Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Esperanto/archive1

Esperanto

This is a very well written article, with much detail put into it. --Flockofpidgeons

Object I think this article has some serious NPOV issues. It reads like an Esperanto manifesto, especially the list headed by "More generally, there are five primary reasons for its strength". The article totally glosses over the fact that Esperanto has not lived up to its orignal stated purpose. With 2 million speakers, it might be the most common constructed language in the world, but so what? The article states that Esperanto was "to serve as an international auxiliary language, a second language for everyone in the world", and it has clearly failed reach that goal. The article should discuss this aspect to achieve a neutral point of view. It also uses the Mother of all Weasel Terms: "There is some evidence that suggests...", which doesn't help to establish NPOV. --Plek 08:33, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The phrase "There is some evidence that suggests..." is linked to an article which (though, last time I looked at it, it needed some grammar and style fixup) details the evidence: a number of studies in schools at various levels in various countries. Maybe it should be rephrased "Some studies suggest..." ?

There is an acknowledgement that Esperanto has "failed to live up to orignal stated purpose"; maybe it should be earlier and more prominent.

Overall I think this is pretty near being ready to be a featured article, but not quite. There are a few infelicities of phrasing, the "five reasons for its strength" could stand some work for better NPOV, and there are irrelevant digressions like the comment about Ethnologue's glitch asserting Esperanto is a language of France. --Jim Henry 17:04, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up. I think the changes you made address some minor issues, but my main concern about POV problems still stands. I'll try to be more specific. To do so, I'll deconstruct the "Language evolution" section, which I think is the most troublesome.

• First paragraph ("A declaration endorsed..."): good, factual information. No problems I can see, although an in-line link to the text of the declaration might be useful.
• 2nd paragraph ("Esperantists believe..."): the problems start here. Those two words are weasel terms. Is the text trying to say that all those 2 million people have the exact same opinion? That's hard to imagine. At least some of them are bound to have a different or opposing view. The phrase "this declaration stabilizing the language is a major reason why Esperanto is uniquely strong", suggests that the declaration has a strictly positive influence. Is that a fact? It seems to me that all languages evolve over time. We're not speaking mediaeval English anymore, either. The static nature of Esperanto is bound to have drawbacks. So what are they?
• "...they see five reasons for its strength": this phrase turns the section into a description of Esperantists' opinion, which is by definition POV. The article is named "Esperanto", not "Opinions about Esperanto". I would therefore suggest to take the factual information from those five points and turn them into descriptive prose, describing the language and its origins. Whether people think those characteristics are good or bad is a seperate issue and should be the subject of a different section.
• "as the legend goes" has no place in an encyclopaedic article.
• Either remove or make specific all adjectives and adverbs that are unquantifiable or opinionated. Some examples: "done an enormous amount of work", "exploit desirable features", "Constructed languages are often destroyed".

Some other observations (yes, I hate people who move the goal posts too ;-):

• The order of the sections seems haphazard: We're moving from history to classification and distribution (which is okay), but then to a very tangential section about Red Dwarf and computer games... Then back to general remarks about the status, followed by some sections about writing and speaking the language. Try to put those into an order that would make sense to the reader: from broad overview to detailed specifics, for instance. Put less important factoids (like the media stuff) at the end. Oh, and do get rid of the minor planet (but that's just because of my bias against gratuitous minor planet references :)...
• After deleting the one reference work about the minor planet (provided you follow my suggestion about dumping the thing), there's only one reference left, and just three pages at that. That seems to be a bit thin for an article that contains so much (most of it very good and interesting) information. I'd suggest to go over the article and find references for the most important facts mentioned in it. Again, in-line citations help to provide a direct link to the reference work (and will also help you spot unreferenced sections).

My fingers hurt, so I guess this will have to do for now. I hope you'll find my incoherent rambling useful in improving the article. One suggestion: you might want to consider dropping it back to peer review first, to get more people involved in the editing process. Good luck. --Plek 21:19, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the more detailed comments. I was going to delete the silly bit about the asteroid, but someone objected in the talk page; I'll wait awhile longer and try to get more consensus before deleting that. I'll try to add more references, edit the language evolution section, and reorder the sections, then link it from the peer review page. --Jim Henry 21:47, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Object. 1) Lead section too brief, does not summarize the article. 2) No images (save for the flag, which is not explained - why does a constructed language have a flag?). At least an image of Zamenhoff should be possible. 3) Many sections are brief (just a single paragraph) or contain "litter", random sentences which connect badly with the surrounding text. "Classification" and "Namesake" are ridiculous as it stands, while "Geographic distribution" does not tell us anything at all about geographic distribution. "Media" just mentions some stuff about films, but doesn't really go into the topic of Esperanto media? Are there newspapers, magazines, books, web sites? Yes? Tell about them. Review all other sections for contents as well. 4) Other reviewers have already mentioned NPOV issues and weasel terms. Please, attribute opinions and statements. 5) References and external links should be sorted out. The references do not seem to be about esperanto at all, while several external links seem to be to vague to be relevant for the article. The see alsos could also use a clean-up. Jeronimo 07:45, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I agree on most of your points, but partly disagree on some:

• Lots of entities other than countries have flags, so I don't think the flag per se needs explanation in this article. But it would be good to add a separate article about the Esperanto flag and link to it from the image and maybe the See also section.
• One of the references relates to the asteroid; I'm planning to delete it. The other is relevant; it's a study on the ease of learning Esperanto and how it helps in learning other languages later.
• Classification seems to be a standard section in articles about languages. I don't see what's ridiculous about it. It states concisely that Esperanto is not genetically related to other languages, but was influence by some languages of the Indo-European family. It could use a bit more information on typology (SVO, AN default order).
• Which external links do you object to as irrelevant?
• What in the see alsos seems irrelevant or mis-sorted? Please be more specific.

I've already fixed some of the problems you and Plek pointed out, and am planning to work on others (media, NPOV problems, opening summary section) today and later in the week. --Jim Henry 16:42, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Jim, some replies (while noting that this article is no longer on FAC, so has already failed nomination). 1) Still the same problem. 2) Still no other images. 3) With "ridicilous" I meant ridiculously short. I can see the classification section is sort of standard. Still, I think more can be said there on the influences from other languages, especially as this is also relevant for the argument how easy (or difficult) the language can be learnt by people not speaking an Indo-European language. Many other section still have several one-sentence sections, and the reading flow is bad. The media section is still the same, and although the title is more appriopriate now, this makes it less appropriate for the article. 4) I'd have to read the article as a whole again to verify any changes here. 5) They seem pretty ok now, I'm not sure anymore what my objection were about exactly. Jeronimo 08:02, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)