Talk:Dali (goddess)/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Katolophyromai (talk · contribs) 03:37, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

I will review this article. I have nominated the articles Inanna, Enlil, Anunnaki, Jonah, Pythagoras, and Satan in this category, all of which are currently awaiting review. I have read this article over and it looks like a very promising candidate for GA. Please remember that it is generally recommended that you should try to review at least two articles for every article you nominate. Otherwise, a backlog tends to develop. --Katolophyromai (talk) 03:37, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Comments and criticism

I do have several criticisms with this article that need to be addressed before I can pass it:

1. Strictly speaking, Aphrodite, Ishtar, and Inanna are not "dawn goddesses"; they were all associated with the planet Venus and Aphrodite may have connections to Hausos, the Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn, but they were not primarily associated with the dawn. You may want to revise the phrasing to make it more apparent that their associations with the dawn are only secondary. (By the way, I thought the connections to Inanna-Ishtar were quite fascinating, since I actually nominated the article Inanna back in July of 2017 and it is still awaiting review.)
2. The references in this article need some refinement. You use several sfn citations, but you do not have a bibliography for them to link to. I would strongly recommend either converting all the citations to sfn and add a bibliography, or converting all the sfn citations to full citations. Otherwise, it makes it much harder for the reader to check the references for verifiability.

Other comments:

In the last paragraph of the "Childbirth" section you mention a story in which a mortal hunter rapes Dali in her sleep and she is found by an old hunter named "Sulkalmakhi." Do you know of any sources that relate this story to the ancient Sumerian myth of Inanna being raped in her sleep by the mortal gardener Shukaletuda? The two stories sound extremely similar and, since we know the two goddesses are possibly related, I am sure I am not the only one who has noticed this connection. If you know of any sources that mention this, it might be interesting to include information about this possible connection in the article. --Katolophyromai (talk) 02:35, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for your interest in reviewing my article! I've gone ahead and made some tweaks to take care of the first criticism; hopefully that's satisfactory.

The second piece though, I have to disagree. All the sfn refs refer to previously cited items, just using different page numbers. There's enough sources that don't get re-used that way that I feel it would be redundant to have a separate bibliography section. Conversely, it would really clutter up the refs section to fully cite every single sfn.

As for your other comment, I'm sorry to say I have no clue. The content of the article represents every scrap of information I could locate about Dali in English. After I contacted him about the picture, Prof. Tuite expressed to me in an email that there is more scholarly work in Georgian and Russian, but I don't read either language. Unfortunately, unless there's a book that isn't indexed on GBooks or an article I missed on JSTOR, I think there's no more to add, at least in English. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 03:15, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

I see. For the citations, if you do not want to have a bibliography and you do not want to cite the same work multiple times, instead of using the sfns, you could convert them to {{rp|insert page number here}} style, which is rather unaesthetic in my opinion, but it provides a very useful and efficient way to cite different pages of the same work and still associate the page number with the full citation without cluttering the bibliography.

Regarding the Shukaletuda connection, if you are in contact with Professor Tuite, you could mention to him the connection and see what he thinks of it. He may dismiss it as irrelevant, or he may say that it is worth looking into. I just thought it was an intriguing parallel. I do not speak Georgian or Russian either, so I do not have a clue what the sources in those languages might say. If they were in German I might be able to read them. --Katolophyromai (talk) 03:54, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Regarding the image, it is quite obviously a modern representation and a representation from the time when she was actually worshipped would be more ideal, but we have used modern representations before and I do not really have problem with it. My philosophy is that a modern depiction is better than none at all and, if Professor Tuite approves of it, I am certainly not going to disagree with him. (I am only mentioning this at all because you already brought it up.) --Katolophyromai (talk) 04:01, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

I don't mean to be difficult, but I really, really do not like the way the RP template looks. As a reader I always find it confusing, and in fact the page for the template itself specifically says to avoid it when possible for just that reason. Would it be better if I added years to the SFNs to make it abundantly clear I am referring to the same sources?

I definitely agree that an image from when she was actually worshipped would be better, but per my fairly extensive searching and my conversation with Prof. Tuite, that's all there is to be found, even in fair use. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 04:27, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

I completely understand why you do not want to use the RP template; I generally dislike it also, but I do use it when it seems unavoidable and I prefer its clunkiness over the redundancy of having multiple citations to the same source only with different page numbers. The main reason why I suggested it is because I have encountered several editors for whom it is their preferred citation style and they will not even tolerate any other style. Adding the years to the sfn templates would probably be helpful. Sfns are my preferred citation style, but they are generally supposed to link to a bibliography. If you do not want a bibliography, however, I am willing to tolerate that; I certainly will not fail the article over a disagreement on citation styles. --Katolophyromai (talk) 04:44, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Okay, years are in :) ♠PMC♠ (talk) 05:45, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Excellent work! Now I think I feel comfortable passing this article. Congratulations!

Once again, I thought I would remind you that there is a backlog and right now I seem to be the only one reviewing articles in this category. I do not mean to strong-arm you or anything, but I make this same request for mostly all the articles I review: It would be helpful if you could review some articles, perhaps Inanna, which has been awaiting review for six months and is about a subject who is related to the subject of this article. Nonetheless, if you are too busy, I will completely understand. --Katolophyromai (talk) 12:53, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Thank you, I appreciate it. I am trying to get some GARs done, although it's not always easy for me with the time required and how weird my schedule is. It is really and truly on my to-do list though :) ♠PMC♠ (talk) 15:58, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)
It is reasonably well written. a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists): It is factually accurate and verifiable. a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism): It is broad in its coverage. a (major aspects): b (focused): It follows the neutral point of view policy. Fair representation without bias: It is stable. No edit wars, etc.: It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate. a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
Overall: Pass/Fail:
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