jens Lallensack: Thank you for the detailed feedback. Here are my responses to your comments:
I've removed the second mention of village.
Done.
I've wikilinked some more terms such as 'noun', 'verb', 'vowel', and others as you suggested.
I've removed that comma.
Done.
Clarified. I meant the romanization, not the Arabic script version of Fula.
The know French because it's a national language today. Clarified.
Done.
I've added the transition 'furthermore'
Linked.
I've linked language family, and it is perfectly normal for families to be nested within other families.
contrast between oral and nasal vowels – I can't find this bit about the contrast mentioned in the body? If it is not there, it has no source? --Jens Lallensack (talk) 21:31, 24 July 2025 (UTC)
Both types of consonants are common in the languages of Sub-Saharan Africa, including Nizaa. – "including Nizaa" is redundant since it was already stated that they occur in the language in the previous sentence.
Endresen groups the tones into "primary tones": high (H), mid (M), low (L), and rising (LH) found on all types of syllables, and "secondary tones": rising (HM), falling (HL), falling (MH), falling (ML) and peaking (LHM) found on word-final syllables and can be understood as one of the primary tones plus an additional tone. – I don't think the grammar works here. Two colons? Is this supposed to be one sentence?
Any reason this article is in American English? English is one of the official languages in Cameroon, and that should be Commonwealth English, no? --Jens Lallensack (talk) 15:59, 28 July 2025 (UTC)
@Jens Lallensack: Everything you mentioned should be fixed; I've also tried to change some words to Commonwealth English, though I may have forgotten some. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 19:38, 28 July 2025 (UTC)
Support. Looks good to me now. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 20:09, 28 July 2025 (UTC)
The goal of this review is mainly to make the article read well and to simplify the prose for a layman audience.
While you note that "the exact classification is still in doubt", the infobox gives a straightforward classification. Which is it? I do not see any source for it being Mambiloid, and further, do write (perhaps in a "Classification") that Mambiloid is a subgroup of Bantoid etc.
The lead could be expanded with another paragraph, breaking up the linguistic description and the documentation history. For the linguistic description, maybe add that the language features an oral/nasal distinction in the vowels, and maybe something about nouns.
How do you cite the consonant table? A tip would be to write (if the sources support this): Nizaa distinguishes between labial, alveolar, postalveolar, velar, labio-velar and glottal consonants (etc. with the manners of articulation and the labialiazation co-articulation).
Do the sources go into more detail on the tones? Specifically, I do not understand if eleven tones can occur on any syllable, or if there are eleven "accent patterns" or something similar. Some examples could help illustrate.
When explaining head-initial, give an example of an English sentence's head and modifiers. You can cite any "Handbook of Syntax" you have available.
"however, in noun phrases, the language does not strongly favor putting the main noun before or after its modifiers", this is clunky. Do you understand the exceptions and the rules? If so, you should be able to explain it more clearly. Use simple and few words.
Do postpositions fall under head-initial? Spell that out.
Give examples of possesor and possesee. Again, cite some handbook.
I do not think that "no overt grammatical marking" is the same as a "zero-marking language" (which you have hyperlinked). It should go to Relative clause#Formation methods and the appropriate entry.
"when the noun is animate, i.e. is a human or an animal" maybe "i.e. refers to".
"which marks location" does it work like the Slavic locative i.e. it's used when a noun has the meaning of location. Or is it something else?
The pronouns "in context", does that just mean "in a sentence with a finite noun"?
Does the vocative really not exist for the second person singular pronoun?
Please move "Nizaa is the only Bantoid language that permits strings of verbal suffixes" down to the paragraph where you discuss suffix concatenation.
Finally, do you have access to Eliane Sonkoue Kamdem's article "Mengaka tense-aspect system" in the Nordic Journal of African Studies December 2019 issue (vol. 28 no. 3)? Does it concern this language or is the term polysemous? Aspets (talk) 21:31, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
Blench (1993) states that it is a Mambiloid language and pretty clearly fleshes out the classification of Nizaa (and the Mambiloid languages as a whole). The Mambiloid languages are also part of the Northern Bantoid and Bantoid language families. Maybe that makes the entire classification issue resolved? I'm not sure.
I've expanded the lead.
Kjelsvik (2002) does include a consonant table in her thesis, so I've just added a description of the table at the top with a citation.
No, none of the sources explicitly go into detail about the tones sadly. I do mention in the wikipedia page that noun and verb roots can only take certain tones.
I've added an English example and cited Fukui (1993)
I've given a better explanation of how the nouns work.
Postpositions are a feature of head-final languages so I've updated the article to reflect that.
I've added an example of a possessive phrase.
Done.
Done.
I think so. I've updated the article to say that.
Yes, it doesn't seem to exist for some reason. I'm not sure why.
Done.
Lastly, the article about "Mengaka tense-aspect system" also relates to a language spoken in Cameroon, but it is a different language.
@PharyngealImplosive7 "Blench (1993) states that it is a Mambiloid language ..." Yes, but you need to write it in prose in the article, and give the page from which you source it.
I think with the pronouns in context, it now reads as if they take those forms either in context or in normal clauses. I'd say replace the "or" with "i.e.".
Otherwise, I think that clears up the points I've had. Regarding the footnote: WP:DUE is key here. I would suggest you make the call about which detail to go into, keeping in mind that the audience will include people who do not even know what a verb is, and avoiding copying the sources since there is copyright. Also, you need to source the footnote. Aspets (talk) 11:06, 24 July 2025 (UTC)
@Aspets: I've explicitly created a paragraph about classification that says However, in 1983, ALCAM classified Nizaa and another language, Kwanja, as Mambiloid, which is where the present classification originates from. Finally, Roger Blench in 1988 classified the Mambiloid languages, along with another language family in Nigeria's Adamawa State, the Dakoid languages, as members of the Northern Bantoid languages, which were a further subdivision of the Bantoid language family.
I've implemented your suggestion that changes 'or' to 'i.e.' and I've sourced the footnote. Since it isn't very important anyways and because I don't want to violate copyright as you say, I'll keep the description relatively short.
I think that in the consonant section, some more prose would go a long way to help the uninitiated understand all the strange symbols. The nature of labialization and pre-nasalization could be described with reference to some introductory handbook in phonetics. You should give some background on the implosive and labial-velar consonants: mention that the language is spoken in an area where those commonly occur. Also, perhaps describe how they're produced. The same phonetics source could be used, and for the areal stuff just a handbook of African linguistics or similar.
The same with tones. A description like "which means that the fundamental frequency (f0) shifts across the word, independently of pragmatic considerations" and maybe something about the presense of tones in neighbouring languages.
Before you explain "The syllable structure V (a single short vowel) exists only in the particle a", you should illustrate what syllable structure is by showcasing some normal words in the language. "This means that only words which fit this structure are allowed, e.g. cún "tree"."
Your explanation of codas should probably change from "that follow the vowel in a syllable" to "that end a syllable". I think that's clearer.
Under "Morphophonology", I don't understand "In some types of suffixes including irregular noun plurals, vowels become /a/". What is this in contrast to? Related languages? Does the stem vowel become /a/, or the suffix's? Also, is this important to include? If it is, we can spare a longer explanation.
Maybe explain the imperfective aspect in one and the same section. Currently one finds information in both "Morphophonology" and "Verbs".
"The possessor always precedes the possessee and most adjectives, demonstratives, and numerals also precede the noun they modify." (the signs of head-initialness) should precede the slew of "however" and "alhtough". Always explain the usual situation before going into exceptions.
I actually think that even definiteness could be explained. Remember, not everybody paid attention when learning grammar in high school. However, all readers know English. Something as simple as "definite nouns are like those with the in English, while indefinite are like those with a" could make it click. Or, in the table, give definitions for the definites and plurals as well: "the house", "houses" etc.
My sneaking suspicion is that the honorific and vocative pronouns are used similarly. It might be WP:SYNTH or even worse WP:OR to put that into the article, however. Would you like to scour the sources to see if we could simplify the amount of jargon used to explain the pronouns right now?
Maybe explain the tenses before the locative suffixes? Unless the locative suffixes are heavily used, they seem to take up undue space. Always begin with the most general and important information.
"does not distinguish mothers and maternal aunts or fathers and paternal uncles from each other, calling them maaŋ and táá respectively. However, maternal uncles and paternal aunts have separate terms to distinguish them from maternal aunts/mothers and paternal uncles/fathers." is hard to keep track of. Can you simplify?
I've added some information about tones and consonants in general and how they work to their respective sections. I've also fixed the description of the codas. I have also clarified that the root vowel is the vowel that becomes /a/ as you can see in the table in the nouns section.
I split the information about the imperfective section into two sections because the first set of information is about morphophonology, while the second group of information is about grammar. I've moved the information about relative clauses before all the exception information.
I've also given examples of definiteness in the noun table. I'm not sure about whether the vocative and honorific pronouns are used similarly, and because Kjelsvik mainly talks about verbs, not nouns/pronouns, there isn't much information there anyways. I've moved the tenses info before locative info.
Finally, I've simplified the kinship section to make it more readable.
@PharyngealImplosive7 I've rearranged the layout in "Consonants" and "Verbs". Please review it and you are free to change it back if you feel it makes it worse. Personally, I think this order makes more sense.
The "Tonology" section should probably start with "Nizaa is a tonal language" using the Kjelsvik source pp. 12-13. Also, not "common ... as well". Remove the "as well".
Looking at the noun table, it looks way more cluttered now. Maybe bring back the previous table, but in the headings (Singular, Singular definite, Plural) write "e.g. a house, the house, houses"? Aspets (talk) 17:29, 24 July 2025 (UTC)
@Aspets: I'm personally fine with the rearrangement of the paragraphs in both sections and have added that Nizaa is a tonal language and have decluttered the table. Thanks for all the detailed feedback again. Do you have any further suggestions to the article? – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 17:43, 24 July 2025 (UTC)
@PharyngealImplosive7 Yes, I have found the title Classification Interne du groupe Bantoïde by Pascale Piron from 1997. It could be used for the classification. It seems to be in French, but I could help with that. Do you have access to it?
But more importantly. It seems like Bruce Connell has written The Integrity of Mambiloid which I guess is quite important to the classification of the language. Do you have access to this article/chapter? It's from the year 2000. Aspets (talk) 17:48, 24 July 2025 (UTC)
I don't have access to the book in French and could not find it on the Wikipedia Library either sadly. I don't want to pay upwards of $150 as well. Perhaps we could ask at WP:RX?
The Integrity of Mambiloid does seem to have quite a lot of useful information, especially Second, it is apparent that Nizaa and Ndoro are the most divergent of the group; sufficiently so that, in the absence of a strong set of unifying features, and until alternative possible alignments are considered, their inclusion in Mambiloid must at this point be considered tentative. (This, however, is not to suggest a closer link between the two.).
How do you suggest I integrate such information into the article? – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 18:01, 24 July 2025 (UTC)
@PharyngealImplosive7 It might be best to split up the "Documentation" section into one on documentation and one on classification. See English language or Xhosa language for a classification section. Aspets (talk) 18:05, 24 July 2025 (UTC)
@Aspets: Done. I've made a separate section titled "Classification" and added information to it. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 18:20, 24 July 2025 (UTC)
@PharyngealImplosive7 Yes, to satisfy the requirement of comprehensiveness it is important that any relevant information from The Integrity of Mambiloid is added to the article. Could you do that? I think we can ignore the French article for now, especially if Connell deals with it himself. Aspets (talk) 18:03, 24 July 2025 (UTC)
Under Background, "The writing system of Nizaa also has not widely been adopted" → "The writing system devised by ... has not been widely adopted". Also, are you sure you have the right source for this sentence?
Under classification: remove "however", "finally" and maybe write "However, Bruce Connell disagreed with this classification ...".
"connections between" → "the genetic relationship between" since you've already used "genetic group" earlier in the paragraph.
"He suggests that", remove "finally".
Under Orthography: move the first sentence to the section between the title and "Vowels", since it applies to both the vowel section and the consonant section.
Under Consonants: "doubly articulated" could probably be simplified to "articulated simultaneously" with a wikilink to Doubly articulated consonant.
When discussing the implosive consonants: "which refer to sounds" → "which refer to consonants".
Yes, Ethnologue is the correct source. It says Literacy rate in second language: A few adults in Fulfulde, Arabic script. Few can read Roman Script
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I also fixed the sentence case table issue. Thanks – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 19:36, 24 July 2025 (UTC)
@PharyngealImplosive7 I mean "The writing system of Nizaa also has not widely been adopted by the Nizaa people, because of their low literacy rate", which is sourced to Theil. Aspets (talk) 19:58, 24 July 2025 (UTC)
@Aspets: You are right about that. It should be fixed now. Any further comments? – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 20:01, 24 July 2025 (UTC)
No, I believe I have finished my review now. Well done! I hope it gets promoted. Aspets (talk) 20:16, 24 July 2025 (UTC)
Support – article is well-written and I have specifically critiqued the technical language with the purpose of making it understandable to laymen. The article's editor has been very responsive and fixed the issues, so I believe that it meets the criteria of WP:MTAU.
It is comprehensive, with every available source used which is important for this language of which not much has been written. The French source mentioned in my review is tangential to the topic, but when it is accessed it may have some information that could be added to the article.
I have not evaluated the neutrality of the article, but considering the paucity of coverage it shouldn't be an issue. The one disagreement in the classification is dealth with even-handedly.
The article is stable.
I have not assertained if there are any copyright violations in the article.
The lead summarizes the content.
The structure of the article leaves nothing to be desired.
I have not looked over the citation practices.
I have not looked over the media.
The article is the appropriate length for the topic.
This article tests whether a topic can be notable, but not able to be promoted to a Featured article. Many of the shortcomings of the article (the uncertain treatment of the tones, the lack of detail in the grammar sections) have to do with the lack of research on the language. However, the article's editor has made a good job with the available sources. While I haven't checked for copyright issues, the citation styles or media, I can to the best of my knowledge confirm that the article meets the other Featured article criteria. Aspets (talk) 20:15, 24 July 2025 (UTC)
@PharyngealImplosive7 I have some more comments now that two other reviewers have come with suggestions.
In Morphophonology, maybe "In the imperfective aspect, coda consonants in final syllables change ..." Remove the "also", and maybe rephrase to "the last consonant in the word" or "word-final consonants".
A "coda augmentative" – is that supposed to be a suffix or affix? I read "appendix" and that is terminology I'm not familiar with. Maybe explain the morphophonological change i.e. "(e.g. /m/ back to /w̃/.)"
Do you want to expand on the noun phrases' head-initialness in a footnote?
Under Nouns and pronouns, maybe use the word "declension"? Does Kjelsvik speak of declension?
Wikilink "case".
You've done a good job on the article! Aspets (talk) 07:38, 25 August 2025 (UTC)
@Aspets: Kjelsvik does not speak of declension, so I'm not going to use that term. Otherwise, I've clarified / fixed / added everything you suggested including the footnote. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 14:02, 25 August 2025 (UTC)
I think they are asking because they would like to close/promote the nomination, and wanted to know whether you had anything else to say. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 00:46, 31 August 2025 (UTC)
@FAC coordinators: This should be ready to close/promote? Not a lot of discussion has been going on for the last week and the nomination is already quite old. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 20:56, 31 August 2025 (UTC)
@David Fuchs I have already voiced my support above. Aspets (talk) 23:02, 1 September 2025 (UTC)
I am kinda unsure if SIL Global#Criticism raises any questions about reliability, seems like many of the issues haven't anything to do with it and it's unclear how many of these are inside views. "Verb chains in Nizaa" and " Nominal Compounding in Nizaa – A cognitive perspective" seem reasonably cited so I'll let it stay. "Mambiloid Inside and Out: Mambiloid Integrity Revisted and The Situation of Somyev Within Mambiloid" requires additional information. What makes https://mambila.info/ a reliable source? Spotcheck:
1 I presume this info is in the subscription-needed section?
Well, I'll need a quote or something, even for a subscription-needed article. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 07:03, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
I've removed the paid source. The claim is already well-supported in the article. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 14:39, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
2 Can't search for the special terms there. And I can't find the Morphophonology part, and the Nouns and pronouns is too technical for me.
(sources numbered as in this version) The part cited in §Morphophonology is on page 178, and the bit about nouns/locative/clitics is on page 181. If you download a PDF, that should allow text searching I think. Pineapple Storage (talk) 14:39, 31 July 2025 (UTC)
Not sure that the article's formulation, which implies that all irregular noun plurals undergo this change, is supported. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 07:03, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
Changed the sentence to say that only some noun plurals display these changes. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 14:39, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
7 This source is too long to work without page numbers.
I added 'quote' and 'quote-page' parameters to this citation. Pineapple Storage (talk) 14:39, 31 July 2025 (UTC)
Which don't seem to display? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 07:03, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
It does for me? Citation 7 now says:
Kjelsvik, Bjørghild (31 March 2008). Emergent speech genres of teaching and learning interaction. Communities of practice in Cameroonian schools and villages. Faculty of Humanities (Linguistics PhD thesis). University of Oslo. pp. 91–134 – via ResearchGate. p. 91: "the actual site of the present head village, Galim"
13 Millet and sorgo not mentioned. Where is cattle herding?
Millet (mil) is mentioned on page 28 in the list of produce farmed, and sorghum (sorgho) is listed as one of the staple foods at the top of page 29. I've tweaked the article to show this. I also couldn't find a mention of cattle herding, but I've added another citation to Kjelsvik-2008 that discusses hunting, fishing, beekeeping and ironsmithing. Pineapple Storage (talk) 14:39, 31 July 2025 (UTC)
That source has been removed. Endressen and Grimes still support the claim. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 15:45, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
24 This source is too long to work without page numbers.
Responding to below: How is the Y-axis sourced? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 07:03, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
Oh, I was using an old version of the article. I don't know how then you would divide the y-axis for a webpage. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 14:23, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
Sorry, I meant the labels for the Y-axis in the table of our article. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:20, 2 August 2025 (UTC)
If you mean the vowel table, each of those IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) symbols is defined as open-mid, open, close-mid, close, etc so we don't need to source that. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 18:24, 2 August 2025 (UTC)
I dunno, I don't think that this is as clear to people as 2+2=4 would be for example. Perhaps a reference might be a good idea here. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 07:13, 3 August 2025 (UTC)
@Jo-Jo Eumerus: I've added a source (the same IPA handbook I used for the consonants section) to the vowel table. As all of your concerns should be resolved now, would you be willing to pass the source review? – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 20:21, 3 August 2025 (UTC)
29 Where is this?
Where in the source that is. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 07:03, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
Read the paragraphs directly below and above figure 2. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 14:24, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
Still can't find that search term mentioned below. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 07:03, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
I was talking about a different source / was using an old version of the article. You can ignore the comments I made below. The source says The 58 phonemes in the syllable onset System are presented in table 2.There are altogether 21 labialized phonemes, not counting /w/. Notice that the unvoiced dorsal fricative /x/ is highly marginal, as it is found in one root only, /xag/ 'to clear the throat'. The glottal phonemes also have a very low frequency, being found mostly in loanwords and ideophones – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 14:39, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
@Jo-Jo Eumerus: Thank you for the source spotcheck by the way. The specific webpage on mambila.info seems reliable to me because it was presented at a linguistics conference in 1997.
Source 1: Yes, Ethnologue is subscription only.
Source 11: Yes, don't worry about that. Sources 10 and 4 also support this claim.
Source 13: Millet and sorghum are mentioned on the last sentence of page 28 and the first of page 29. The sentence starts with La nourriture principale des Nizaas. The cattle herding claim has been removed by User:Pineapple Storage and replaced by activities sourced by Kjelsvik (2008)
Source 15: Kjelsvik (2008) has entire paragraphs on Islamization (During the last 40 to 50 years, the Nizaa have become steadily more islamized...). Endressen (1992) also states La majorité des Nizaas sont des musulmans nominalement, mais il y a aussi quelques chrétiens. Dans la réligion traditionnelle des Nizaas le culte des ancêtres joue un grand-rôle
Source 24: It does have page numbers (pages 10 to 11)?
Source 29: Unsure what you mean. Could you please clarify?
Source 32: See the paragraph starting with Another domain of pitch variation is the word or syllable...
Source 36: Has a page number already?
Source 39: Table 3 lists /j̃/ as a coda, so this is fine.
Source 41: already has page numbers?
Source 43: Good catch. I've fixed the initial sentence to say that it is neither.
Source 46: Do you mean expand the information about the head-directionality parameter or something else? Could you please clarify?
Source 47: and there are a number of postpositions but also at least one preposition is mentioned by the source
Sources 50, 51, 53, 57: all seem to have page numbers, unless I'm missing something.
I guess this is done now. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 07:04, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
@Jo-Jo Eumerus: Thank you for the source review. Do you have time to do a check for close paraphrasing for the article? – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 14:55, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
I didn't notice any during the source comparison. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 16:20, 6 August 2025 (UTC)
@Jo-Jo Eumerus: Would it be safe to assume that you have passed the close paraphrasing check as well then? – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 16:22, 6 August 2025 (UTC)
@Gog the Mild: (sorry if I'm doing this wrong, this is my first FAC nom after all) 3 reviewers have supported based on prose and Jo-Jo Eumerus has passed the source review and seems to have passed the close paraphrasing check as well. Would it be ok to close / promote the article or is it better to keep the nom open? Thanks – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 19:43, 6 August 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for the update PI. Perhaps best to include all of the FAC coordinators - @FAC coordinators: . We could do with another couple of general reviews, so we'll keep it open for now. Gog the Mild (talk) 23:44, 6 August 2025 (UTC)
@PharyngealImplosive7: I have a background in linguistics. Glad to see other linguistics pages get to FAC and I think you've done a bang-up job here. I was planning to review this when it was a GAN, but real life got in the way. Happy to have the opportunity to add my two cents here. Going to begin with a volley of comments, follow up, and then I think the lede needs a bit of expansion to cover the breadth of the page.
In the lede, delink the first instance "endangered" per WP:SOB; you link it later in a different environment anyway.
Soft recommendation to put the glosses in parentheses for readability.
I think that having too many parentheses will start to clutter up the sentences (especially in the grammar section), so I'm not sure about this. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 15:32, 17 August 2025 (UTC)
In Nizaa is the word the Nizaa call themselves, the link for "word" is an WP:EGG; recommend expanding the pipe to include the rest of the clause.
Nyamnyam is a pejorative term likely derived from the Fula word nyaamnyaamjo 'cannibal' which is further derived from nyam-nyam 'to eat', despite there being no evidence of the Nizaa being cannibals, while Galim is the main town of the Nizaa people – Not sure that there's a reason to give us the full Fula etymology here, nor link Galim to the rest of the sentence; it's a harsh left turn. Recommend rephrasing to something like Nyamnyam is a pejorative term likely derived from the Fula word nyaamnyaamjo ('cannibal'), though there is no evidence the Nizaa have ever practised cannabalism. The name Galim comes from the main town of the Nizaa of the same name.
Yes, it is not actually traditional couscous in the European sense, but called that by Endresen. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 15:27, 17 August 2025 (UTC)
Can we clarify that for the reader who might go look up couscous trying to figure out what it is? Perhaps by calling it a "couscous-like dish"? ThaesOfereode (talk) 22:07, 18 August 2025 (UTC)
I think the couscous part is pretty irrelevant (it is just what Endresen calls the dish) so I've removed its mention entirely. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 22:18, 18 August 2025 (UTC)
though some do practise Christianity a traditional religion that incorporates ancestor worship – Not sure what this is supposed to really say. Also there are two periods here.
That source quote is quite long. Any real reason for its inclusion?
Thank you for the ping! Um... to be honest, I'm not 100% sure why I put the whole quote in there... I seem to remember it had something to do with WP:NONENG, but reading that again now it only says translated quotes should be provided in the event of a dispute, so maybe I misread it before, I'm not sure. Otherwise it might just have been because @PharyngealImplosive7 said he didn't read French, so I wanted to be clear about exactly which part of the source I was referring to and what it said? Again, I don't know, but I don't think it's necessary to keep the quote; if anything, maybe get rid of most of it and keep just the most relevant bit(s)? Pineapple Storage (talk) 15:36, 17 August 2025 (UTC)
Since it's not strictly necessary, I've removed it for now. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 00:15, 18 August 2025 (UTC)
I think this is a good call. We can always re-add it, but given the length of the quote, I think it was a bit outsized. ThaesOfereode (talk) 22:07, 18 August 2025 (UTC)
write Fula in the Ajami script of Arabic – I think it might be clearer to say that they write Fula using an Ajami Arabic script, only linking Ajami script.
However, another linguist, Bruce Connell, in 1997, disagreed with this classification. He suggested [...] – Awkward. Recommend However, another linguist, Bruce Connell, disagreed with this classification. In 1997, he suggested [...]
are tentative members of the Mambiloid languages at best – Kind of informal/awkward. Recommend can only be tenatively considered members of the Mambiloid languages
that the genetic relationship → that evidence of a phylogenetic relationship – The phylogenetic relationship isn't weak per se, but rather evidence of it is shaky, no? In either case, the term here is phylogenetic.
That's it for now; will tackle the rest of the page later. Again, great work. ThaesOfereode (talk) 22:16, 16 August 2025 (UTC)
I can only tackle this first set of comments for now; I'll be back in anywhere from a few hours to a day depending on how busy I get. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 15:32, 17 August 2025 (UTC)
@PharyngealImplosive7: Yes, looks good for this first volley; I will look at the second one shortly. I've left a couple comments above and I've included a small change which appeared to have been half-fulfilled. Let me know if you have a concern about the wording. ThaesOfereode (talk) 22:11, 18 August 2025 (UTC)
Missed this on the first go, but shouldn't the lede pronunciation be [nɪ́zʌ̀ː ~ nɯ́zʌ̀ː]? Certainly is should be with the long marker and not a duplication of the vowel, esp since you haven't marked the syllable boundaries.
Interestingly, the sources always use /ɪ/ and never use /ɯ/, though they do list allophonic variation between the two vowels. Also the reduplication of the vowel is used to signify a different tone (/ʌʌ̀/ is different from /ʌ̀ː/) – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 00:15, 18 August 2025 (UTC)
Okay, with respect to [ɯ], do the sources indicate any particular conditions under which it appears? It's fine if it doesn't occur in the name itself, but if there's anything to say about allophony, we should include it. Re: tone, what difference is it signifying? If it's signalling a contour, we need to use the appropriate IPA contours, since this would be confusing to someone with knowledge of IPA but not knowledge of Nizaa in particular. ThaesOfereode (talk) 22:14, 18 August 2025 (UTC)
I've used the more common Chao tone letters to represent the name of Nizaa (now it says /nɪ˦zʌː˧˨/. As for [ɯ], the sources again, are frustratingly vague about where each allophone occurs. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 22:33, 18 August 2025 (UTC)
@ThaesOfereode: Endresen (1992), the French source, has information on where each allophone occurs. You may want to check out the vowel section; I added an explanation as to what is used where. The explanation also justifies why [ɯ] is never used in the word /nɪ˦zʌː˧˨/. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 17:01, 20 August 2025 (UTC)
Yep, excellent addition. Couple suggestions:
Clarify "it" here (in ). A bit hard to follow for the layman, I think.
Add a contrastive example showing blocking before the excepted phonemes.
Remove quotation marks from "back" and "front"; these are not metaphors since they are literally at the front and back of the mouth mechanically. The use of "normal" in quotes is good and appropriate, I think.
Soft suggestion to reverse the order so that the reader is exposed to the onset first, the placement of the vowel, and then the following consonant whenever possible (e.g., used when a vowel is before /n/ and follows /tʃ, dʒ, ᶮdʒ, ɲ, j, ʃ/ → used when a vowel follows /tʃ, dʒ, ᶮdʒ, ɲ, j, ʃ/ and precedes /n/). This helps the reader follow the process as C1VC2 rather than C2VC1.
Yes, I missed it. Thanks for the ping. I've removed the quotes for front and back, reversed the order, added a contrastive example, and clarified what 'it' is. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 23:06, 21 August 2025 (UTC)
No short nasal vowels at all? Seems odd. Typically, a field linguist might include certain contexts for the shortening of phonemically long vowels. Anything like that in your source material?
I don't think so. Short nasal vowels seem to be conspicuously absent. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 00:15, 18 August 2025 (UTC)
but this distinction has been lost in younger speakers – Soft recommend to link Merger (linguistics) to "distinction has been lost". Might be worth mentioning which vowel collapsed into which.
eighth nasalised vowel /ɤ̃ː/ from /ʌ̃ː/ - should already be mentioned. I've added the wikilink – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 00:15, 18 August 2025 (UTC)
Asking myself as well here, but since /ɤ̃ː/ collapsed, should ⟨ʌ̃ː⟩ be in square brackets (i.e., [ʌ̃ː]), or since it is an underlying phoneme in younger speakers should we keep the slash bracketing? ThaesOfereode (talk) 22:16, 18 August 2025 (UTC)
I think both interpretations make sense, and it doesn't seem like it would be the end of the world to me if we kept the slash. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 22:34, 18 August 2025 (UTC)
Older speakers of Nizaa also pronounce /ɛː/ as the sequence /aɾ/. – One of these is the underlying representation and one of them is the surface. That means one of these needs to be in square brackets (e.g., [ar]).
Under "Short oral vowels", your unrounded vowels are organized front-to-back (e.g., ɪ ~ ɯ), but your rounded vowels are organized back to front. Why? I would guess that the underlying representation favors one over the other (e.g., unrounded vowels are underlyingly front and vice versa).
I used the organization that Kjelsvik and Endresen used, but I'm open to changing this (maybe they listed the more common vowel first?). – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 00:15, 18 August 2025 (UTC)
This is a very strange organization, but I don't suppose I have any real objection to it since the information isn't obfuscated in any way by its order. We can keep it as is, I think. ThaesOfereode (talk) 22:18, 18 August 2025 (UTC)
Now that I have information from Endresen (1992), the organization is this way because the "normal" allophones of the vowels are first. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 23:10, 21 August 2025 (UTC)
You only discuss marginal phonemes in "Consonants" when your "Vowels" section has two. Why? You point out that your marginal phonemes are in parentheses here, even though you do the same without the explanation above. Consider revising this.
Older speakers of Nizaa also distinguish an eighth nasalised vowel /ɤ̃ː/ from /ʌ̃ː/, but this distinction has been lost in younger speakers. Older speakers of Nizaa also pronounce /ɛː/ as the sequence [aɾ]. - this is my description for the vowel marginal phonemes.
Both types of consonants are common in the languages of Sub-Saharan Africa. – Soft recommendation to rephrase so you can include a link to Sprachbund; not a big deal though
Footnote seems most appropriate here. It'll also help justify your footnote section since I've often (I think correctly) been suggested during GANs to remove single-note sections and integrate them into the body of work whenever possible. ThaesOfereode (talk) 22:19, 18 August 2025 (UTC)
(combinations of tones) – I would clarify this; I think a relatively smart reader might interpret this as a polysyllabic quality rather than a monosyllabic one. For example 指鹿為馬 (zhǐ lù wéi mǎ) requires a combination of tones, but it's four words. A contour is strictly the shift of the tone within the syllable.
Can verb roots participate in tone contour? If so, are they limited to mid and high tones there?
Leaving this to Pineapple Storage; rationale given below. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 01:32, 18 August 2025 (UTC)
In §Tonology, the claim that Verb roots can only use the high or mid tones, unlike nouns, which may use any of the three levels. is cited to Kjelsvik 2002, page 18. That page says:
Verbs can have a M or a H lexical tone, as noted above. The root can be augmented with a number of derivational suffixes, and inflected with suffixes. Periphrastic forms making use of the auxiliary á / a᷆ / a etc further expand the paradigm, as we noticed above.
(By the way, while researching this I discovered that there are tone contour diacritics in the Unicode Combining Diacritical Marks Supplement block. I drafted a version of the §Tonology table using them, based on the table in Kjelsvic 2002 p. 13, which can be found here, in case you want to add that to the article @PharyngealImplosive7? No pressure either way, of course.)The only bit I could find in Endresen (1992) that discusses the tonology of verbs specifically is the text on page 43, between the diagram and the table; this is my rough translation:
This hierarchy is important both from a synchronic perspective and from a comparative and diachronic point of view. For example, in synchronic analysis we find that among monosyllabic verbs there is only one tonological lexical opposition: between the H tone and the non-H tone. In comparative analysis we find that the lexical H tone of monosyllabic verbs corresponds to the H tone of Proto-Bantu, and that the non-H (M and L) tone correspond to the L tone of Proto-Bantu; cf. Endresen (forthcoming). But Nizaa doesn’t just have the three tones H, M and L. By overlooking the downstep and the floating tones, we must distinguish between nine different tones in order to obtain a sufficient description. Other than the three simple tones, H, M and L, there are five double tones, HM, HL, MH, ML and LH, and one triple tone, LHM.
Hopefully this helps! And apologies if I've mistranslated any specific linguistic terms that I'm just unfamiliar with in French! Just let me know if there's anything that doesn't make sense. Pineapple Storage (talk) 16:42, 18 August 2025 (UTC)
@Pineapple Storage: Firstly, great translation, only a few terminology differences that were fairly easy to parse out. I have several questions still though. Are these representations in the table orthographic or are they supposed to be IPA? If orthographic, we need to include IPA. If they're supposed to be IPA, they aren't in line with typical contouring conventions. Are the tones in CVC falling on the nasal coda? I think I've seen this kind of representation before, but only on nasals. I don't think we want to give the impression that this kind of "coda tonality" is possible on coda stops. Again, highly recommending IPA contour conventions here: the current use seems to suggest a syllable break that isn't there and the mid-tone contours are difficult to discern on my screen; I can only imagine what this will be like for someone with accessibility issues. I should be able to add them, but if there are any indications about absolute tone (instead of relative; this is typically a 1–5 number), I need to know to appropriately add. Is there anything in the "Endresen (forthcoming)" that explains the tonogenesis of the mid tone? As an aside, I think CV → CVV → CVC is the more natural progression for the table, but open to suggestions. ThaesOfereode (talk) 22:57, 18 August 2025 (UTC)
@ThaesOfereode: I believe User:Pineapple Storage is translating the 6 pages in Endresen (1992) that talk about tones from French to English right now. As for the tone table, I've added a separate chao tone letter column and moved the nasal coda accents to the vowel. Sadly, neither Kjelsvik nor Endresen actually gives numerical tone letters, but since there are no extra-high or extra-low tones in Nizaa, I think the chao tone letters are accurate. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 23:12, 18 August 2025 (UTC)
@PharyngealImplosive7 @ThaesOfereode Thank you both for your patience, here is the Google Docs link:Endresen 1992 translation(I'm hoping that will work!) A couple of the tables are quite lengthy so I left them out, but I'm happy to translate the vocab from them if you need it. Also again, apologies in advance if there are any errors—my French is a bit rusty!:) Pineapple Storage (talk) 14:47, 19 August 2025 (UTC)
A couple of quick notes:
L tone in French is B (for bas) so apologies if I transcribed any by accident and left some confusing tone labels!
The translation of Nizaa mum is given as just "un" in this paper, so I'm not sure whether it's best translated as "one", "a/an", or both/either (depending on context); this is probably given somewhere else in the literature.
Wherever I've written "shift" or "shifted", that's a translation of transport or transporter; there might be a more linguistically accurate English equivalent for this, I wasn't sure.
I've translated substantif as "noun" throughout, hopefully this is accurate(?)
Let me know if there's anything else I can help with! Pineapple Storage (talk) 14:58, 19 August 2025 (UTC)
No problem at all! Happy to help. Pineapple Storage (talk) 16:03, 20 August 2025 (UTC)
Endresen groups the tones into "primary tones" and "secondary tones". – Seems better to put the link of "groups the tones" rather than on "primary tones", no?
The primary tones, high (H), mid (M), low (L), and rising (LH), are found on all types of syllables. – This seems to contradict what you wrote above about the tonal quality of verbs. Clarify. Also, what is "all types of syllables"? Is this a phonological constraint (e.g., CV vs CVC) or is it a stress-based one (e.g., primary vs penultimate stress)? If it's about syllable structure, this section needs to be moved to below "Syllable structure" so that the reader can understand what the possible syllable types are.
It seems strange that you gave us a rundown of the places of articulation, but haven't made any effort to explain what a tone group is and how it works in Nizaa. I'm totally out at sea with this. Can primary tones occur in syllable-final position (see also above)? What do you mean they "can be understood as one of the primary tones plus an additional tone"? It looks like this was lifted more-or-less verbatim, but it's not clear what that means at all. Are they underlyingly two syllables and the contour arises from the surface pressures? I was so confused by this I looked at the source and it says "Tones will not be discussed in this article" but says that a forthcoming article will discuss it; I suspect it's Endresen's French-language article you've cited, which is oddly only found in the "Background" section despite clear usefulness elsewhere (no mention of nyaamnyaamjo in its sense as 'sorcerer'?)
For this question and the one above (along with the Can verb roots participate in tone contour question), I'd like to ping @Pineapple Storage: (sorry if I'm pinging you too much!) since they know French and can interpret what Endresen 1992 actually says. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 00:15, 18 August 2025 (UTC)
No problem, yes of course I'm happy to help! I'm a bit rusty on all this, so I'll look back at the relevant sources first. Stay tuned!:) Pineapple Storage (talk) 11:07, 18 August 2025 (UTC)
Unfortunately the French article also refers to a "forthcoming" article that will more clearly explain the tone situation, but looking at his list of publications (of which there are absolutely loads, so apologies if I've just missed the relevant one) I couldn't immediately find that "forthcoming" work. His selected publications indicates that his subsequent work was about Fula, so I'm not sure whether the Nizaa tonology was ever published? Pineapple Storage (talk) 16:50, 18 August 2025 (UTC)
@Pineapple Storage: It seems like pages 43-49 are all talking about tones, the downstep, etc. Would it be possible for you to translate those pages as well (I get it if you don't have enough time) – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 18:45, 18 August 2025 (UTC)
Of course, no problem! Those pages are mostly tables anyway, so it shouldn't take too long. The journal is non-commercial use only (the website specifies CC BY-NC prior to 2023) so I'll do it in a Google Doc and post the link here rather than actually publishing the text on-wiki, if that's okay? Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:57, 18 August 2025 (UTC)
There's no tone table, which I think would be useful. More useful still would be a map of tonal diacritics since you're about to throw a lot of them at the reader and there's not really a useful way to understand it. Case in point, is sìì low? Is yîm LHL, LHM, or MHL?
Why are you marking long vowels with VV? Are they polymoraic? You should say if they are since that's what outlines the syllable constraints. The French-language source from Endresen seems to indicate that they are (p. 33).
You're not consistent with Endresen's name; sometimes it's just Endresen, other times is Thiel Endresen.
As an aside, strange that the Norwegian Wikipedia page only includes "Theil" (as do his University of Oslo, Google Scholar, Academia.edu, and researchgate.net pages!), but he seems to cite himself as Endresen (cf. 1991 p. 176)?
Why are you only discussing the lenition in coda wrt imperfectives? The source gives an example of fortition in augmentatives, which seems worthy of mention.
Will tackle grammar later on. ThaesOfereode (talk) 15:06, 17 August 2025 (UTC)
Most of these should be resolved. I'll wait for Pineapple Storage to explain to me what Endresen 1992 says about tones. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 00:15, 18 August 2025 (UTC)
Sure thing, no problem. Thanks for your patience as I sling through this slowly (and nickpickingly!). ThaesOfereode (talk) 23:02, 18 August 2025 (UTC)
@ThaesOfereode: I've added a lot more information about Nizaa tonology from Endresen (1992). Could you take a look at that section again and see if you understand it? – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 19:14, 19 August 2025 (UTC)
Okay, the biggest takeaway from these changes is that we absolutely positively must establish a universal orthography for this page; I can barely follow this page with its two principal sources competing for orthographic dominance. We cannot have "!" mark a downstep for an African language when /!/ exists in several neighboring languages; I thought I missed a new addition to phonology for a moment. Mark it with ꜜ◌ instead, since the exclamation is alternative for a typographical constraint we don't have here. The macron likewise needs to be removed. Its use in the "Sample text" section looks like a failed copy–paste; kekirā́ should be, I believe, kekira᷇, and it looks like there are similar issues passim. You should do a pass through and make sure these are rectified. I recommend just using Chao, but if you can use the prescribed IPA orthography that's fine too. Bottom line is that I don't want the reader to be guessing the whole time like I am now.
Other major takeaways:
Monosyllabic nouns can only have the syllable structures CVV and CVC – There are no instances of a (with tone) that are nominal?
Tone grouping still has not been explained. Is there not even a broad approach to this that we can use to explain to the audience what this is? I speak two tonal languages and I don't know what these groups are meant to signify; I can't even tell if this is a morphophonological or a phonosemantic phenomenon. My hunch is that it might be a sandhi phenomenon obfuscated by sound changes, but that's just a guess. The link is good and should stay, but it simply redirects to Tone (linguistics).
It's unclear why you introduce ° without giving an example.
ŋun 'boy/girl', with a mid tone, and ɓʉʉ, with a floating mid tone sound the same – They have the same tone, but they don't sound the same, right?
ɓʉʉ́ is a rising tone – You've marked a high tone here.
the result is inaudible – No. There simply is no change.
bɔ̀ɔ́ŋ 'egg' merges with the mid tone in mum when the two words are combined – Endresen has ɓɔ̨̀ɔ̨́ mum as 'one egg', seemingly unaffected by the tone shift, no? It's not merging; it simply has not been affected per above.
You need a counter-example here.
Do you have the right tone on ɓo᷄w? Seems like that's mid–high, not high–mid, but the sentence is a bit confusing.
Soft recommend placing the tone table after the second syllable.
Will continue to review, but those were my main findings with the new content. ThaesOfereode (talk) 23:10, 19 August 2025 (UTC)
@ThaesOfereode: I have tried to standardize the orthography by removing any of the macrons and using the hook accents. I've also used ꜜH to represent the downstep. As for your other concerns:
Monosyllabic nouns can only have the syllable structures CVV and CVC - no nouns use a with tone. That is reserved for the copula and auxiliaries.
I'm not sure how to put this into the article but I think the tones groups are just a way to show which tones are the main tones (primary) and which ones are derived through floating tone attachment, suffixing (e.g. suffixing of the L tone for definiteness), or tone-shift (secondary tones).
It's unclear why you introduce ° without giving an example. - it is just a shorthand so I don't need to write "the floating tone" multiple times, as that gets repetitive. It is used in the paragraph and in the table.
ŋun 'boy/girl', with a mid tone, and ɓʉʉ, with a floating mid tone sound the same – They have the same tone, but they don't sound the same, right? - yes right, clarified.
ɓʉʉ́ is a rising tone - I think you misread the tone table, a high tone would have an acute on both vowels (see the CVV section of the tone table)
bɔ̀ɔ́ŋ 'egg' merges with the mid tone in mum when the two words are combined - yes right, they are not merging; clarified. Also I added a counter-example in the next sentence.
Do you have the right tone on ɓo᷄w? - I had the wrong tone. Thanks for correcting me. I've scanned the entire article for any incorrect tones and have fixed hopefully all of my errors, but there still may be a few outstanding ones.
Soft recommend placing the tone table after the second syllable. - unsure what you mean by syllable.
Thanks for the detailed feedback again; it is helping the article become better. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 23:54, 19 August 2025 (UTC)
{{ping|ThaesOfereode}] This section should also be largely resolved. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 22:23, 20 August 2025 (UTC)
Top to bottom:
Cool, no problem.
Yeah, that's fine; I just don't know how helpful it is to the reader. What's the point of introducing a linguist's convention if you don't really use it passim. You write "floating tone" three times after the fact..
Okay.
Good fix.
Part of my frustration with the orthography. Though this has brought something else to my attention: this syllable is CVVC, no? Where is that in the analysis?
I haven't caught any so far, but will let you know if I find any.
Sorry, I meant moving the table to after the second paragraph of the section; I think the table will be useful to read before approaching the rest.
Glad the feedback is coming across as helpful. I always worry it comes across as mean-hearted! ThaesOfereode (talk) 22:34, 20 August 2025 (UTC)
@ThaesOfereode:bɔ̀ɔ́ŋ is not CVVC, rather it is CVV with a nasal long vowel. As for the degree symbol / floating tones, I'm only using "floating tones" to describe them in general, so I think the setup is fine. I've also moved the table as you suggested. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 22:47, 20 August 2025 (UTC)
Trout on my end; apologies for the mixup. ThaesOfereode (talk) 22:39, 21 August 2025 (UTC)
Not quite. I've pinged you again toward the top of this volley. ThaesOfereode (talk) 23:05, 21 August 2025 (UTC)
@ThaesOfereode: Thanks for the reminder (I didn't see that before); now everything should be resolved. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 23:10, 21 August 2025 (UTC)
Okay, I've done a final sweep (mostly for my nitpicking that I don't think I'm justified bothering you here for). I apologize for the delay; I was going to make recommendations to the lead, but other than vaguely recommending you expand it somewhat to make it more summary, I don't have much to add. This article's writing is excellent, the facts contained therein are faithful to the source material, and the content is comprehensive in its approach to this language. Great work, PI7; I'm happy to support on prose and factual content. ThaesOfereode (talk) 10:16, 22 August 2025 (UTC)
Is there any evidence (or source material) that says this is an underlyingly head-initial/head-final language? I understand if not, but would be great color.
{@ThaesOfereode: Unsure what this means? possessor always precedes the possessor sounds wrong and is incorrect.
Uh, yeah clear misread on my end. I believed I meant to write possessed, but I'm not sure it matters; it's clear enough. ThaesOfereode (talk) 22:00, 19 August 2025 (UTC)
These examples from Kjelsvik are excellent, but the orthography is difficult based on previous sections. What is the macron doing? I imagine length, but these are duplicated in your orthographic conventions above... and in some of your examples here. Also, is the circumflex supposed to be a LHL or MHL or LHM? Hard to tell.
I think the macron represents a mid tone? I didn't make the orthography, so I'm not entirely sure, but we should probably use Kjelsvik's orthography as at least it's standardized. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 00:47, 19 August 2025 (UTC)
@PharyngealImplosive7 @ThaesOfereode The complexity of this tones discussion is now outside my comfort zone given my (unfortunately) limited experience in Linguistics, so apologies if I've misinterpreted, but my reading of the Kjelsvik (2002) p. 13 table is that macrons by themselves only occur on the final consonant of a CVC syllable or the vowel of a CV syllable, to indicate that a three-tone contour ends with a final M tone (ie. LHM: CV = tǎ̄ and CVC = tǎm̄) because a M-tone vowel is just bare, without diacritics (so LHM: CVV = tǎa). I think given that Kjelsvik (2002) is the most recent (and most comprehensive) documentation of the tones, it would be good to standardise to her orthography, which does appear to use additional diacritics next to the vowel they apply to for CV syllables (which just needs a zero-width joiner or Template:Hair space to produce). Kjelsvik doesn't stack the diacritics (the way they currently are in the table at §Tonology for LHM, LHL and MHL) and I feel like this should be avoided as it could introduce some ambiguity about the order the tones are applied... I've done an updated version of the table at User:Pineapple Storage/sandbox/sub-sandbox 7 so you can see what I mean. Pineapple Storage (talk) 17:32, 20 August 2025 (UTC)
Done. I agree that although the diacritics may clash with each other, it is probably best to use the newest and most standardized orthography. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 18:27, 20 August 2025 (UTC)
Yes, but my major concern here is that it seems to indicate that the coda can always carry tone. I have only ever seen a resonant coda carry tone and without explicit details I'm somewhat concerned about using a CVR syllable to serve as a paradigm example. @PharyngealImplosive7: My understanding is that the tone is carried entirely on the vowel or vowel–resonant sequence. Are there any examples in the literature regarding the tones shown in the table with the resonant occurring (LHM, LHL, and MHL) with a stop coda as well? ThaesOfereode (talk) 23:04, 20 August 2025 (UTC)
@ThaesOfereode: In the tone table on page 13, Kjelsvik (2002) uses accents on the coda, e.g. ta᷄m̀ or tǎm̄. I can only find accents used on 'm' or 'n' (page 150, the word is ndǔn̄); no other codas seem use a separate accent. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 23:10, 20 August 2025 (UTC)
There's one instance on page 72 of kpa᷄ŋ̀, on page 108 there's a ɗàňí (intervocalic), and page 109 nitaŋẁ, but again these are all nasals/nasalised. The only exception I could find was at the top of page 155, gu᷄r̀. Pineapple Storage (talk) 13:45, 21 August 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for the insight here, Pineapple. @PharyngealImplosive7: Right now, I highly recommend using Chao throughout given the disparity between the two orthographies and the likelihood a non-expert may become confused by it. That said, given its use in the literature, I won't oppose on this basis alone. The choice is yours. ThaesOfereode (talk) 22:55, 21 August 2025 (UTC)
@ThaesOfereode: I guess using chao would be nice for understanding purposes, but since Kjelsvik uses her orthography and not IPA for Nizaa sentences, it might be odd to combine the two? Pinging @Pineapple Storage: for their opinion. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 22:58, 21 August 2025 (UTC)
As I've said, this is outside my expertise, but given that you've asked for my opinion I'm happy to give it! My instinct is to go with Kjelsvik's orthography, as it seems to have been used in subsequent literature (eg. Pepper 2010), and AFAIK Chao tone letters aren't used in sources about Nizaa (routinely? or at all?). But I think it should be explained explicitly (either in the body or in a footnote) that Kjelsvik's orthography splits the diacritics out of necessity (if this is correct). She says on p. 12:
a certain splitting up of the triple tones was unavoidable, since no triple-tone symbols was available
I might be wrong, but I interpreted this as meaning that the resonant coda (m, n, ŋ, r or w) doesn't necessarily carry its own tone, but rather the vowel+resonant cluster shares a single triple-tone sequence; only a couple of triple-tone diacritics exist and they don't cover all the tone combinations in Nizaa, especially the ones that include M segments. I would guess that, in order to preserve the order of the tones in the diacritic representation (ie. rather than stacking them, which could make it ambiguous which tone is realised first), Kjelsvik spread the diacritics out over the constituent characters.If this interpretation is correct, then I think the diacritics should be explained explicitly, along with a discussion of any differences between Endresen and Kjelsvik's orthographies, just to make sure everything's as clear and confusion-free as possible. Does this make sense? Again, I may have gotten things completely wrong. But as a (comparative) layperson this is my reading of it. Pineapple Storage (talk) 00:47, 22 August 2025 (UTC)
I agree with your assessment; it seems fairly accurate. I've added a note in the tonology section (note 2) that explains how the diacritic system for three-tone contours works, so courtesy ping to @ThaesOfereode and Pineapple Storage: to see if it makes sense / is accurate. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 03:48, 22 August 2025 (UTC)
Note makes sense and is a welcome addition. Great work by both of you. ThaesOfereode (talk) 10:15, 22 August 2025 (UTC)
Yep, the note looks good! I think it does a good job of explaining the situation without overcomplicating it. Pineapple Storage (talk) 14:59, 22 August 2025 (UTC)
What's the difference between the associative construction and the possessive phrase?
There doesn't seem to be much of a difference; I removed the associative construction and kept the possessive one. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 00:47, 19 August 2025 (UTC)
As a follow up, are these all compounds in typical language or not? The "two nouns" one is kind of throwing me. I think this should be regarded as a compound noun. Strictly speaking, is nízαὰ an adjective here or is this another compound noun? Are the adpositional phrases cliticized to the head? ThaesOfereode (talk) 22:03, 19 August 2025 (UTC)
Again, there isn't much specific information in the source. I've relabeled the "two nouns" one as a compound noun. As for the adjective + noun one, nízαὰ is an adjective because the source labels the phrase as such. As for the adpositional phrases, I'm not sure if they are clitics or not. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 22:38, 19 August 2025 (UTC)
Definiteness on nouns is marked by adding a lowering tone contour.
What is ɓaara doing? You just told us that pluralization is done through the use of animacy-based suffixes. Shouldn't the plural of sìì be sììya? Same for mbéwwu?
I've actually got no idea. Kjelsvik talks about -ya and -wu in one sentence and then throws 'ɓaara' at us in the table for regular nouns. Endresen (1992) actually defines it as the word for 'two'. I've added that to the article. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 00:47, 19 August 2025 (UTC)
Yes, looks like your sfn tag was erroring out, but I believe I've fixed it. Double check me though. Also, I highly recommend using the example njèè from "Verb chains" since it actually does use one of these suffixes to pluralize (njèèyâ). Also, does the word 'two' pluralize it per se or does the pluralization simply not need marking due to context? I don't think the source is backing up what you have written unless I missed something. ThaesOfereode (talk) 22:11, 19 August 2025 (UTC)
ɓaara does not appear to take plural markers. As for where Endresen talks about ɓaara, I got that information from this passage (translated into English):
Note that the M tone of the lexical tones HM and LHM “disappears” before mum and ɓaara: ɓów mum “one/a dog”, ɓɔ̨̀ɔ̨́ mum “one/an egg”, ɓów ɓaara “two dogs” and ɓɔ̨̀ɔ̨́ ɓaara “two eggs”. The “disappearance” is the result of a “shift” [lit. “transport”] of the final tone of a syllable to the following syllable:
I've added njèèyâ to the table as you suggested. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 22:47, 19 August 2025 (UTC)
Some pronouns in Nizaa have different forms to show respect (honorific) → Some pronouns in Nizaa have different honorific forms to show respect
Anyway to link the kinship system to its archetype (Iroquois kinship, it looks like)? In any case, recommend a {{broader}} tag, either Iroquois kinship or Kinship terminology
a 'younger sibling' nā́m is seen as disrespectful – Soft recommendation to say something along the lines of "indeterminate of gender" for clarity's sake.
That's about all I have for now. I will review the page in full and look at your comments above later on. ThaesOfereode (talk) 00:21, 19 August 2025 (UTC)
@ThaesOfereode: Most of these should be resolved; for some of these, Kjelsvik (2002) is annoyingly vague, so I can't do much. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 00:47, 19 August 2025 (UTC)
@PharyngealImplosive7 @ThaesOfereode, regarding "Older speakers of Nizaa also pronounce /ɛː/ as the sequence [aɾ]." The older speakers do not have any /ɛː/, right? As in, they have no [ɛː] and therefore there's no reason to analyse them as having a phoneme /ɛː/. Rather, it's the younger speakers who have shifted /aɾ/ into [ɛː]. But then, it's easier to just analyse the new sequence as a phoneme /ɛː/, and maybe /aɾ/ just doesn't occur for younger speakers. My suggestion is: it may be that older and younger speakers have different phonemic systems (phonologies), and it must be if there isn't a merger or split.
But all of that is unimportant, because we cannot analyse the phonology ourselves. We have to stick to what the sources report, and is that really /aɾ/ and /ɛː/ or /aɾ/ and [ɛː] or [aɾ] and /ɛː/? We must follow their analysis. Aspets (talk) 13:45, 19 August 2025 (UTC)
@Aspets and ThaesOfereode:: Endresen (1991) uses slashes for both ɛː and aɾ:
First, there is a generation difference in the use of /ɛɛ/. In nouns, the younger generation, e.g., Hamadicko Daniel, uses /ɛɛ/ where the older generation in most cases uses the VC sequence /ar/, (cf. /bɛɛ/ vs. /bar/ ('cloud'). These are clear indications that a change */ar/ > /εε/ has taken place in Nizaa. The fact that there is generation difference today, combined with loanwords like /jέέtu/ ('file') < Fulfulde /jarto/ indicate that it has taken place fairly recently, and probably after Pre-Nizaa A. In an even more recent influx of loanwords, even the younger generation has /ar/, (cf. /martô/ 'hammer' < French marteau).
@PharyngealImplosive7 It doesn't say if the older generation has /ɛː/. My interpretation of that passage is that young people have both /aɾ/ and /ɛː/. If /aɾ/ was [ɛː] they wouldn't be able to pronounce /marto/. I think this is better understood as a sound change than underlying/surface realizations. Aspets (talk) 18:09, 19 August 2025 (UTC)
Yes you probably are right. I'll go ahead and remove that from the article. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 18:14, 19 August 2025 (UTC)
the language was first documented extensively from 1979 to 1984 by Norwegian linguist Rolf Theil Endresen This is cited to two of Endresen's papers. That's not enough to state in wiki-voice that nobody documented the language before he did. See my essay Wikipedia:First is worst. RoySmith(talk) 14:58, 30 August 2025 (UTC)
PS, also the photo caption, Rolf Theil Endresen, who was the first linguist to extensively document NizaaRoySmith(talk) 14:58, 30 August 2025 (UTC)
@RoySmith: I've removed the mention of "first" in the article. Do you have any other suggestions, comments, or feedback? – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 15:36, 30 August 2025 (UTC)
That was just something that jumped out at me, but I'll probably not do a full review. RoySmith(talk) 15:41, 30 August 2025 (UTC)
Furthermore, I must thank my knowledgeable and always patient supervisor, Rolf Theil Endresen. He is in this case a 'first mover' in a very real sense of the word: it was he who first analysed the Nizaa language and created its alphabet.
I agree with Pineapple Storage; another source saying that Endresen was the first to document Nizaa should alleviate concerns. Re-added. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 20:54, 31 August 2025 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I'm going to be reviewing this article! I'm a new reviewer, so @It is a wonderful world has kindly offered his mentorship. I'll read through the article and start making some notes, hopefully today, or tomorrow at the latest.:) Pineapple Storage (talk) 15:33, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
@Pineapple Storage Looking forward to working on this! Just two tips that I have noticed new reviewers sometimes struggle with:
It's a good idea to structure your review based on the criteria. Different reviewers do this in different ways. Some use the templates linked in the "GA toolbox" on the right, others just create section headings based on the criteria. I personally think the clearest way to do it is with this (feel free to copy+paste) or a similar structure, but you are free to use if you would like.
It's a good idea to keep track of how you evaluated the criteria as you go along, even if you find no issues. It means others can see you are checking everything, and allows you to keep track of the review better. For example, when evaluating the scope/broadness (criterion 3), you might write "The structure appears to follow the same structure as other GA and FA articles on this topic. I see no major omitted areas".
Hi @IAWW, thank you for these tips! I was actually just about to add TM:GAList2, so I will add the template below. Pineapple Storage (talk) 15:55, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
Great, I look forward to your comments. IAWW (talk) 16:03, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for starting the review! This is also my first GA nomination. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 17:43, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
@Pineapple Storage You are reviewing really well. I added a few thoughts below, but you are doing a great job of checking every criteria and engaging well with the content of the article. Feel free to keep pinging me when relevant. IAWW (talk) 08:35, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
Thank you so much! I'm relieved to hear it's not going too badly, as I've actually been quite enjoying it (apart from the frustration of there not being as many sources available as we would like, because it's such a small language). Thank you for your feedback below, it's really helpful to hear your thoughts—especially on some of the more nuanced criteria!:) Pineapple Storage (talk) 11:09, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
Hi @It is a wonderful world! I'm just checking in, as I'm aware I've done quite a bit of editing of the article since I started the review—so much so that my Xtools authorship is now 25.8% (even though I've mainly been copyediting and rearranging, rather than actually writing new content). I've had another look through the GAN instructions and done a quick search in the discussion archives, but I haven't been able to find any advice specifically on the issue of what to do if a reviewer becomes a "significant contributor" to the article during the review. WP:GAN/I#R2 says reviewers can't have made significant contributions to the article prior to the review, which I hadn't, but because I'm so interested in languages and linguistics, I've been able and willing to actually work on improving the article during the review, as opposed to remaining detached and exclusively noting areas in need of improvement on the review page. Do you think there would be consensus for me carrying on the review despite this? Or should I step back and allow someone else to review it now that I'm a significant contributor? Apologies if this is a silly question and/or there's a super obvious answer to this that I've missed, but I just wanted to clarify and make sure I'm okay to proceed. Either way, I think for my next review I will try and choose an article in a topic area I know less about and am less interested in!:) Thank you, and sorry this turned into such a long message! Pineapple Storage (talk) 16:30, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
It's a good question. I think in this case it is fine, because I'm also checking the review. >25% is quite a lot though, and you would generally want to request a third opinion particularly on the parts you have been involved in. IAWW (talk) 18:23, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
Okay thank you for this! Yes, this is what I was thinking; if the review hadn't already had your oversight, I would definitely have looked to get a second/third opinion! Your feedback and guidance have been essential so thank you very much again for generously offering your time. I hope you've found the process/article interesting too!:) Pineapple Storage (talk) 10:02, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
A. The prose is clear and concise, and the spelling and grammar are correct: Pineapple Storage (talk) 10:25, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
I think some of the detailed linguistic discussion could be a bit more accessible to a wide audience. Explaining a few technical terms might make for easier reading. Most of the technical terms are already wikilinked, which is great, but a non-specialist reader would likely not want to have to click on every single term they don't understand in order just to understand the sentence; I'm quite experienced with linguistics and have studied languages at degree level, and I found it challenging to keep track of the §Grammar section given how many wikilinks I was having to follow (or add in). It might be an idea to add brief explanations to the most important important technical terms for each topic, especially ones that are repeated several times (eg. marginal in §Consonants, coda in §Syllable structure, headedness and attested in §Word order, etc). Pineapple Storage (talk) 22:20, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
I've tried to add more definitions for technical terms. Let me know if anything else is too technical or unclear. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 22:51, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
That's great, I think those have made a difference! Pineapple Storage (talk) 23:20, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
@It is a wonderful world I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts on WP:MTAU for this article? (Especially if you don't have loads of experience in linguistics!) Pineapple Storage (talk) 01:00, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
Hello! I certainly do not have loads of experience in linguistics, and WP:MTAU is definitely a big and relevant consideration for this article. I originally was going to read through this section an tell you all the ways I was confused, which is often the best approach, but I don't think it is best in this scenario because I think it would take too much explaining to make this understandable to your average layperson. Note the GA criteria says it should be "understandable to an appropriately broad audience", and in this case I think an appropriately broad audience at least for the more technical parts of the article would include people who have at least some experience with linguistics. However, I still think this has some improvements to be made in this regard:
Write one level down. This means the article should be understandable to @Pineapple Storage, who has studied language at a degree level, but not necessarily understandable to me, without me having to follow several links.
Add concrete examples – Nahuatl seems to do this quite well. If you can source some concrete examples, they would really help.
Try to avoid explaining everything in a parenthetical like this: "The language primarily uses postpositions, though at least one preposition (the comitative) is attested (or that we have evidence of such a feature existing), and a locative suffix is attested." It makes the sentences very un-concise and makes them harder to follow. Where the terms are used just once or twice, either cut the technical term(s) completely, or leave them as a link. If the term is used several times, then an explanation is appropriate, which could be done in a parenthetical.
@PharyngealImplosive7 Could you go through the article and especially the "grammar" section with these points in mind, and then Pineapple and I can read through to see whether it is understandable enough? IAWW (talk) 08:08, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
Looks great to me! The clarifications you've put in really help, and as there are plenty of wikilinks I think it should work well for most readers. What do you think @It is a wonderful world? Pineapple Storage (talk) 15:58, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
Yes I think it looks much better. I could not understand the first subsection of the Grammar section at all earlier, but I can follow it a lot better now. It is weird that that subsection is the only one with examples though. Are there any other examples available for the other subsections? IAWW (talk) 18:07, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
@It is a wonderful world: The noun section seems pretty self-explanatory to me, but I could add examples there. I also have added one example of serial verb constructions to the verbs subsection. Let me know if you would prefer any more examples anywhere else, as Kjelsvik (2002) has plenty. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 19:13, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
@PharyngealImplosive7 Do any sources support the opinion that the phonetic inventory is "large"? If not, that specific opinion should be removed IAWW (talk) 22:11, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
Sorry, just realized I replied to the wrong comment with this. I meant to reply to the lead discussion. IAWW (talk) 22:12, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
@It is a wonderful world: An average phonetic inventory is around 20-30 consonants as per WALS (large (34 or more consonants)). Considering that this language has well over 60 different consonants, I think it is safe to assume that it has a large inventory. Not sure if this qualifies as WP:OR, but I think its fine. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 22:20, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
Unfortunately this is not fine as it is OR IAWW (talk) 22:40, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
Kjelsvik (2002) p. 9 says The Nizaa language has a fairly complex phonology and tonology, so I think it would be reasonable to put in the lead Nizaa has a complex phonology, with over 60 consonant phonemes... or similar, and then back this up with further info and a citation ([1]) in §Phonology and orthography. Pineapple Storage (talk) 02:59, 17 May 2025 (UTC) Pineapple Storage (talk) 02:59, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
I've gone ahead and said that it has a complex system of phonology and cited that in the phonology section. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 03:10, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
Layout — Section headers: for clarity, and consistency with other language articles,[2] it might be good to retitle §Phrases as 'Sample text' or 'Example text'. This would also mean that a 'Phrases' section could be used to discuss eg. idioms, if this aspect of the language is discussed in future sources. Pineapple Storage (talk) 00:03, 16 May 2025 (UTC) Pineapple Storage (talk) 19:42, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
I renamed it to 'Sample text'. I got the idea of naming it 'phrases' originally from Taa language#Phrases, but I agree that it doesn't seem quite right. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 00:18, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
Lead section — Summarising body text: I feel like at the moment the lead section doesn't really summarise the rest of the article, as it introduces several different pieces of information that aren't repeated later on. Would there be any way to expand this info into its own section(s) and have more of an overview in the lead? Pineapple Storage (talk) 03:17, 16 May 2025 (UTC) Pineapple Storage (talk) 10:25, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
Yes it is looking better. My biggest concern is that most of the second paragraph does not appear to be supported by the body. E.g. "as well as a rich system of tones" and "Nizaa also has a rich system of kinship terminology, with different words being used for different levels of respect". Although some examples exist in the body, these strong statements do not appear to be supported. IAWW (talk) 18:22, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
Additionally, it could do with some expansion. IAWW (talk) 18:22, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
The language was not extensively studied before the 1990s, when Christian missionaries Rolf Theil Endresen and Bjørghild Kjelsvik, began to document the language. This is interesting, and would be good to include in the body (along with a source), but at the moment it's new (and unsourced) information in the lead, so could probably do with a revisit? Pineapple Storage (talk) 02:47, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
Love the idea of a history section! My only concern is the use of "Christian missionaries", given that Theil Endresen and Kjelsvik don't seem to use the term to describe themselves. For instance, there's a chance that they were just language enthusiasts looking for a way to work with the speaker communities of the languages they were studying, and that Christian mission organisations were the only ones that provided this kind of opportunity in Central Africa/Cameroon at the time, and that as part of this work they were expected to translate the Bible. (Even today, SIL Global—an evangelical Christian organisation, ie. originally a Christian mission—is both the registration authority for ISO 639-3and the publisher of Ethnologue.) Alternatively, it could be that they are/were actually "Christian missionaries", but would object to the use of the term... etc. Do you see where I'm coming from? It might be worth replacing "Christian missionaries" with (eg.) "Norwegian linguists"; you've mentioned their work with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Cameroon so the connection has very much been made, even without using the term "Christian missionaries", which isn't explicitly backed up by the sources. Pineapple Storage (talk) 03:38, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
@Pineapple Storage: Yeah, I totally understand. I have changed the wording to reflect that. I also have done some rough machine translations of the French (and used my knowledge of Spanish) to add some information to the article using Endresen (1991). Could you also quickly review if the translations are accurate to ensure the sources are being represented accurately please? – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 03:49, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
Yep that all looks good! All pretty much accurate, as far as I can tell. Pineapple Storage (talk) 05:19, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
Hi @PharyngealImplosive7, Nice work. "Nizaa has a complex phonetic inventory" is now fine as it is sourced. I don't see where "60 consonant phonemes" (shouldn't it be 65?) and "its grammar is similar to most other Mambiloid languages" are supported in the body. IAWW (talk) 09:15, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
Rolf Theil Endresen at Oslo University was appointed Associate Professor of African Languages (Hausa, Fulfulde) in 1978 and Professor of African Languages in 1994. Around 2000, the position was changed to Professor of General and African Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy (currently Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies) of the Historical-Philosophical faculty. Endresen studied varieties of Fulfulde and the Bantoid Nizaa (Cameroon). The study on phonology included, for example, Nizaa, Kafa, and Koorete. He carried out grammatical studies on Fulfulde and Subiya. Endresen supervised nine PhD students, seven of them from Africa, before retiring in 2017.
As neither this summary, nor any of his 'Acknowledgements' sections that I can see, mention any Christian missionary organisations, it looks like he might not be associated with any; meanwhile, I also found this profile of Bjørghild Kjelsvik as an associate professor at NLA University College, which is a Christian (again, specifically Lutheran) college. For me this reinforces the idea that Theil Endresen and Kjelsvik didn't necessarily share the same affiliations, other than Theil Endresen's supervision of Kjelsvik's research at the University of Oslo. Pineapple Storage (talk) 10:11, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
(Just to be clear, I made these tweaks in my capacity as a Wikipedia editor, not as part of the GA review! Feel free to change any of my edits back if you disagree with them/think they're unnecessary/etc.) Pineapple Storage (talk) 10:15, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
@It is a wonderful world: I've tweaked the lead to say 65 phonemes instead of 60 and have removed the similarity with the Mambiloid languages part. ANny final suggestions or do you think the lead is good now? – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 17:11, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
I think it is good to go! IAWW (talk) 18:38, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
Layout — Section headers: Currently, §Kinship is within the §Grammar section; would it be better in a separate §Vocabulary section? (Could this be another opportunity for some more examples, per IAWW's feedback above?) Also, would it be worth rearranging the sections so that §Name is before §Geographical distribution and population? This would make it more consistent with articles like Erromintxela language; still, I'm not sure whether it's right for this article, so I'd be interested to hear your thoughts @PharyngealImplosive7. Pineapple Storage (talk) 19:42, 16 May 2025 (UTC) Pineapple Storage (talk) 10:25, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
There are no examples in the Kjelsvik (2008) source of any sentences or phrases using that terminology, so we can't really add any examples there. I don't think it would be right to create a separate "vocabulary" section only talking about kinship, which is why I kept it in the grammar section. I moved the "name" section up as you said. @Pineapple Storage: Any further thoughts? – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 20:00, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
In terms of examples for a potential § Vocabulary section, I meant it might be good to see if there are any other types of vocabulary—aside from kinship terminology—that have been discussed by sources and might be unusual/unique to Nizaa. I had a quick look through Kjelsvik-2002 but soon got bogged down in the ins and outs of interlinear glossing (and went down a rabbit-hole learning how to use Template:Interlinear!) so unfortunately I can't give you any examples straight away, but I will try and have another look. Pineapple Storage (talk) 02:44, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
Now that there's more info about the speaker community in §Geographical distribution and population, do you think it might be worth retitling this section § Demography and distribution (as in Nahuatl, for instance)? Also, given that §History currently only describes the history of the study/documentation of the language, as opposed to the history of the language itself, would it be an idea to title this section § Documentation? These are only suggestions, of course; I'd be interested to hear your thoughts. Pineapple Storage (talk) 05:24, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
Sure; I have gone ahead and implemented your suggestions. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 05:26, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
Just noting than I am happy for this to pass as long as Pineapple is. You two have worked really well together during this review, and a I just took a quick gloss of the parts of the article I could understand, and it seems like GA status to me. Nice work! IAWW (talk) 22:17, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
Yep, I'm happy to pass the article as well. See below:) Pineapple Storage (talk) 10:59, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
B. Reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose): Pineapple Storage (talk) 19:25, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
Most sources definitely but the source with by far the most citations is Kjelsvik (2002)[3] which has 190 pages, so it's much harder to verify statements than it would be in, for instance, a short journal article. It would be good to include a few different refs to this source specifically, each with page numbers relevant to the sections/statements they're supporting; Template:Sfn might be helpful for this. Pineapple Storage (talk) 00:49, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
Added SFNs for all the mentions of Kjelsvik (2002) besides the first one, with page numbers. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 01:07, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
Per WP:TSI: for paragraphs which cite a single source, refs can just be at the end of the paragraph, but there are a couple of paragraphs (eg. in §Consonants, §Nouns and pronouns, §Verbs) where multiple citations are at the end of the paragraph, but they don't all contain all the information in the paragraph. (I got a bit stuck with §Vowels and have ended up duplicating ref 2 as I don't have access to it so can't verify whether it supports the first two sentences of the paragraph, just the last sentence, or both.) It might be good to separate out citations where they each support different parts of the paragraph? Pineapple Storage (talk) 03:13, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
@PharyngealImplosive7 I've now done a pretty comprehensive/in-depth spot-check of all references (with the exception of TheilEndresen-1991, due to the paywall) and aside from one WP:TSI issue (tagged, in §Verbs) it's all looking great, so once that's sorted I think this criterion will be a strong ! Pineapple Storage (talk) 17:31, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
The §Name section is closely paraphrased from Blench (1993) p.108[4] and there's currently no precise ref to the source text (ref 8 just points to the Glottolog entry for the citation, not to the text itself). This has also meant that there's a duplication of pejorative in that section, so this might need rewording. Pineapple Storage (talk) 19:57, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
I've now added the expanded Blench ref which includes a link to the source text. Pineapple Storage (talk) 23:44, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
There are a few bits of close paraphrasing from Kjelsvik (2002)[3] and Kjelsvik (2008)[5] in §Phonology and orthography and §Grammar. This might be one cause of the WP:MTAU difficulties mentioned above in point 1A; for both of these reasons, I think it might be a good idea to find ways to reword parts of these sections. It would also be good to double-check that there isn't too much close paraphrasing from Theil Endresen (1991);[6] I would check but unfortunately I don't have access. Pineapple Storage (talk) 22:44, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
Both of these have been fixed to the best of my ability. Especially in more niche fields like phonology, it is kind of hard to preserve the meaning of the source without using similar language to it. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 23:09, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
I totally understand! Yep, it's definitely tricky to avoid when there are so few synonyms for the technical terms! Good work on your latest edits tweaking the wording away from the sources; I feel like it runs a bit more smoothly now so this was well done. @It is a wonderful world, do you have any thoughts on close paraphrasing from a Wikipedia policy point of view? Pineapple Storage (talk) 23:30, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
I think the check you did is really good here. As long as no full sentences or extended phrases are used, then you should be fine because most the content is just facts (WP:FACTSONLY). IAWW (talk) 08:23, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
That's great, thank you. In that case, I'm happy with the copyright status at the moment; I'll finalise closer to the end of the review. Pineapple Storage (talk) 11:30, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
The article is pretty comprehensive! For smaller/lesser-known languages, it will always be difficult to provide huge amounts of detail as they are nowhere near as well-documented as some more widely-spoken languages, but there's lots of detail here with regard to the features of the language. Pineapple Storage (talk) 19:57, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
It represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each: Pineapple Storage (talk) 16:08, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
No issues re viewpoint bias, but re WP:DUE: at the moment, most of the article is the §Phonology and orthography and §Grammar sections. These sections definitely go into a good amount of detail, but by comparison the rest of the article feels like it could do with expanding, so that the non-linguistic information about the language also gets its due weight. Would there be any way to beef the other sections up, for instance with a chunkier intro and the headers mentioned under point 1B above? Pineapple Storage (talk) 03:42, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
There isn't much info on the non-phonetic/non-grammar aspects of the language, though the lead definitely could be improved. The language doesn't have much documented history, any dialectal/regional variation documented in the literature, or interesting info on the vocabulary (there are lists of verbs documented by Kjelsvik, but I don't think that is necessary to add to the article). – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 03:49, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
Yes, totally understand the issue here; smaller communities and their languages are often underrepresented by sources. The work you've done so far on the lead and §Geographical distribution and population looks really great! I have to go now, but I will have a look for sources over the next couple of days and see if there's any that go into more detail re history of the language/community. For now, these are the only ones I've found:
Theil Endresen, Rolf[in Norwegian] (1992-06-30). "La phonologie de la langue nizaa (nizaà)"[The phonology of the Nizaa language]. Nordic Journal of African Studies (in French). 1 (1). Nordic Africa Research Network: 28–52. doi:10.53228/njas.v1i1.57. Retrieved 2025-05-15. I've only skimmed this one; I'm not sure whether you speak any French, but if not, I can have a more thorough read of it and see if there's anything useful.
is pretty helpful in terms of the Nizaa people's culture. I've added some information about them in the 'Geographical distribution and population' section. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 13:42, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
@Pineapple Storage: I have no knowledge of French, so if you do, I would appreciate it if you could see if the second source has anything useful in it. I'll try to look through the Philip source to find any useful info. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 17:30, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
@Pineapple Storage: The Philip source doesn't have much information about the language or the culture itself (besides the circumcision initiation rights which are not really relevant here). – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 17:41, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
Yes fair enough, that would seem a bit off-topic! :D I had a look through the French source and given that it's a phonology, most of the content is already covered (eg. by Kjelsvik); there were a couple of points at the beginning about Nizaa farming and religious traditions, as well as the fact that Theil Endresen was the first to properly document the language, so I've added those in as ref 10 and ref 11, just to back up the existing sources. Pineapple Storage (talk) 17:43, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
The map is definitely relevant, but given that the article title is Nizaa language, it's not immediately clear which label we're supposed to be looking at. If I'm understanding it correctly, it's the patch just to the left of centre that says 'Suga'; if so, it might be worth adding a note to this effect in the caption. Do we know if this map is backed up by any sources? Pineapple Storage (talk) 00:14, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
The image was added before I started editing the article, so I didn't really scrutinize it much. However, it is supported by the Ethnologue Report of Cameroon and Fanso (1989), which talks about Cameroonian history. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 01:22, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
That's fair enough! Would it be worth adding these sources to the article somehow, for verifiability? Maybe an explanatory note (using Template:Efn or ref tags) in the caption, with something along the lines of "For demographic information, see [sources]"? Or if not, maybe in a "Further reading" section? Pineapple Storage (talk) 01:48, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
Pass or Fail: Pass! Congratulations @PharyngealImplosive7! Really well done for all your hard work on this article! Thank you for your patience given that this was my first review. As noted above, my authorship is now quite high, so apologies for this—I hope I haven't been meddling too much! The article is looking great, and I'm really pleased that this will be the next addition to Wikipedia's Good Articles about languages, of which there really should be more (in my opinion). Many thanks to @IAWW for his essential mentorship and contributions to this review. Congratulations again @PharyngealImplosive7! Pineapple Storage (talk) 10:59, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
Just a small note on an area for potential expansion: the §Consonants section mentions Most Nizaa are not literate, and the few who are often only can read and write Fula in the Ajami script. The Latin romanization of Nizaa also has not widely been adopted by the Nizaa people yet because of the low literacy of the Nizaa. As a reader, this left me wondering about the history of romanization of the language, who developed the system, etc. There might not be any sources that discuss this, and I don't have access to all the sources cited here, but this might be something to look into (eg. if you want to take this further to WP:FAC in future). Pineapple Storage (talk) 19:57, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
It was Endresen who actually first created the alphabet/romanization. Added that to the article. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 23:27, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
Re §Name section: I don't have access to ref 8, but the 2009 edition of Ethnologue states that 'Baghap' is their name for themselves; 'Nizaa' for their language.[7] Maybe Blench (1993)[4] didn't know this at the time/new information has come to light? Might be worth looking into some of the more recent sources to see if any others discuss endonyms of the community/language. Pineapple Storage (talk) 19:57, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
Interesting; I didn't notice that when originally reading that source. It seems contradictory to all the other sources in the article; maybe it was a mistake? Blench (1993) does mention that their was some confusion around another unrelated Adamawa language also called Nyamnyam, so this might be related. It might be worth putting a note in the article about this, but I'm not sure. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 23:17, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
A quick note re this edit... Apologies if this is a silly question (my IPA is rustier than I'd like it to be!) but what's the relationship between the tone markers you added and the way it's presented in the source? Pineapple Storage (talk) 01:24, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
I used chao tone letters, which are more accurate then the accents that used by the source (although those are more common in the literature). I also used the IPA long vowel symbol instead of duplicating the vowel, which is preferred in IPA notation. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 01:37, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
Since this doesn't really have strong ties to any variety of English (Cameroon was a German and then a French colony), I'd prefer to leave it without any templates and let MOS:RETAIN prevent anyone from significantly changing it. I'm American, which is why I used American English, as it is what is most natural for me. – PharyngealImplosive7(talk) 17:05, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
Just for transparency, I've been through the article and added bibliographic parameters to a few references for verifiability per CITEVAR. Hope this is okay! Pineapple Storage (talk) 21:28, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
This review is transcluded from Talk:Fury 325/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
I'm going to be reviewing this article! I'm a new reviewer, so @It is a wonderful world has kindly offered his mentorship. I'll read through the article and start making some notes in the template below, hopefully today, or tomorrow at the latest.:) Pineapple Storage (talk) 15:24, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
Looks like a fun one to review! IAWW (talk) 15:36, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
Just noting that at time of writing, the nominator's authorship of this article is 5.4%, but they are ranked 5th in authorship so are eligible to nominate the article per WP:GAN/I. Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:41, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
Note: Unfortunately it looks like I'll be quite busy IRL for the next few days, so it might take me a bit longer than I'd like to complete the review. However, I'll still be able to make some progress with it every day, so hopefully I'll be able to get it done by the end of the week. Thank you for your patience everyone!:) Pineapple Storage (talk) 14:34, 19 May 2025 (UTC)
The lead is a good length, and provides an overview of the key information. The only detail in the lead that isn't expanded on in the main body is the fact that the roller coaster was manufactured by Bolliger & Mabillard. This is mentioned again in passing in §Records, but it might be good to mention the manufacturer details in the §History section, along with an independent source that confirms the manufacturer. Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:41, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
Done – Though it's not really detailed beyond a mere statement, the History section does mention the manufacturer now with source. --GoneIn60 (talk) 17:18, 19 May 2025 (UTC)
§Incident is currently a standalone section, but it restates and expands on information in the fourth paragraph of §History; to ensure there's no repetition, and that readers can be sure they're getting all the information they might be looking for, I think it might be sensible to make §Incident a subsection of §History, and merge the information from the fourth paragraph of §History into that new subsection. Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:41, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
Just wanted to mention that WP:APARKS approach is to typically place an Incident section near the end of the article, which can cover incidents/accidents in more detail, and if any are substantially critical or important to the ride's history, include a brief mention in the History section as well. I agree that the contents in History should not simply regurgitate what is covered later in more detail. This version of Iron Gwazi when it achieved FA status demonstrates how minor incidents are not mentioned at all in History. This version of Son of Beast when it achieved GA status shows how a brief mention in History would work when done properly. I think the latter approach could work in this article as well. If agreed, I can make that change. --GoneIn60 (talk) 13:25, 19 May 2025 (UTC)
Thank you for pointing this out! I didn't know there was a specific WP:APARKS policy re §Incidents sections. I did have a look at a couple of other roller coaster GAs, and their sections usually described more serious incidents, often involving evacuation of passengers, injuries or even death, and normally more than one; for instance, Kingda Ka#Incidents and Top Thrill 2#Incidents each list several different events, while Banshee (roller coaster)#Incidents and Firehawk (roller coaster)#Incident each only mention one but these both involved deaths. I'm really not an expert in roller coasters at all, or the style customs in WP:APARKS, but it struck me that the incident described in this article doesn't actually feel like much of an "incident" but rather a maintenance event that caused the closure of the ride, so would make more sense as a subsection of §History. Again, I might be completely wrong on this, but this was just my perception as a reader with limited knowledge of roller coasters/amusement parks. Pineapple Storage (talk) 14:18, 19 May 2025 (UTC)
No, I think it's a excellent point that for one single occurrence, we probably don't need a dedicated section or subsection to cover it. Instead, it should be merged into the History section. I'll work on that now. Also, just for clarification, there isn't a policy per se being followed by WP:APARKS. The WikiProject's guidance only suggests a dedicated Incidents section; it doesn't require one. -- GoneIn60 (talk) 15:17, 19 May 2025 (UTC)
Ah okay that makes sense! Sounds like a good plan, thank you!:) Pineapple Storage (talk) 15:33, 19 May 2025 (UTC)
This is a minor issue, but the fact that the roller coaster is hornet-themed is only mentioned in §Theme, but the bug net marketing campaign is discussed in §History, and the buzzing hornet sound is mentioned in §Ride experience. As a reader, I found these details a bit confusing, until I got to §Theme and learned about the relevance of hornets to the ride. It might be worth briefly mentioning this earlier in the article, either in the lead, §History or potentially in §Ride experience, to avoid confusion. Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:41, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
I've now added a brief mention of the theme to §History, just after the discussion of the beekeeper marketing campaign. Feel free to move/remove this if the mention would work better elsewhere! Pineapple Storage (talk) 05:31, 23 May 2025 (UTC)
Done – Went with your first suggestion to combine Reception and Awards. Still room for expansion here, but it does seem logical to group these together while keeping Records separate. --GoneIn60 (talk) 17:28, 19 May 2025 (UTC)
Ref 19[1] doesn't actually mention the fact stated by the sentence it's used to back up (On January 30, 2015, the final piece of Fury 325's track was put in place), which is a text-source integrity issue so I've tagged it with Template:text-source inline. However, this source does mention that Fury 325 was designed by Bolliger & Mabillard, so it could be used to back up the manufacturer details, as suggested above. Pineapple Storage (talk) 19:32, 18 May 2025 (UTC) Pineapple Storage (talk) 14:23, 19 May 2025 (UTC)
The source does state, "Fury 325 will eventually provide far more thrilling moments than the one it gave the media Friday. But the installation by a construction crew of the final piece of the roller coaster ... was a milestone" along with its headline to indicate this happened on January 30, 2015. If that's not good enough, we can simply remove it (and use it elsewhere), as Ref 19 adequately supports the claim already. --GoneIn60 (talk) 13:54, 19 May 2025 (UTC)
Fair enough, I must have missed the implied connection with the date! (It doesn't help that the dateline only says "January 30, 2015", so it wasn't immediately obvious that "Friday" meant the same day the article was published!) In this case, I don't think it necessarily needs to be removed, maybe just switched with ref 19 so that the more explicitly relevant footnote comes first? I don't think this would be a GA requirement though so it's not a huge issue. Pineapple Storage (talk) 14:22, 19 May 2025 (UTC)
Done. Thanks. -- GoneIn60 (talk) 14:50, 19 May 2025 (UTC)
Citation a is one of five footnotes at the end of the paragraph, which makes it difficult to verify (ideally these would be separated out to support individual sentences), but the source doesn't actively contradict the text. Pineapple Storage (talk) 22:39, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
Done – Section has been revamped to sentence citations. --GoneIn60 (talk) 23:58, 20 May 2025 (UTC)
Citation b The cited webpage doesn't make it immediately obvious either that the application was suspended in February 2014, or why it was suspended... I went to the 'Documents' tab and found this letter explaining the reasoning for the suspension, so that might be a better source for this statement (archive link here). Pineapple Storage (talk) 00:50, 19 May 2025 (UTC)
Ref 33[5] The source does support the paragraph, but again, it's bundled with four others, which makes it difficult to check verifiability for each individual statement. Pineapple Storage (talk) 00:50, 19 May 2025 (UTC)
fixed – This ref no longer exists. It was a duplicate of another. The section now uses inline citations after each sentence instead of paragraph citations. --GoneIn60 (talk) 23:54, 20 May 2025 (UTC)
Ref 26[7] The source supports most of the sentence, except the statement that The ride was closed later that day; the article only says it was shut down after a visitor called the fire department, not when exactly that happened. Pineapple Storage (talk) 00:50, 19 May 2025 (UTC) Pineapple Storage (talk) 14:27, 19 May 2025 (UTC)
fixed – This is supported by refs cited in the previous sentence. Repeated one of those for this sentence. --GoneIn60 (talk) 13:41, 19 May 2025 (UTC)
Most of the sources inspected do support the text, but there are a few WP:TSI issues here and there. I will likely do spot-checks of further sources later on in the review, just to be sure. Pineapple Storage (talk) 00:46, 19 May 2025 (UTC)
Further sources to be spot-checked (randomly generated):
A. It contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline:
B. Reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose):
Well-cited, and more easily verifiable now that citations have been rearranged to support sentences rather than whole paragraphs. Pineapple Storage (talk) 08:01, 23 May 2025 (UTC)
Earwig's result is "Violation unlikely" at maximum 10.7% similarity, and I can't see any obvious close paraphrasing or unsourced quotes, so I'm happy to pass this criterion. Pineapple Storage (talk) 07:17, 23 May 2025 (UTC)
Article covers the subject quite comprehensively, with sections, coverage and levels of detail comparable with other WP:APARKS GAs. Pineapple Storage (talk) 07:17, 23 May 2025 (UTC)
In my opinion, no part of the article feels excessively technical; the article stays on-topic, without any unnecessary/irrelevant tangents, and the level of detail reflects the coverage of the subject in the sources. Pineapple Storage (talk) 07:17, 23 May 2025 (UTC)
It represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each:
Most of the article is descriptive, and where subjective opinions are presented (ie. §Reception), the viewpoints represented do reflect coverage in the sources, so I can't see any issue with editorial/viewpoint bias. Only one small suggestion: §Reception currently only documents Initial reception, so it might be good to include some more up-to-date reception as well. From a brief search, I found these sources from more recently: [12][13]Pineapple Storage (talk) 07:17, 23 May 2025 (UTC)
All images are relevant to the article and provide good illustration to support the text. Given that the caption for File:Fury 325 (Carowinds) 1.jpg identifies the damaged support column, might it be worth moving this image from §Ride experience to either §Incident or, if the sections are merged as suggested above, §History? (This is only a minor issue!) Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:41, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
Good suggestion, but it seems the main reason why this image was added was to show a portion of the layout (relevant to "Ride experience"). I used the {{Stack}} template to reposition this, so that it is closer to the History section. If that's not good enough, we can simply rephrase the caption, removing the part that mentions the cracked column. --GoneIn60 (talk) 02:55, 21 May 2025 (UTC)
Good captions are provided for all the images; the video of the ride, File:Fury 325 Carowinds POV.webm, could do with a caption, just to properly frame it for readers. Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:41, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get to this! I’ve been very busy and am super grateful to Gone for the help. I’ll try to assist wherever I can. Therguy10 (talk) 14:14, 20 May 2025 (UTC)
Hi @Pineapple Storage, just popping in to see how things are going. It looks like another very good review from you. I just noticed one thing you seem to have missed: the video has a watermark that should be removed (WP:WATERMARK). This doesn't seem to violate any GA criteria directly, but it seems like quite an important thing to fix. IAWW (talk) 08:00, 23 May 2025 (UTC)
The first watermark can be cut easily by cutting out the first section of the video. The icon in the bottom right is trickier. You could crop the side, or open a request at Wikipedia:Graphics Lab/Illustration workshop (I think that's the right place), though those requests often take a while to be answered. IAWW (talk) 08:05, 23 May 2025 (UTC)
@IAWW Oh wow, I'm so glad you caught this! The watermark issue wasn't on my radar so thank you for letting me know. I will have a look into the options and see what's available. Thank you again! Pineapple Storage (talk) 08:39, 23 May 2025 (UTC)
@IAWW I've had a look at the proposed Commons policy on watermarks and Wikimedia's legal guidance on removal of watermarks; from these, it seems like actually removing all traces of the watermark might be in a grey area re US copyright law. Because of this, I've left the in-picture icon in place, but trimmed the beginning and end of the video, and will upload it to Commons as a new version of the file along with a Watermark tag. I'll leave it to someone with more experience in copyright issues and watermarking to decide whether total removal of the icon is appropriate! Thank you again for catching this. Pineapple Storage (talk) 09:31, 23 May 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for this. It is a more gray area than I thought. The article and review are both looking very good, and I would be happy for this to pass if/when you are. IAWW (talk) 09:42, 23 May 2025 (UTC)
@IAWW I've had major difficulties trying to upload my trimmed version of the video to Commons, given the 100MB upload limit and the fact that Commons doesn't seem to accept MP4 uploads. I've tagged the video as watermarked, but I'm not sure whether this is enough?
Also, what are your thoughts on the source spot-check above? I did find a few WP:TSI issues, and these have been fixed, but do you think the accuracy of sources needs further investigation or does the spot-check indicate general accuracy to GA standard? Pineapple Storage (talk) 07:57, 24 May 2025 (UTC)
Hi @Pineapple Storage, I also had the same issues so I requested help here. I don't think this should hold back the article from reaching GA – what can be done about it will be done. Well done for doing such an extensive spot check, and uncovering several TSI issues. I personally don't think the issues were severe enough require a full source-text integrity check, but it's up to you as the reviewer to make the final call. Note that it is relatively rare to complete a spot check with no issues found. IAWW (talk) 09:46, 24 May 2025 (UTC)
Oops I forgot to hyperlink "here" IAWW (talk) 09:46, 24 May 2025 (UTC)
Okay this is really helpful thank you! Thanks for asking at the Commons help desk, I will keep an eye out for responses to your query. And re sources, this is really useful; I feel like the spot-check showed that the majority of sources support the article, but I wasn't sure whether the fact that the check identified any TSI issues at all would mean that a full check had to be done. As long as the issues identified in the check are fixed, and you're happy for the article to pass based on this, then so am I! Pineapple Storage (talk) 13:12, 24 May 2025 (UTC)
Great! Nice work, feel free to pass this when you are ready:) IAWW (talk) 13:26, 24 May 2025 (UTC)
IAWW, appreciate your assistance with the review. Had a question concerning your your edit here that removed the {{Stack}} template. I had added it recently, so that the corresponding image would stack next to the infobox and appear in the Ride experience section. Since roller coaster infoboxes tend to be long, we have used this workaround in the past. Is there an issue I may not be aware of? --GoneIn60 (talk) 10:14, 23 May 2025 (UTC)
Hi @GoneIn60, I accidentally published that edit without entering the edit summary. Apologies for that. At least on my device, the stack template was causing the image to move left of the infobox, creating a large whitespace to the right. IAWW (talk) 11:04, 23 May 2025 (UTC)
Interesting. I didn't have that issue in a desktop Chrome browser. Do you see the same issue at Son of Beast (first image under Construction)? -- GoneIn60 (talk) 12:17, 23 May 2025 (UTC)
Yes it displays to the left of the infobox for me. Is it meant to do that? I am on Firefox btw IAWW (talk) 12:33, 23 May 2025 (UTC)
Yes, just left of the infobox with text wrapping above and below the image. This is expected behavior and allows the image to appear in the section in which it was intended to appear in. Without Stack, it goes all the way to the right, below the infobox, which may cause it to appear in the wrong section. Hope that makes sense. -- GoneIn60 (talk) 13:04, 23 May 2025 (UTC)
I see what you're saying now. You can revert my edit if you would like. I'm not a fan of the whitespace created but I'll let you choose what to do. IAWW (talk) 13:10, 23 May 2025 (UTC)
Thanks, I also see what you're saying about the whitespace after testing in Microsoft Edge. Depending on the resolution of your screen and font size (some of which can be controlled/changed in your Wikipedia account preferences), there is a slight chance that the stacked image will run into an odd overlap of the infobox, where part of the image sits below the infobox. When this odd overlap occurs, there is a lot of ugly whitespace to the right of the image.Unfortunately, that cannot be avoided in all situations, but stacking the image is still useful for those with larger resolutions and smaller font sizes. This could go either way, but I think I'll revert it back until some deeper discussion determines that we should avoid or deprecate the Stack template. IMO, it shouldn't exist if it's not to be used. GoneIn60 (talk) 14:21, 23 May 2025 (UTC)
Not sure if this helps; all looks normal on Safari on iPad. Therguy10 (talk) 17:48, 23 May 2025 (UTC)
Overall:
Pass or Fail:
@GoneIn60 @Therguy10 Really good work everyone! As discussed above, given the tweaking that has already been done re WP:TSI, I'll be more than happy to pass this article; just for my peace of mind, it would be great if someone could iron out the issue with ref 14 ([9]) and then I'll close the review. Thanks again to @It is a wonderful world for his invaluable input! Pineapple Storage (talk) 20:48, 24 May 2025 (UTC)
@Pineapple Storage May it just be better to remove that source? The only other “source” I could find was this but I can’t imagine that’d cover much. Therguy10 (talk) 22:37, 24 May 2025 (UTC)
Yep I think that might be a good plan, as well as rewording the sentence so that it only mentions the actual date of completion as mentioned in the 'BrakeRun2' ref (the other Facebook post, from October 24). Pineapple Storage (talk) 22:49, 24 May 2025 (UTC)
Just did this myself, so happy to pass the article. Well done again to everyone!:) Pineapple Storage (talk) 23:06, 24 May 2025 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I suspect much of this can be put to bed very simply, but it will have to wait now for next week. Blogs of established authors are fine, and we don't normally use page refs within journal articles. Speak to you later. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:17, 4 June 2025 (UTC)
No problem, just come back to it whenever suits you. Pineapple Storage (talk) 19:38, 4 June 2025 (UTC)
Note: I couldn't find a specific guideline or policy advising against page numbers for journal articles, so I've added inline page numbers (using Template:Rp) to the Holmes refs, for convenience. You're welcome to remove them if you don't want them included, or change them to Template:Sfn format if you'd prefer. Pineapple Storage (talk) 20:38, 4 June 2025 (UTC)
Thank you. I'll fix them to sfn as no part of WikiProject Middle-earth uses rp. Policy does not require pages within journal articles and hardly any Wikipedia articles or editors use such numbering. (BTW: looking for policy to say "and we don't do X" is asking a lot; laws of all types generally leave a blank when breathing and walking and eating are actually permitted.) Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:18, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
Breathing, walking, eating... and adding page numbers to journal citations!:) Thank you for retaining the page numbers, I think it does aid transparency/verifiability. Pineapple Storage (talk) 08:12, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
I'll give this review a go! I'm a new reviewer, but have been part of a mentorship and have so far completed two reviews (Nizaa language and Fury 325). I'll read through the article and start making some notes, hopefully today, or tomorrow at the latest.:) Pineapple Storage (talk) 11:09, 1 June 2025 (UTC)
Many thanks. I will try to get to your comments promptly, which I'll be able to do if they're by tomorrow. I will be away from my desk later this week and will respond to any later comments when I can. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:51, 1 June 2025 (UTC)
No problem at all! It will likely take me a while to work through the review, so feel free to come back to it whenever suits you. Pineapple Storage (talk) 16:12, 2 June 2025 (UTC)
For future reference, comments are much easier to locate and to respond to if formatted as normal text, divided into level 3 (or 4) sections, rather than in the hierarchical #list of the template which has to be edited as one enormous object. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:20, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
You're so right! I've removed the #list format and replaced with plain text numbering for the criteria. Pineapple Storage (talk) 09:11, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
A. The prose is clear and concise, and the spelling and grammar are correct: Pineapple Storage (talk) 19:53, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
Lead section: Reviewers have echoed the editors' remark that readers too easily skip over the poems, finding them a distraction, when actually the poems contribute substantially and in multiple ways to the reader's understanding of character and mood. I think an addition along the lines of ... readers too easily skip over the poems included in Tolkien's prose works, finding them ... would clarify that readers aren't skipping over the poems in The Collected Poems, but rather those embedded in Tolkien's other works. Pineapple Storage (talk) 19:28, 11 June 2025 (UTC) Pineapple Storage (talk) 19:53, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
Done.
§Quality of the poetry paragraph 5: (literally, words and phrases in literature that Tolkien specially liked) — is "literally" necessary? Also, shouldn't "specially" be "especially"? Pineapple Storage (talk) 19:34, 11 June 2025 (UTC) Pineapple Storage (talk) 19:53, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
Cut 'literally'. Both 'specially' and 'especially' seem good to me; I'd prefer the former, but no matter.
All good on this point now, as far as I can see. The lead is a summary of the article, with proportional coverage of the sections (ie. a chunkier summary of §Reception than of §Contents). Layout is sensible and pretty standard, no obvious words to watch, and no unnecessary lists etc. Pineapple Storage (talk) 19:37, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
Source check found a few WP:TSI issues, plus some attribution tweaks and a couple of WP:VOICE recommendations. More detail below in Source check. Pineapple Storage (talk) 04:10, 5 June 2025 (UTC)
Good idea to split this out from this list, per my FFR comment above.
A. It contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline:
References are consistently formatted, and listed in §References. Also, appropriate ref names are used per WP:REFNAME. Pineapple Storage (talk) 13:35, 6 June 2025 (UTC)
B. Reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose): Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:26, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
§Raising the poems' profile The passage ("Many who enjoy ...") quoted from Ordway is a direct quote from the book itself, within the first few paragraphs of the introduction; a sample is available here[a] and is linked on the HarperCollins page for the book. It might be good to cite the original source for the quotation, as well as Ordway's article. Pineapple Storage (talk) 20:23, 3 June 2025 (UTC) As mentioned below, I'll agree to disagree on this. Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:26, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
The Ordway citation is sufficient as it covers the material.
§Contents As mentioned below under criterion 4, it would be good to cite the quoted samples with page numbers from The Collected Poems. Pineapple Storage (talk) 20:27, 3 June 2025 (UTC) Pineapple Storage (talk) 10:50, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
Added.
§Reception Most of the sources are short articles, so no need for page numbers, but Holmes is 39 pages; direct quotes from this article are included, so for verifiability it might be good to add some page numbers. Pineapple Storage (talk) 20:35, 3 June 2025 (UTC) I've now added these myself. Pineapple Storage (talk) 03:59, 5 June 2025 (UTC)
This has been addressed.
File:Tolkien's Collected Poems.svg says Verse translations still not published in full, and the caption says ... including some still unpublished like Tolkien's verse translation of part of Beowulf with citations to Cooper and Bratman, but neither of these sources back up the claim that Tolkien's verse translation of Beowulf is still not published in full. Is there a page in The Collected Poems that backs up this fact? If so, it might be worth citing. Pineapple Storage (talk) 21:42, 3 June 2025 (UTC) Pineapple Storage (talk) 10:50, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
No OR as far as I can tell. Some WP:TSI issues highlighted in the Source check below, which may need further citations to confirm basis in sources and rule out OR. Pineapple Storage (talk) 13:35, 6 June 2025 (UTC)
Please note that it is normal for a book's contents to be cited implicitly, i.e. the book itself is sufficient to describe itself, the proper use of a primary source. No secondary source can improve on what is actually in the book; secondary sources are needed for comments about the book, a different matter. It is actually impossible for a contents description to be original research as long as it does not contain editorial opinions.
@Chiswick Chap Yes, of course, but WP:V (and therefore WP:BURDEN) still applies; if you've added content to the article based on what's in the book, then I would argue that this should be made clear and (especially in a book of 1600+ pages) a specific citation should be provided where possible. Readers and future editors likely won't have time to skim the whole book to check the accuracy of a given claim (if they have access to the book at all, which isn't a given, due to the price of both the physical and digital copies and inaccessibility through eg. Wikipedia Library). Without citations, and unless they have the time to verify the information for themselves, the expectation is inherently that readers and editors should just "take your word for it"; while you are certainly an expert in the subject, and I have no doubt that your representation of the contents of the book is accurate, I think you would agree that this expectation would go against the ethos of the encyclopedia. Also, if the book's contents [are] cited implicitly, this leaves it up to future editors to add citations; that's absolutely fine for most articles (because Wikipedia is a work in progress and perfection is not required) but we are discussing a GA nominee, and you know better than anyone that these have higher standards than most articles.
All that being said, given that you've now added citations for the quoted poem samples and the rest of the book-sourced information is unlikely to be challenged, I won't keep banging on about it. I'm hoping to get my hands on a copy of the collection within the next couple of days (library-request delays permitting), so I might add a couple of book citations later (and you can revert my additions if you object to them). Pineapple Storage (talk) 10:50, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
Editors necessarily summarise and paraphrase the sources they read, that is what editing (meaning creation of content) consists of. That kind of work is inherently verifiable because the sources exist. WP:V extends to works that exist in a single manuscript copy in a remote library; there is no prescription that cited works have to be accessible with a click or two.
Hmm. As mentioned below, §Reception is quite lengthy, and it contains a lot of quotations. By my count, direct quotations make up about 23% of the word count of this section, and the quotations from critics make up about 15% of the article overall (if we include the newly-added samples in §Contents, then direct quotations are about 23% of the article's total prose). I haven't yet checked the quoted proportions for individual sources (as laid out in WP:OVERQUOTE) but I'm aware of the potential relevance of WP:COPYQUOTE re critics' articles etc.; I also looked over this discussion, which I think might be relevant to this article. I'd be interested to know your thoughts on this criterion @Chiswick Chap, especially regarding §Reception. Pineapple Storage (talk) 21:09, 3 June 2025 (UTC)
It's fine. The newly-added samples are of course in response to your request. There is no specific limit on amount of quotation (however measured), but fair usage requires that only a reasonable percentage of the original work be quoted, i.e. we don't copy whole poems. Wikipedia is in general more cautious than the law, which simply says that quotes must be attributed and must be for reasonable scholarly or critical purposes, which this certainly is.
Personally I still don't feel great about the levels of direct quotation (I note that Earwig measures 51% similarity to the Ordway source, though a few of the highlighted phrases are the editors' names, titles of works, etc.) but I know there are no hard-and-fast rules about this so it's not prohibitive for GA. Pineapple Storage (talk) 19:00, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
Direct quotation and attributions to names and books necessarily cause tools like Earwig to flag up text matches. That is no issue, unlike the case with plagiarism.
A. It addresses the main aspects of the topic: Now that some discussion of the content of the poems has been introduced. Pineapple Storage (talk) 17:45, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
The §Contents section gives a good overview of the content, scope and structure of the book, but I found myself wanting some more information about the poems themselves, especially the previously unpublished ones. Alberge gives short extracts of a couple of these, including "The Empty Chapel" and "Monday Morning", which are mentioned in passing in the summary of her review in §Quality of the poetry. Given that this collection is the first publication of so many of Tolkien's poems, might it be good to incorporate discussion of the text of some of these into §Contents? (Further discussion in criterion 4 below.) Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:13, 2 June 2025 (UTC)
I doubt if your request could be fulfilled by any conceivable structure of this article; the poems are far too numerous and varied in length and style for any such summary to be workable. The job of a contents section is indeed to provide "a good overview of the content, scope and structure of the book", so I am glad you think it does that already.
I also found this article that seems to contain some more extracts and discussion of previously unpublished poems. I haven't read it properly but it might be worth a look to see if there's anything useful. Pineapple Storage (talk) 03:57, 5 June 2025 (UTC)
Noted. The article is specific to one poem in the collection and as such is probably beyond the scope of this general article about the book.
Sure, but currently, §Contents doesn't give any indication of even the broad themes covered by the previously unpublished poems: according to Lyon (p. 1), Many of the early poems are intimate portraits of Tolkien’s romance with Edith Bratt, images of his legendarium to come, or his relationships with the TCBS. Also, I assume that Alberge's discussion of Tolkien's war poems has been described in §Quality of the poetry because the collection does in fact include war poems. These could be used as sources for a brief summary of the poems' themes in §Contents, to at least give the reader an overview. Pineapple Storage (talk) 11:18, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
Added a bit on themes from Alberge, at the risk of repetition, and from Lyon, who however is not principally concerned with providing coverage of that subject. Further, the book is not organised thematically, so we have to be very careful not to impose interpretations.
This might just be personal preference, but I think it's worth saying anyway given other concerns about WP:DUE and WP:COPYQUOTE mentioned elsewhere in this review; I feel like §Reception goes into a bit too much detail about the exact comments of every single reviewer, with an excessive number of direct quotations, and basically no summary of overall critical response (not even an introductory sentence/paragraph for the section). As mentioned above, I'm aware of this discussion about the spectrum that exists between quote-plopping (allowing the reception section to just be a list of quotes) at one end, and at the other, generalising "critical response" too much without isolating any individual reviewer's points, which risks WP:SYNTH and WP:NPOV issues. In this case, given the abundance of reviews (at least 11, by my count), I think at least some encyclopedic summary is in order; even if cross-review summary is avoided, summarising the main arguments of individual reviews (for instance, Holmes, which currently occupies three paragraphs in §Presentation) would make the experience of reading and navigating §Reception a lot easier than the current quote-after-quote-after-quote format. In an ideal world, if a reader comes to §Reception looking to find out how critics generally responded, they shouldn't have to read all 1400+ words before they can draw any kind of conclusion at all. Pineapple Storage (talk) 03:51, 5 June 2025 (UTC)
The job of Reception is to present neutrally and clearly what reviewers, scholars and critics have written. The division into subsections ("Raising the poems' profile" etc.) does what can safely be attempted to organise the comments; refactoring them is risky, as you rightly imply, and any generalised statement, even the blandest bit of leading-in to a section ("Some scholars have stated that the quality..." will attract requests for citation. Best we don't go there.)
I understand where you're coming from, but I still think a summary paragraph identifying the key points from some of the reviews discussed at most length (Ordway, Kriticos and Holmes, for instance) placed before any of the subheadings in §Reception would aid readability and navigation. Something like: The collection has been reviewed by critics and Tolkien scholars in several publications, including Mythlore and the Journal of Tolkien Research.[1][2] Scholar 1 commented on A and B;[3] scholar 2 focused on C, while recognising D.[4] Scholar 3 praised E and F, but also noted G.[5] This would give §Reception a pyramid structure, where readers can get the gist of the critical response to the book from the summary, then get the details, quotes, etc. from the subsections. An overview of topics addressed by critics falls well within summary style. Pineapple Storage (talk) 14:55, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
We don't do that, as the lead acts as the top of your 'pyramid' and it already provides such a summary. By the same token, a Wikipedia article body does not include an introductory or overview section, nor a conclusions section. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:00, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
Fair point, I completely forgot that the summary was already in the lead! I hadn't reread the lead since I started the review 10 days ago. Apologies!:') Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:17, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
Note: As mentioned elsewhere, I think there's still a bit too much detail in §Reception (especially given the minimal detail of §Contents), but I get that this is subjective; now that some more detail has been added to §Contents, I'm okay to pass on this. Pineapple Storage (talk) 20:04, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
It represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each: Pineapple Storage (talk) 23:54, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
No problems that I can see in terms of WP:NPOV, as a range of critical viewpoints (positive and negative) are presented in §Reception.However, re WP:DUE: please feel free to set me right on this (as I’m very much not an expert in either Tolkien or poetry collections/anthology works/etc., and have no Wikipedia experience in these areas), but from my perspective as a reader, the weighting of the article feels a bit unbalanced... §Reception contributes ~70% of the article's prose. That's not to say that §Reception is necessarily[b] too long, just that it would be good if the same level of detail extended to §Contents. As mentioned above, given the number of poems that were previously unpublished, I find myself wondering about the content of those, and would have hoped to find out more information about them in the §Contents section[c].I'm not sure whether you have access to a copy of the collection (even the ebook is £45!) but if so, it would be interesting to outline some of the information provided in the commentaries by the editors—perhaps for any poems for which the editors' commentary was particularly comprehensive, or where lots of different versions were included in the book. (Does this make sense?) It might also be good to include some examples of Tolkien's limericks and clerihews (if possible, given copyright etc.), to give readers an idea of Tolkien's particular style in these genres of poetry, as well as maybe some descriptions of the content of the full-colour frontispiece, and six monochrome plates. (What do the images depict? What was special about the images the editors chose to include?)In summary, it would be nice to have a bit more in-depth coverage of the actual Poems Collected in The Collected Poems (and the editors' commentary on them) given that this collection contains some that were previously unpublished and therefore (very likely) unknown to readers; this extra detail in §Contents would then also mirror the comprehensive coverage of §Reception, making the article feel more balanced. Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:13, 2 June 2025 (UTC)
I'll have a think about what we can include in Contents. We can maybe quote briefly from a poem or two; it's a more sensitive matter than quoting prose, as even a short sample can be a large percentage of a short poem, so we need to have good reason to use it under the fair usage rules. The Contents is certainly not the right place to discuss poems, that point is clear. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:18, 3 June 2025 (UTC)
For sure! I totally understand. Might it be possible to include short extracts (for instance, any lines that are discussed at particular length in the editorial commentary) from some of the longer unpublished poems? This would mean the quoted lines would make up a smaller proportion of the works, but would still give readers an idea of the content of some of these never-before-seen poems. Also, if you would prefer to avoid including any discussion in §Contents, would it be an idea to add a §Poems section (or similar)? Pineapple Storage (talk) 16:23, 3 June 2025 (UTC)
That would be the implication. If we're giving quotations from the book's content, then Contents is the place. We can't do our own discussion of the contents in 'Poems' or anywhere else, that would be WP:OR. That is already why the reception/analysis is more detailed, because that is the legitimate discussion of the book's quality and contents. Indeed, thinking about this, there is no reason why Reception's length should be limited to the length of Contents, there is no implied relationship there. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:35, 3 June 2025 (UTC)
Yes, obviously no original discussion would be included, but it might be good to summarise the commentaries by the editors for the quoted poems, to give readers some context; that's all I meant by "discussion". Pineapple Storage (talk) 17:44, 3 June 2025 (UTC)
I'll see what I can do without crashing the OR barrier. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:45, 3 June 2025 (UTC)
Thank you! I can see you've already added some samples to §Contents, so this is looking good so far. It might be good to add some citations with page numbers for the quoted passages of The Collected Poems?Re no reason why Reception's length should be limited to the length of Contents, I agree, but also WP:WEIGHT still applies; as I said, I have no prior experience in this area, but as a reader I feel like an article about a book of 1600+ pages (including many previously unpublished poems) should at least describe some of the poems and summarise some of the book's editorial commentary on those poems. I'm not saying the description of the content of the book should necessarily be the same length/longer than the description of the critical response, I just meant it would be nice if the proportions were a bit more balanced. Pineapple Storage (talk) 19:37, 3 June 2025 (UTC)
Noted. As above, I don't think we can do that, nor would it be in scope for this article as it's a matter for Tolkien's poetry (which is already linked).
Okay, but §Reception (especially §Quality of the poetry) already includes commentary on Tolkien's poetry from secondary sources. Why not include in §Contents not only a brief summary of the topics/themes of the unpublished poems (as described under criterion 3A above) but also a description/summary of some of the editors' commentary, which is after all part of the content unique to the book? (From my reading of the reviews etc., the collection isn't just all Tolkien's poems printed one after another; at least some of them are interspersed with discussion by the editors, which is currently only mentioned in passing, and leaves a lot of question marks for me as a reader. What kind of commentary do they provide? Do they talk about any particular difficulties they encountered when trying to ascertain chronology of poem drafts? Are there any repeated themes in their commentary, or points about Tolkien's life or work that are brought up multiple times throughout the book? Etc.)Again though, I'm not going to keep banging on about this; I feel I've already gone slightly mad trying to draw a line between the strictly-define GA criteria and my nagging feeling that the article leaves some key questions unanswered. (I suspect that to someone who has read the book and knows it well, and has also read a lot of other Tolkien scholarship literature, the answers to these questions may seem so obvious as to not need mentioning.) Pineapple Storage (talk) 12:06, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
Noted; I agree that you are trying to go far beyond the GA criteria here, and probably far beyond what a Wikipedia article ought to be doing really. I've added a mention of commentary from TCG.
Hmm... I would disagree; these edits have pretty much covered what I was after, and I don't think you'd have added them if they were beyond scope!:) Thank you for making these additions, it has made a difference in terms of comprehensive coverage of the book. Pineapple Storage (talk) 14:25, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
Just a note re describing the illustrations; on page 4 of his review, under Front Matter and Introduction, Holmes specifies that (at least some of) the plates are reproductions of Tolkien's manuscripts. Pineapple Storage (talk) 22:29, 3 June 2025 (UTC)
Added.
Note: I still feel like §Reception is a bit too extensive/over-detailed, but now that some more detail has been added to §Contents, I don't think this imbalance is prohibitive for GA. Pineapple Storage (talk) 19:21, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
Not too sure about File:Lena och riddaren dansa (Lena dances with the knight) by John Bauer 1915.jpg; it would be good if the caption made a more explicit connection between the theme of the painting and the critical discussion of themes in Tolkien's poetry. Without further detail, the image is a painting of two people dancing, which doesn't obviously connect with the dynamic of disenchantment and re-enchantment in Tolkien's poetry. Pineapple Storage (talk) 16:41, 3 June 2025 (UTC)
Bauer's painting shows a scene of a mythical knight and his lady in an enchanted landscape; it's a good expression of the feelings engendered by Tolkien's Middle-earth. I'm not sure what more we could do with captioneering really. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:29, 3 June 2025 (UTC)
I think what gave me pause was that the painting's setting doesn't look especially enchanted, and nor do the characters depicted. Even just a mention of the "enchanted landscape" in the caption would clarify the image's relevance, I think! Pineapple Storage (talk) 21:47, 3 June 2025 (UTC)
Added.
Overall:
Pass or Fail:
Wow! That was a bit of a marathon but we got there. Thank you for your patience with my review—and my forgetfulness, eg. with the lead summary! As I've said above, I still think there's room for improvement, but GA criteria are met so happy to pass. Well done, and thank you again!:) Pineapple Storage (talk) 20:21, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
Self-published blog by the editors of the collection. Not independent, but I think WP:ABOUTSELF applies as it's only used as a source for the editors' account of the history of the book. If any of this info is provided in the book itself (for instance, in the highly informative introduction) then it would be good to cite the book too, as it likely has editorial oversight from the publisher re accuracy etc. Pineapple Storage (talk) 13:50, 4 June 2025 (UTC)
The established-scholar exception applies here; I doubt very much that H&S asked the publisher if they could blog about their book, and I'm sure the publisher would defer to them on matters of scholarly interpretation.
Citation a (cited as source for the whole of §Background): the source doesn't explicitly state that Christopher Tolkien invited the editors to work on the collection (as currently stated in §Background), just that the collection was suggested to [them] in HarperCollins’ offices and that Christopher Tolkien hoped that his father’s talent for poetry could become more widely known—from reading the source, it's possible that it was HarperCollins who "invited" Scull and Hammond to work on the collection, and that Christopher Tolkien just approved it. I know this is a bit nit-picky, but given that the blog is self-published, and the details of the commissioning of the collection involve a third party (Christopher Tolkien), I think precision would be advisable here. Pineapple Storage (talk) 09:24, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
Edited.
Also, Edith Bratt and the first poem in the collection aren't mentioned in the source. Maybe cite a page in the book? Pineapple Storage (talk) 13:50, 4 June 2025 (UTC)
I see you've addressed this.
Re mention of Edith Bratt and first poem: for now, I've added a footnote citing Pizzimento, as the source says A quegli anni risale anche la prima poesia scritta da Tolkien di cui si abbia notizia, Morning / Morning Song (Collected Poems, n. 1), acclusa in una lettera all’amata Edith Bratt datata 28 marzo 1910. According to Google Translate, transl.The first known poem written by Tolkien also dates back to those years, Morning / Morning Song (Collected Poems, n. 1), included in a letter to his beloved Edith Bratt dated 28 March 1910.Pineapple Storage (talk) 13:50, 6 June 2025 (UTC)
Noted.
Citation b (cited as source for most of the first paragraph of §Contents): FVSP also for the statements about Songs for the Philologists (which isn't mentioned) and poems in other languages (the source actually says as many of his father’s poems as possible, regardless of their date of composition, language, or circumstance, so I assume this policy changed later). Maybe cite the introduction to the book, if that's where these are mentioned? Pineapple Storage (talk) 13:50, 4 June 2025 (UTC) Pineapple Storage (talk) 20:12, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
This has been discussed above. "Contents" is based on the book itself, which is necessarily the ultimate authority here.
The way the footnotes are currently positioned implies that the "blog" and "Bratman March 2024" sources support the whole preceding paragraph. As this isn't the case (because, as you've said, some or all of the preceding paragraph is sourced from the book), it would be good if this was illustrated somehow, for instance in a footnote citing the introduction to the collection (pp. xiii–lxiix, or whatever the page range of the introduction is) if the introduction states the language details etc. explicitly. Pineapple Storage (talk) 19:18, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
A simple fix: a paragraph break, would be sufficient; we can ref the Introduction.
I had never heard of The European Conservative, and frankly their 'About' page was a tough read. In any other context I would be very concerned about WP:RS status, but given WP:RSOPINION, WP:RSEDITORIAL and WP:BIASED, I guess it's fine for inclusion in §Reception. (This profile says the author has a PhD in English Literature and Culture, which I think qualifies him to review literary works—although it would be nice if the review were in a more reputable publication.) Pineapple Storage (talk) 15:22, 4 June 2025 (UTC)
Noted. I agree with you that the source is fine for the purpose here.
Citation a (in caption for File:Tolkien's Collected Poems.svg): as mentioned above in point 2B, source only discusses Bealuwérig, Tolkien's translation of "Jabberwocky", not his translation of Beowulf, or the fact that the verse translation is still unpublished. Pineapple Storage (talk) 15:22, 4 June 2025 (UTC) Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:10, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
I added a ref.
Citation b: WP:TSI fine for the last sentence of the paragraph, but the source doesn't mention the manuscripts and doesn't specify that commentary is given for individual poems (only the introduction's commentary is mentioned). Pineapple Storage (talk) 15:22, 4 June 2025 (UTC) Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:10, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
The paragraph doesn't mention "manuscripts" or "commentary" so there seems no issue here.
@Chiswick Chap The last sentence of the paragraph is Poems are shown in different versions, gathered from Tolkien's manuscripts, and have commentaries by the editors. The collection is structured chronologically. The only footnote for this sentence is currently a ref to the Cooper source, which doesn't mention manuscripts or individual-poem commentary. Pineapple Storage (talk) 09:18, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
Ah, in Contents. This is a description of the book itself, not from Cooper. Reordered.
Citations c–g (paragraph 4 of §Presentation): no inaccuracies regarding Cooper's review, but attribution is never introduced as it is with other critics in this section; the reviewer is only referred to as Cooper, and there's no mention of which publication the review appeared in. Pineapple Storage (talk) 15:32, 4 June 2025 (UTC) Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:10, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
Fixed.
Also, WP:REPEATCITE? One footnote at the end of the paragraph might be sufficient, given the lack of page numbers. Pineapple Storage (talk) 16:36, 4 June 2025 (UTC)
Unknown editorial policy for blog posts on this website, but The Tolkien Society do publish academic journals and the author is an established Tolkien scholar. Pineapple Storage (talk) 15:47, 4 June 2025 (UTC)
I added this ref, to verify the description of the appendices and end matter. The version from their website isn't ideal; if I had a copy of the collection in front of me, I'd cite the ToC straight from the book, and leave the web version in §See also. Pineapple Storage (talk) 16:36, 4 June 2025 (UTC)
Again, Word on Fire would be a questionable source for non-opinion content (assessments from Media Bias/Fact Check and Ground News don't inspire confidence) but for opinion from a known Tolkien scholar, this isn't too much of a problem. Pineapple Storage (talk) 16:36, 4 June 2025 (UTC)
Noted.
Citation a: as mentioned under point 2B above, the Many who enjoy ... passage is a direct quotation from the introduction to the book, so it would be good if this were also cited. Pineapple Storage (talk) 16:36, 4 June 2025 (UTC) I still feel like an original source ref would be good, but I'm not going to go on about it.:) Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:10, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
Noted, this is discussed above.
Citations b–f (§Raising the poems' profile and §Quality of the poetry): all accurate to the source. Given that this is the only source cited in these two paragraphs, and quotations are clearly attributed, there would be no ambiguity over the source of the direct quotes if there were just one footnote at the end of each paragraph; I feel like repeated footnotes are unnecessary here given the lack of page numbers, but that's just preference. Pineapple Storage (talk) 16:36, 4 June 2025 (UTC)
Citations a–e: all accurate to the source. WP:REPEATCITE may apply, but again, not a big issue. Pineapple Storage (talk) 16:36, 4 June 2025 (UTC)
As above.
Citation f: the final sentence slips into Wikipedia's voice, including an out-of-quotation comment about Tolkien's creative genius, so it would be good if this could be reworded. Pineapple Storage (talk) 16:36, 4 June 2025 (UTC) Pineapple Storage (talk) 09:28, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
In Kriticos's view. I felt this was clear from the context, but added it now anyway.
Citation b: another instance of a direct quote from the introduction to the book, via the secondary source. Would be good to cite the original passage from the book, in addition to the Alberge source. Pineapple Storage (talk) 16:42, 4 June 2025 (UTC) As above. Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:10, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
This source is supposed to support a passing mention of Flieger's concept of a dynamic or dialectic of disenchantment, as seen in "The Sea-Bell", but neither "The Sea-Bell" nor the word "disenchantment" are mentioned in the source, and "enchantment"/"enchanted" is only mentioned three times, in an article of 15 pages. Is there a better source (for instance, from one of her books) for Flieger's own description of this dialectic of disenchantment in "The Sea-Bell"? Pineapple Storage (talk) 17:18, 4 June 2025 (UTC) Pineapple Storage (talk) 11:35, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
This is a direct, cited, and attributed quotation, so it represents the source's opinion exactly of Flieger's writing. I've read a lot of Flieger, and it feels a fair depiction of her voice, but it isn't for Wikipedia to original-research-double-guess why they said so: indeed, we mustn't try.
@Chiswick Chap I agree, insofar as the Emanuel quotation (from The Conversation) is exactly accurate to the cited source, and the Edmonds source accurately describes Flieger's voice. However, the Emanuel source doesn't actually mention "The Arch and the Keystone"; in fact, the hyperlink provided in the source is to pages 209–220 of Flieger's book A Question of Time: J.R.R. Tolkien's Road to Faërie. For reference, the wording in §Quality of the poetry is currently The Conversation writes that the poetry is part of the Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger's[6] dynamic or dialectic of disenchantment, as seen in "The Sea-Bell", combined with and opposed by re-enchantment, as seen in "the elven-realm of Lothlórien".[7] Given that "The Arch and the Keystone" is neither mentioned by the quoted source, nor discusses the content of this paragraph at length, the citation of it doesn't seem to be relevant. It would make sense to either cite A Question of Time, given that that's the link provided by the Emanuel source, or remove the Flieger citation entirely and let this paragraph rely on the Emanuel citation. Pineapple Storage (talk) 09:43, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
Done. BTW no need to ping, I'm watching this page.
Not sure about the editorial policy of this site, or whether one exists, but as mentioned before, I don't see this as too much of a problem for reviews. Pineapple Storage (talk) 17:34, 4 June 2025 (UTC)
Noted.
Fine re WP:TSI, but the citation lists the author as Edmonds, Jeremy; the authors listed by the source are pseudonymous, as stated in the body text of §Quality of the poetry, so I'm not sure who Jeremy Edmonds is. I think this needs attention. Pineapple Storage (talk) 17:34, 4 June 2025 (UTC) Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:10, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
Citations a–d: accurate to source. (It's worth noting that all of the quotations cited appear in the review before any mention of The Collected Poems, so they're really statements about Tolkien's poetry overall; I don't have access to the whole article though, so I'm not sure what else is said about this book specifically, or for instance about the previously unpublished poems.) Pineapple Storage (talk) 17:50, 4 June 2025 (UTC)
I don't read Italian, so I'm relying on machine translation, but I'm pretty sure the summary is accurate. Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:19, 4 June 2025 (UTC)
As mentioned above, I've added page numbers with Template:Rp, but these can be removed if they're a problem, or otherwise switched to a different format. Pineapple Storage (talk) 00:05, 5 June 2025 (UTC)
Citations a–f and h: accurate to source. Pineapple Storage (talk) 00:05, 5 June 2025 (UTC)
Citation g: Hmm. The summary (in short, ...) does represent the opinions summarised in the source, but I feel like the language is a bit too negative (cluttered, repetitive ... mass of drafts) to be presented in Wikipedia's voice. Either rewording it to be a bit more neutral, or directly quoting the source, might be a good idea. Pineapple Storage (talk) 00:05, 5 June 2025 (UTC)
Since we agree that the summary accurately represents the scholarly opinion, no action is needed here. Wikipedia is not censored, and is not required to be mealy-mouthed. If a scholar names issues that he or she perceives, we are at liberty to name them too: the material is cited and attributed, which is sufficient.
Sure, but I still think it needed more explicit distancing from Wikipedia's voice. I've added a bit of an escape clause for this (diff) just for my own peace of mind re WP:NPOV; feel free to edit this if you feel it's necessary. Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:49, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Note: @DaniloDaysOfOurLives and I are working very hard to review every single GA nomination in the television section. Consider joining us to clear the backlog!
Hi @Pineapple Storage, I noticed you had a nomination open and it seems very interesting! So I'll review it. IAWW (talk) 19:13, 24 May 2025 (UTC)
Comments are below. I thought this was extremely well written for your first GA! Great work:) IAWW (talk) 19:15, 24 May 2025 (UTC)
Amazing, thank you so much for taking on the review!:) Pineapple Storage (talk) 20:54, 24 May 2025 (UTC)
I think the lead needs to be expanded a bit to cover the main points of the article. A quick summary of their main campaigns would be appropriate. IAWW (talk) 19:13, 24 May 2025 (UTC)
I've expanded the lead to include some more details about their activities (diff). Is this what you were thinking? Pineapple Storage (talk) 21:42, 24 May 2025 (UTC)
Yes, I think that's great. I don't see any issues holding this back from GA anymore, so I'm gonna go ahead and pass. That was quick! IAWW (talk) 21:55, 24 May 2025 (UTC)
The purpose listed in the infobox is "Protesting against Elon Musk", but I think it should be a little more general than that, e.g. "Protesting against Elon Musk and billionaire influence" to be accurate. IAWW (talk) 19:13, 24 May 2025 (UTC)
Totally agree, as their scope has definitely widened beyond just protesting Musk. I think "billionaire influence" might not quite cover it, as they seem to be opposed to billionaires in general (especially their tax avoidance etc.) rather than just their influence in politics... Could Protesting against Elon Musk and other billionaires work? Or maybe Anti-billionaire protests (although I don't think this is a commonly-used phrase)? I'm not sure how to strike the right balance between conciseness and a comprehensive summary! Pineapple Storage (talk) 21:15, 24 May 2025 (UTC)
The campaign is anticipated to raise £150,000 over the course of one year, and was discussed in a February 2025 episode of The Guilty Feminist podcast: Grammar error (WP:CINS) IAWW (talk) 19:13, 24 May 2025 (UTC)
Without the comma, I feel like this sentence runs on a bit, but I also want to avoid repeating the campaign too many times, so I'm thinking of changing it to this: The fundraising campaign, which is anticipated to raise £150,000 over the course of one year, was discussed in a February 2025 episode of The Guilty Feminist podcast. Is this better? Or should it be two separate sentences? Pineapple Storage (talk) 21:02, 24 May 2025 (UTC)
Yes I like this IAWW (talk) 21:38, 24 May 2025 (UTC)
This article seems controversial at first, but it's almost entirely descriptive. Is there any sourcing on the reception/reactions to the group's activities? IAWW (talk) 19:13, 24 May 2025 (UTC)
Yes I noticed this too. I've had another look for actual reviews/evaluation of the group's activities/campaigns/strategy, but I'm having trouble finding any. I think it's possible that authors of reliable sources (newspaper articles etc.) try not to pass comment/give opinions on the campaigns, to avoid creating controversy with editors who don't want to risk drawing negative attention from Musk's supporters. Certainly, I haven't been able to find any sources criticising Everyone Hates Elon or their poster campaigns, but I also haven't found any that explicitly express their support for the group. I will keep looking, and add any reception etc. to the article if I find it! Pineapple Storage (talk) 21:22, 24 May 2025 (UTC)
Fair enough! I don't think this is an issue for the GA broadness criteria though, so I'll pass on scope. IAWW (talk) 21:39, 24 May 2025 (UTC)
No media unfortunately. I couldn't find any either unfortunately. IAWW (talk) 19:13, 24 May 2025 (UTC)
I actually reached out to the group in April (per WP:REQFREE and WP:ERP) to ask them if they'd be willing to release some of their images under a free license to allow inclusion in the article. They said they'd be happy to upload an image/some images to Wikimedia Commons, and that they'd let me know when the uploads were done; I actually haven't heard back from them (I'm sure they've been pretty busy this month!) but I will get back in touch to let them know about this review and see about an update on images. Pineapple Storage (talk) 21:26, 24 May 2025 (UTC)
That would be great! IAWW (talk) 21:40, 24 May 2025 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
This article was recently promoted to GA. As this is the first article I've created that's gone beyond start-class, I'm keen to carry on improving it as much as possible. Any feedback at all is welcome!
I'm already aware of a couple of issues, which we discussed in the GA review:
The article doesn't currently have any images/media, but I'm in contact with Everyone Hates Elon to arrange for some free images to be released, so hopefully the article will soon be illustrated.
The article doesn't include discussion of reactions or feedback to the group's campaigns (for instance, any "critical reception"), as this doesn't currently exist, as far as I can tell. Likely given the contentious topic area, and the risk of attracting drama, sources tend to keep to discussing the facts rather than giving opinions. I'm keeping an eye out for "critical reception"-type sources, and if any do emerge, I'll incorporate them into the article.
I've also posted some thoughts about the WP:RS status of Left Foot Forward (which is the origin of four sources cited in the article) at Talk:Everyone Hates Elon, so I'm interested to hear what others think about this.
As I said, any feedback on the article is very welcome; comments don't have to relate to the issues mentioned above. Thank you in advance! Pineapple Storage (talk) 13:12, 31 May 2025 (UTC)
@Pineapple Storage: I have added this article to the FAC PR sidebar. Please consider reviewing other articles on that list. I also recommend that you review articles at WP:FAC: this will help you learn the FA criteria and build goodwill amongst other FA reviewers, thus making it more likely that your article will be reviewed. Lastly, since you are working on your first successful FAC nomination, I recommend getting a mentor to help give comments and guide you through the process. Happy editing! Z1720 (talk) 01:17, 27 June 2025 (UTC)
@Z1720 Okay thank you for this! I wasn't actually sure about aiming for FA with this article straight away, as I don't think it's quite ready yet (eg. no media) but I guess there's no harm in trying to get it FAC-ready anyway!:) I will try and get involved in reviews too, as you suggest. Thanks again! Pineapple Storage (talk) 02:01, 27 June 2025 (UTC)
The biggest question I have is "Does this comply with WP:FACR 1d: "it presents views fairly and without bias" and I'm not sure I can answer that in the affirmative. Surely there is criticism of the group? Legal issues they're embroiled in? I'm not seeing anything negative about the group and that's a red flag to me that this isn't really neutral. RoySmith(talk) 00:10, 26 July 2025 (UTC)
I totally understand where you're coming from, but honestly I have really looked (including prior to and during the DYK nomination/vetting and the GA review) and I haven't been able to find any published sources criticising the group's actions, or even that discuss criticisms levelled at the group. In addition to actively searching, I also have Google Alerts enabled for the phrase "Everyone Hates Elon" so that I can keep up-to-date as to what sources are saying about the group. As yet I haven't been able to find (or been notified of) any sources that actually criticise the group, or any that discuss legal challenges or prosecution. The closest I could find was TfL saying that the posters were unauthorised and were quickly removed (discussed in paragraph 3 of §Elon Musk). If anyone else can find any sources discussing criticism of the group then please do bring them to my attention and/or add them to the article yourself, as I'm very keen for the article to accurately convey the group's representation/coverage in the available sources! Pineapple Storage (talk) 03:00, 26 July 2025 (UTC)
Okay, so I've had another look, and the absolute closest thing to criticism I've been able to find is the headline of an article from the US edition of the Daily Express: Donald Trump's golf course vandalized with message concerning alleged Epstein friendship. The actual text of this article doesn't repeat the title's accusation of "vandalism", and doesn't offer any further criticism of the group's actions. I'm hesitant to include this in the article, as the Express is considered generally unreliable and it might feel a bit undue to include this as "criticism" based only on one word in one headline. What do you think @RoySmith? Pineapple Storage (talk) 08:09, 26 July 2025 (UTC)
I'm not convinced this violates FACR 1d, but neither am I convinced it complies with it. I just wanted to bring it up, as it's something that might be raised at WP:FAC so you should be ready for that. RoySmith(talk) 11:12, 26 July 2025 (UTC)
Yes absolutely, thank you for bringing it up, it's definitely something I'm keen to include if/when sources are available. I will have a think about whether (and how/where) to mention the Express headline's use of "vandalized". Pineapple Storage (talk) 12:24, 26 July 2025 (UTC)
I've added some criticism of the Venice protests to §Jeff Bezos and Amazon; the comments weren't about Everyone Hates Elon or the EHE/Greenpeace demonstration specifically, but they were about the anti-Bezos protests in general, which hopefully is close enough? Pineapple Storage (talk) 16:20, 26 July 2025 (UTC)
Looking at the sources, they seem mostly solid, but there's a few that are questionable. I'm not saying they're not usable, but for a topic like this, I'd be ultra-conservative about the quality of sources...
WP:THR says "generally reliable for entertainment-related topics". I have no reason to believe they're not reliable for the purpose being used here, but finding a more solid source would avoid the question being raised.
Thank you, I'll have a look for further sources to back up the claims sourced to THR. Pineapple Storage (talk) 13:01, 26 July 2025 (UTC)
Unfortunately I've had trouble finding different sources for the bits citing THR; I think this is more likely because the group haven't done that many interviews (so aspects of their history haven't been so widely reported on) as opposed to signalling an inaccuracy in the article... Again though, if concerns are raised about the reliability of THR's claims then I can always just remove/rework the relevant passages. Pineapple Storage (talk) 13:19, 27 July 2025 (UTC)
Left Foot Forward appears to be a blog, but what I can find in WP:RSN is generally favorable, so probably OK.
Yes, I did have some reservations about Left Foot Forward (see talk page). It's not used to source any crucial information, so worst case scenario the bits that cite it could always just be removed, if any objections are raised. Pineapple Storage (talk) 13:01, 26 July 2025 (UTC)
I just checked out RSN and found this and this, so I agree with you that it's probably fine for now! Pineapple Storage (talk) 13:41, 26 July 2025 (UTC)
WP:RSNP says "caution is advised" for Sky News Australia
Wow, thank you for bringing this to my attention! I totally fell for the branding, I had no idea it wasn't affiliated with Sky News! I will have a look for an alternative source. Pineapple Storage (talk) 13:01, 26 July 2025 (UTC)
Totally fair! I've added another source, from The Sun (Malaysia) (the text of the article is from Agence France Presse and doesn't mention EHE, but an image of the poster is used to illustrate it). This obviously isn't ideal (see discussions here and here), so I might end up just deleting the paragraph about the Kent posters! Pineapple Storage (talk) 13:01, 26 July 2025 (UTC)
@RoySmith thank you so much for your feedback, it's very much appreciated!:) Please do let me know if you have any other concerns or you identify any other areas in need of improvement. Pineapple Storage (talk) 13:19, 27 July 2025 (UTC)
I've listed this article for peer review because I'm thinking of nominating it for FAC and need feedback on how it could be improved to meet the criteria. As this is a very abstract article, I'm also looking for places that people find the most difficult to understand so I can try to improve how accessible it is.
@Pineapple Storage, Phlsph7: Hello both, sorry for the delay, I took a bit of a break from Wikipedia. I think all your comments have been addressed so just putting this note here to let you know I'm closing this review. Thank you for all the helpful ideas! Shapeyness (talk) 13:45, 23 October 2025 (UTC)
@Shapeyness: It has been over a month since this has been opened, but no one has commented yet. Are you still looking for feedback? Z1720 (talk) 01:00, 27 June 2025 (UTC)
@Z1720: Hi, yes I'm still looking for feedback. I was hoping for feedback from outside Wikiproject Philosophy to make sure this is as accessible as possible but will add a note there if I don't get any comments soon. Shapeyness (talk) 15:18, 27 June 2025 (UTC)
@Shapeyness I'm a complete beginner in not only philosophy but also PR and FAC, so apologies in advance for my ignorance re philosophical concepts, but I'm going to try and have a look through the article and give some feedback from a layperson's perspective. Hopefully I'll be able to come back with some comments later today or tomorrow!:) Pineapple Storage (talk) 17:05, 4 July 2025 (UTC)
Hi Pineapple Storage, thanks for reviewing! I want this article to be as accessible as possible so no need to apologise for any ignorance of philosophy:) It is quite niche so may be impossible to make fully accessible but any comments are helpful. Shapeyness (talk) 22:34, 4 July 2025 (UTC)
Hi again @Shapeyness, really sorry about the delay here, I've been busy IRL the last few weeks so apologies for ghosting this review until now! Pineapple Storage (talk) 20:56, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
@Pineapple Storage: no worries, I haven't been too active the last few weeks anyway! Thanks for all the comments, the lead is definitely a lot more accessible now - let me know if there's anything I missed or if you have any more comments. I can close the review if not:) Shapeyness (talk) 10:48, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
Thank you for your patience! Glad you're happy with the lead. I've added some more thoughts below about §Background, but I'm aware I seem to be going into a lot of detail bearing in mind this isn't an FAC review, so if you feel like there's enough to be going on with here then that's no problem! Grappling with this article's concepts and language has been a workout for my brain and an interesting challenge so far. I'd be happy to try and give the same kind of feedback on the rest of the article, but only if you'd find that helpful and constructive! Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:40, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
Thanks Pineapple Storage! Comments on the rest of the article would be very helpful and appreciated but don't feel any obligation if you get busy again. Shapeyness (talk) 09:05, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
Aside from the final paragraph of §Nature and methodology of epistemology, discussing feminist epistemology, the only mention I can find of a female philosopher is the penultimate sentence of §Epistemic realism and anti-realism, about Sharon Street. I understand that philosophy tends to be quite male-dominated, so there probably just aren't that many female or nonbinary metaepistemologists, and of course we want to avoid giving undue weight to the work or opinions of non-notable philosophers. Still, taking this into account, might there be any non-male philosophers who have been influential in the field of metaepistemology outside of explicitly feminist epistemology, and could be worth mentioning?From List of epistemologists, I found:
Maybe a few of these scholars had some thoughts on metaepistemology too? Obviously this is quite a hefty list already, and I'm sure there are plenty more, so it would take a lot of time and effort to search through all their publications to see if they discuss metaepistemology. It might be possible to start with any whose names are immediately recognisable (for instance, if they've been prominently cited by other authors in the discipline) and go from there? This is only a suggestion, and it could be there's nothing further that could be included, in which case fair enough! But I think it's something worth considering. Pineapple Storage (talk) 16:19, 2 August 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for mentioning this, I added a mention of Christine Korsgaard, her work is in ethics but it is relevant here too. Linda Zagzebski would definitely fit into this article, I just need to add a paragraph on virtue epistemology and the value of knowledge. The article isn't too long and I was already considering adding this so it wouldn't be undue. I'll check some of the sources to see if anything else springs out. Shapeyness (talk) 00:16, 3 August 2025 (UTC)
As the "theory of knowledge", epistemology ... — It's not immediately clear to me why that phrase is in quotation marks? Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:39, 4 July 2025 (UTC)
These are kind of acting like scare quotes, so yeah they shouldn't be there I think - they have been removed now. Shapeyness (talk) 22:38, 4 July 2025 (UTC)
typically viewed as a normative field focused on reflective thought rather than empirical evidence — I think this could do with a qualifying phrase to frame that last clause more clearly as an explanation of what you mean by "normative field", as opposed to an unrelated characteristic. For instance, "a normative field, in that its focus is on ..." or "a normative field, meaning that its focus is on ..." Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:39, 4 July 2025 (UTC)
Normative here actually is a separate thing to reflective. Being normative means that something evaluates and prescribes rather than merely describing. The most obvious example of a normative field is ethics: it evaluates by saying that some things are good and others bad, and it prescribes by telling us what we should or should not do. (Hopefully this explains it ok.) It can be hard to get the balance between flow/conciseness and accessibility sometimes, but I'll think about this and come back to it if I can think how to explain normativity in a couple of words for the lead! Shapeyness (talk) 22:55, 4 July 2025 (UTC)
Ok, have come back and added some more explanation. Shapeyness (talk) 16:52, 5 July 2025 (UTC)
Ah okay, thank you for explaining! And the definition of normativity that you added has really helped to clarify it, so the lead feels a lot more accessible now—at from my point of view as a philosophy novice!:) Pineapple Storage (talk) 20:56, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
It is usually seen as methodologically distinct from the sciences, with methods including ... — For me, this raised the question "why wouldn't it be?" Is this highlighted because there's a particular branch of epistemology that isn't seen as methodologically distinct from the sciences? If so, it might be good to add a clarification along the lines of "Unlike [X branch of epistemology/philosophy], metaepistemology is usually seen as ..." Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:39, 4 July 2025 (UTC)
I added a sentence to the beginning of the paragraph that should hopefully clarify why this is being mentioned. Btw, epistemology is traditionally seen as "methodologically distinct from the sciences" but other viewpoints like naturalism and experimental philosophy disagree. Maybe it should be more clear in the lead that the "other views" mentioned are opposed to the traditional view? Not sure, but will think and come back to this as well if you think it needs more clarification. Shapeyness (talk) 23:41, 4 July 2025 (UTC)
A number of questions arise from the normativity of epistemology. — This feels a bit vague. It left me asking, who do these questions "arise" for, and in what context? And if the questions "arise from the normativity", does this mean that the questions are about the normativity, or that they form part of the normativity (given that normativity is linked above to the idea of "reflective thought")? It might be good to merge this sentence into the next one somehow, so that the whole paragraph starts with the stronger "Metaepistemologists investigate ..." for instance. Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:39, 4 July 2025 (UTC)
As a twin metanormative discipline, metaepistemology's relationship with metaethics is a matter of debate. — Is "twin metanormative discipline" an established phrase? If so, it would be good to clarify that the "twinning" in question is with metaethics (if that's the case), and also to give some context for the term "metanormative", as this isn't defined anywhere else in the article (and its meaning isn't automatically obvious). If "twin metanormative discipline" isn't a specific technical term, it might be better to rephrase this into more general language, for instance: "Although metaepistemology is closely linked to metaethics, the exact relationship between the two disciplines is a matter of debate." Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:39, 4 July 2025 (UTC)
I've rephrased this, hopefully a bit less jargony and technical now. Shapeyness (talk) 23:13, 4 July 2025 (UTC)
Yep, this has definitely added a bit more clarity to that sentence. Thank you! Pineapple Storage (talk) 20:56, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
Some theorists view the disciplines as strictly analogous whilst others see important distinctions between the two. — Hmm. This feels a bit vague; I think a more general/accessible phrase could replace "strictly analogous" here. The phrases "structurally equivalent" and "any positions taken in one should carry over to the other", which are used in the final paragraph of the article, gave me a much better idea of what this sentence in the lead actually meant; might there be a way to match this level of clarity in that last sentence of the lead? And maybe rather than "important distinctions", something like "important ways in which the disciplines are not equivalent"? It feels kind of redundant to just say that some theorists notice differences between them; if there were no distinctions then they wouldn't be considered separate disciplines, right? Pineapple Storage (talk) 19:28, 4 July 2025 (UTC)
Slightly reworded, although I am now using the wording "disanalogies", let me know if that still reads unclear/technical. Shapeyness (talk) 23:16, 4 July 2025 (UTC)
This definitely feels like it's along the right lines, thank you. Maybe a piped link to wikt:disanalogy could be helpful? That might just be me though, others might not feel it's necessary. Pineapple Storage (talk) 20:56, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
No harm in adding a link so I added it in. Shapeyness (talk) 09:58, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
Again, it's important to note that my ignorance of philosophical concepts is really punching through here, and it could be that your target audience for this article is much more clued in than I am (for instance, philosophy undergraduate students or similar). I'm also aware that Metaepistemology isn't currently classed as a Vital Article AFAIK, but Metaethics (level 5), Ethics (level 2) and Epistemology (level 3) all are, so it's reasonable to conclude that metaepistemology isn't so obscure that its article shouldn't even try to be accessible to non-specialist readers. Pineapple Storage (talk) 19:28, 4 July 2025 (UTC)
Note: I'm writing these comments as I go, so apologies if any of my suggestions are actually already addressed in a different part of the article; I will try to come back and edit/strike any that turn out to be redundant!:) Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:40, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
I feel like a wikilink to Meta (prefix) somewhere in this section might help clarify things a bit; if you know what meta means, this makes it easier to grasp how metaepistemology must relate to epistemology, so this might be a good foothold for readers who have no prior knowledge of philosophy etc. Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:40, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
which itself is a first-order or substantive discipline — Could maybe do with a follow-up clause to explain what a substantive discipline is in layman's terms, or perhaps just a wikilink to First-order (which briefly defines the term)? Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:40, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
It's basically the opposite of a metatheory. A metatheory is a theory about theories, a substantive/first-order theory is a theory about something else. Biology has theories about fish and plants, etc. These are all substantive theories, whereas metascience might have theories about science and about scientific theories themselves. Sadly none of the sources really spell this out and I couldn't find another good source to explain this either - plus wiktionary entries don't look super useful here and first-order is a disambiguation page. Hopefully the link to metatheory helps a bit for this but would have been good to add more explanation if there were sources. Shapeyness (talk) 09:18, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
For sure! Totally understand the difficulty here; I guess terms that are so fundamental to a discipline are rarely actually defined in sources, because authors assume their audience will know the basics! First-order is actually a set index article though, so I think it's okay to link to it? Pineapple Storage (talk) 16:19, 2 August 2025 (UTC)
Hopefully this is also ok: Special:Diff/1304095980. I thought adding a new wiktionary entry would explain things best. Shapeyness (talk) 23:53, 3 August 2025 (UTC)
cites William Alston ... other theorists like Dominique Kuenzle and Christos Kyriacou (in footnote a) — some further context for the individuals mentioned might be helpful, just to orient readers within the literature a bit. For instance, I'm assuming the reference is to this William Alston? If so, a wikilink might be helpful; for the others, maybe a brief mention of their academic affiliation? Readers might find it easier to keep track of the different people mentioned if they know what era they're from (it's usually easy to tell by hovering over a wikilink whether they're a 16th century polymath, a 21st century postdoc, etc.) and/or what institution they publish with, for instance. Again though, this might just be me! Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:40, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
I linked William Alston and added some context about the relationship to the other theorists mentioned. Shapeyness (talk) 09:19, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
argue that the analysis of knowledge is a paradigmatic example of a substantive first-order epistemological question, not a metaepistemological one (in footnote a) — Is there a more straightforward synonym for 'paradigmatic' that could be substituted here? If not, a quick explainer might be good. (I would suggest linking to wikt:paradigmatic, but I don't feel like any of the definitions listed there actually represent the meaning of the word as it's used here, so that link might just add to any confusion.) Also, could a paradigmatic example of a substantive first-order epistemological question possibly be streamlined to simply an example of an epistemological question, given that epistemology has already been described as a substantive first-order discipline? Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:40, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
Hopefully this should be simpler now. Shapeyness (talk) 09:20, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
criteria of adequacy – Is this a philosophical term? If so, needs explanation, as currently it's somehow both vague and opaque; if it's not a specific term, then rewording would be good. Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:40, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
Yes this is a philosophical term. My understanding is that it basically means the criteria you use to judge whether an epistemological theory is successful, or whether it even counts as epistemological in the first place. Again the source doesn't define this anywhere, but I'll keep looking to see if I can find another source! Shapeyness (talk) 09:23, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
I managed to find a good source so I added a note there. Shapeyness (talk) 11:45, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
Dominique Kuenzle identifies its first use ... but Christos Kyriacou and Robin McKenna state – as above, a bit of context for these names might help to orient the reader. Maybe something like "Example Name, professor of X at Y University" or "Example Name, author of This Influential Book", where applicable? Just to kind of justify why these specific commentators/sources are being referred to (especially when they don't have their own article to wikilink). Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:40, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
I could add the books they were making these statements in since they are both about metaepistemology - the only reservation I have is that it should (hopefully) be clear from context already that these are all philosophers working in this area. Shapeyness (talk) 09:25, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
into three branches analogously to the three branches – should analogously be an adverb here, or would three branches, analogous feel more natural? I'm not sure. Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:40, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
nor entails any particular position in them. – I may have misinterpreted, but could this phrase be simplified to "nor forms a part of any of them"? If so, I think the simpler wording might be the way to go. Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:40, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
For example, according to this view, a person being an epistemic realist, anti-realist, or relativist has no implications for whether they should be a coherentist, foundationalist, or reliabilist, and vice versa. – It's not clear from the previous sentence which of these sets of viewpoints are relevant to metaepistemology, or to other epistemology branches. Without further context, this feels like a bit of a nonsequitur. Again though, I might just be confused! Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:40, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
Yes I was probably drawing examples too closely from the source, making this more confusing than it needed to be - should be simpler now! Shapeyness (talk) 09:27, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
a normative epistemological view may even be fully derivable from a metaepistemological one. – Is 'derivable' a specific term in philosophy/logic? Might there be a simpler way to phrase this? Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:40, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
Changed "derivable" to "follow from". Shapeyness (talk) 09:29, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
according to the latter view, metaepistemology may have relevance to issues of practical importance like climate change scepticism – Unless the application of metaepistemology to climate change scepticism is explored in depth later in the article, it might be worth expanding a bit here, as it isn't immediately clear (to me, at least) how the two concepts could relate to each other. Pineapple Storage (talk) 18:40, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
I added a brief example, hopefully a footnote is ok. Shapeyness (talk) 14:18, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
knowledge is generally understood in terms of determinate beliefs – Either a simpler synonym or a brief explanation for "determinate" beliefs might be helpful here. Pineapple Storage (talk) 16:19, 2 August 2025 (UTC)
but degrees of belief or credences are also important concepts – There's a bit of ambiguity here; grammatically, this sentence could mean "degrees of belief or degrees of credences", when in fact "credences" is a synonym for "degrees of belief". Swapping them around would fix this (ie. but credences or degrees of belief are), as would replacing "or" with "also known as". Pineapple Storage (talk) 16:19, 2 August 2025 (UTC)
These are the subjective probabilities people hold about what is true – Hmm... I'm not sure it's possible to "hold" a "probability"; could this be (eg.) "subjective probabilities people perceive about what is [likely to be] true" instead? Pineapple Storage (talk) 16:19, 2 August 2025 (UTC)
Hopefully better now. Shapeyness (talk) 00:36, 3 August 2025 (UTC)
Proposed functions of the term knowledge – I feel like 'knowledge' should have a different format per MOS:WORDSASWORDS, but I'm not sure whether this should be italics or quotation marks in this context. Pineapple Storage (talk) 16:19, 2 August 2025 (UTC)
and the relationships between knowledge and related concepts such as assertion. – Is there a relevant wikilink for 'assertion' here? Logical assertion redirects to Judgment (mathematical logic), would that be the right target? Just to give an idea of what type of 'assertion' is being referred to, and therefore how it could relate to knowledge. Pineapple Storage (talk) 16:19, 2 August 2025 (UTC)
The mathematical logic link is probably too narrow/technical, I added a link to Claim (philosophy) which is roughly right or wikt:assertion would also work. Shapeyness (talk) 00:47, 3 August 2025 (UTC)
Epistemic realism generally takes these epistemic facts to be normative and to provide categorical reasons for belief. – 'categorical' links to wikt:categorical, but even so, to an untrained reader it might not be 100% clear which sense of the word is being used. (I assume it's "Absolute; having no exception" rather than "Of, pertaining to, or using a category or categories"...) Is there a way of tweaking this sentence to rule out this slight ambiguity? Pineapple Storage (talk) 16:19, 2 August 2025 (UTC)
File:Contextualism_explanation.png – Could there be citations to specific sources for these definitions? Also, the alt text for this image is a little bit unwieldy; might it be easier to format this info as a wikitable? Pineapple Storage (talk) 16:19, 2 August 2025 (UTC)
It denies the existence of epistemic facts, like error theory, but also denies that epistemic statements have any representational content. – Grammatically, this sentence is a bit ambiguous as to whether it means Like error theory, it denies the existence of epistemic facts, but it also denies that epistemic statements have any representational content.orIt denies the existence of epistemic facts, such as error theory.... I'm assuming it's the former, ie. expressivism and error theory both deny the existence of epistemic facts; if that's the case, it might be worth moving "like error theory" to the start of the sentence (and adding "it" between "but" and "also"), just to rule out any confusion? Pineapple Storage (talk) 16:19, 2 August 2025 (UTC)
It's great to see the article moving towards an FA nomination. As Pineapple Storage has already pointed out, one of the main challenges may be accessibility. Some philosophy articles have a simple general point with the difficulty coming from a complex analysis of this point. This article is different since it's already challenging to explain the topic itself in simple terms, so this is probably not the easiest article to get to FA status. Chances are that at least some FA reviewers of the article have little philosophical background. They don't expect to understand everything, but if they struggle with too many points, especially in the lead, they may be reluctant to support.
Some things that might help are to split long sentences into shorter ones and to replace difficult terms with simpler ones. For example, methodology often (but not always) means method, which is easier to understand. Another approach could be to cover less information. For instance, instead of naming each view with its technical term, like the 3rd lead paragraph, there may be ways to describe some disagreements and approaches without technical terms.
Accessibility:
Among the topics discussed within metaepistemology is what the nature and methodology of epistemology are. could be simplified to Metaepistemology explores the nature and methodology of epistemology. The sentence is similar to the last sentence of the previous paragraph so maybe it's not needed.
(See the third bullet point at #Lead above for some context.) Previously the article jumped straight in with "Epistemology is typically viewed as a normative field focused on reflective thought rather than empirical evidence." But I think that ends up just being confusing, so I think a topic sentence is useful here even if its a bit repetitive. I have reworded it to be a bit simpler and more focused though. Shapeyness (talk) 17:35, 29 July 2025 (UTC)
It is usually seen as being focused on reflective thought rather than empirical evidence and as methodologically distinct from the sciences, with methods including the use of intuitions, thought experiments, conceptual analysis, and explication could be simplified to This characterization emphasizes reflective thought and intuitions rather than empirical evidence. It is associated with the methods of thought experiments, conceptual analysis, and explication.
The following sentence lists various alternative views. Maybe it would be more accessible by not including the technical terms for each view but just saying what they do. Something along the lines "Other perspectives argue that ... or challenge ...", possibly using several shorter sentences instead of one long sentence. I don't have a clear idea of what the resulting passage would look like so I'm not sure if it would be an improvement.
Expressivism argues that statements about knowledge do not aim to represent facts in the first place, but instead express attitudes like "this belief is good enough". Maybe: Expressivism argues that statements about knowledge do not represent facts, but express attitudes like "this belief is good enough".
I would generally be sympathetic to this but it would be pretty much impossible for this article because normativity is one of the key things being investigated (Compare to the IEP, for example, which begins not just with the concept of normativity but also with "situating metaepistemology within the metanormative domain" [that's a slight paraphrase]). Shapeyness (talk) 17:35, 29 July 2025 (UTC)
Maybe some things can be done about the lead at least. For example:
Epistemology is usually viewed as a normative field, in that it evaluates what the right things to believe are and prescribes how one ought to form beliefs. not sure if that's helpful, but it could be changed to: Epistemology is usually viewed as a field that evaluates what the right things to believe are and prescribes how one ought to form beliefs.
rough draft of what the 4th lead paragraph could look like: Many metaepistemological discussions examine values and norms of beliefs, like the idea that people should not indiscriminately accept beliefs without good reasons. One position argues that individuals have an obligation to hold the right beliefs. However, it is disputed whether people have control over their beliefs and whether judgments about belief norms can motivate belief change. Since these problems resemble some issues discussed in the field of metaethics, metaepistemologists examine the similarities and difference between the two disciplines.
I didn't check the draft against the sources and it probably oversimplifies some things, so you may have to rewrite it somewhat if you think this is a good idea and maybe use a different norm-example in the first sentence. It might be possible to cover the sources of normativity by adding a sentence on instrumentalism if there is an easy way to explain it. Maybe something along the lines "According to one view, epistemic norms only matter because they help people form true beliefs." Personally, I'm also sad about removing various details and replacing them a dumbed-down version. But for the sake of FA, I think the danger of complaints about complexity and technical terms is much higher than of complaints about being too dumbed-down. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:05, 30 July 2025 (UTC)
That's a good compromise between accessibility and information content. Phlsph7 (talk) 08:53, 31 July 2025 (UTC)
Covered topics:
I think it would make sense to add a short explanation somewhere about how credences differ from beliefs and how some philosophical approaches, like Bayesian epistemology, analyze credences rather than beliefs, see https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaepistemology/ .
The methodology section could briefly mention formal methodology, i.e., using tools from logic and mathematics. Phlsph7 (talk) 13:49, 29 July 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for the helpful comments Phlsph7, I have rewritten part of the lead like you suggest. Sad to lose some of the details but probably for the best and I'm starting to get a bit happier about how accessible it is now. Will include responses above if I haven't made the associated changes to the lead. Shapeyness (talk) 17:20, 29 July 2025 (UTC)
I think the transition at the beginning of the 2nd lead paragraph works well and the reduced information density should make the text easier to digest for non-philosophers. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:13, 30 July 2025 (UTC)
More comments:
The second paragraph of the subsection "Terminology" discusses the history of the term "metaepistemology". While the part about the first use of the term is interesting, I have the impression that the rest is too detailed. I think talking about the history of metaepistemology itself (i.e. when discussions of metaepistemological theories began, whether conducted under that label or not) would be more interesting, like the topic of the last sentence of the paragraph.
Not much exists on the history but Oxford Bibliographies mentions a bit at least. I shifted the focus to be more historical, although its a similar level of detail. Hopefully the broader view it takes justifies that detail a bit better. (Plus it's more interesting now so thanks for pointing out!) Shapeyness (talk) 21:43, 31 July 2025 (UTC)
The problem of reconciling feminist epistemology's criticism of androcentric bias and simultaneous acceptance that feminism has its own biases is called the "bias paradox".[43] Louise Antony has embraced feminist naturalised epistemology to solve this problem, arguing that feminists should try to show that feminist values produce empirically better theories.[44][i] Other feminist approaches to epistemology can also be viewed as in conversation with different viewpoints, and as extending criticisms of traditional epistemology from a feminist lens.[45] For example, Sally Haslanger has argued from a pragmatist feminist perspective that epistemic concepts should be reformed to remove androcentric biases so they can better serve their purposes within epistemology.[46][j] I'm not particularly happy with this passage: it seems to be overly detailed and not really helpful. Maybe condensing it might help.
This means that statements about what a person knows, for example, are objectively true or false could be simplified to This implies that statements about what a person knows are objectively true or falsePhlsph7 (talk) 08:56, 31 July 2025 (UTC)
Done: I also added a note to explain there can be epistemic facts about other concepts. Shapeyness (talk) 21:43, 31 July 2025 (UTC)
Looks good. Some more:
Epistemic reductionists are generally naturalist realists while antireductionists tend to be non-naturalists. That is, reductionists tend to believe that epistemic facts can be identified with natural facts while antireductionists take them to be a sui generis type of fact.[51] Reductionists can be further divided into analytic reductionists, who accept conceptual analysis, and synthetic reductionists, who think that epistemic reductions can only be found empirically. would it make sense to simplify the passages by removing the technical terms regarding (non-)naturalists and analytic/synthetic reductionists?
Done: I ended up removing those sentences. Shapeyness (talk) 17:51, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
But if they need to know whether there is a connection—if they urgently need to meet someone in that city say—then they would need to do further checks before they can confidently say they know one way or the other. Do we need the initial clause "if they need to know whether there is a connection—"?
This denial that epistemic statements have a representational content capable of being true or false is called epistemic non-cognitivism. could be simplified to The idea that epistemic statements are neither true nor false is called epistemic non-cognitivism.
I merged that sentence into the previous one. Shapeyness (talk) 17:51, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
The section "Epistemology of epistemology" could be quite difficult for the average reader. For example, the paragraph of Metaepistemological scepticism seems to assume that readers know what the problem of scepticism is. Phlsph7 (talk) 13:00, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
I'll have a think and try to simplify, although I think it's impossible for all parts of the article to be accessible to someone without any knowledge of epistemology. For reference, the only courses I could find on metaepistemology were at masters level, so if we were to go by WP:ONEDOWN then we would be assuming the understanding of an undergraduate who has taken an epistemology course (or at least intro to epistemology). I do want this to be better than ONEDOWN as much as possible though so will try to improve that paragraph. Shapeyness (talk) 17:51, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
It's possible that I'm overemphasizing the importance of simplification for this article. My FA experience is mostly from articles on quite general topics, so I think you have a good argument that a higher difficulty is to be expected for this article. Phlsph7 (talk) 12:58, 2 August 2025 (UTC)
The paragraph starting with Deeply related to the notion of normativity are reasons might benefit from a concrete example where a person believes something for the wrong kind of reason.
There is some discussion about believing things for the wrong kind of reasons in the paragraph "Another question is what it means for something to be epistemically valuable." I made this change, hopefully that is similar to the kind of thing you were thinking. Shapeyness (talk) 22:10, 3 August 2025 (UTC)
I was thinking about an example closer to everyday life. If you find a source on the relation between non-epistemic reasons and wishful thinking, you could say somthing along the lines For example, wishful thinking may provide non-epistemic reasons to believe, such as believing that one will win the lottery based on a strong desire for wealth.Phlsph7 (talk) 08:26, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
Pascal's wager is discussed by a few sources but that isn't really an everyday example. Another one in the IEP is believing something because it is comforting but that would add some repetition with the example used later on (to do with buck-passing and the wrong kind of reasons objection). After a quick search, I couldn't find a better everyday example, but I could try to incorporate Pascal's wager here. Shapeyness (talk) 22:17, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
The paragraph on metaethics seems to assume that readers know what metaethics is. Adding a sentence to explain the term might help. It could also help clarify the similarities if it lists some metaethical topics that have parallels because they apply the same idea to actions rather than beliefs. Phlsph7 (talk) 13:00, 2 August 2025 (UTC)
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