Talk:Mongolian language/GA2

GA Reassessment

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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

A summary of the conclusions reached: the article was kept at GA status.

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I've listed this article for reassesment over fears it may no longer meet the criteria, as it was listed in 2009 so it could do with a review. For instance " It may have about 5.2 million speakers, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia" in the lead section is unclear, as it says it may have that many speakers, but this is an accurate encylopedia, not guesses. Also, quite a few references actually seem to be in Mongolian, and ditto the Bibliography section. So, can you rereview it please? Rcsprinter^{Gimme a message} 17:16, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Hn, a lexicon can not be more exact than we know. But neither the Mongolian state nor China has any accounts on how many Mongolian nationals and non-Mongolians (e.g. Kazakh) can speak Mongolian. This is addressed in "Geographic distribution". As a lot of notable research on Mongolian happens to be written in Mongolian (which should come as no surprise), this is reflected in the sources of this article which is legitimate given the absence of English-language sources of comparable quality. So basically what do you hope to review? G Purevdorj (talk) 19:24, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, as I don't come from Mongolia or China, I don't really know the figures.(Actually I don't know how many people speak English!) But as I say it is supposed to be encyclopedic information. I'm sure it'll be fine.

But, I suppose if it is legitimate sources, it'll be OK. The thing is, the readers on the English Wiki will be looking for English things, and then if it's in Mongolian then they can't really read it. And it can't be a good article without reliable sources. Maybe somebody could translate them/the pages? I also think it should be properly re-reviewed against the full GA criteria. Get back to me. Rcsprinter^{Gimme a message} 19:45, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

The numbers given in the article follow an estimation by Svantesson et al. 2005, an English-language source that you can look up. This estimation is more reliable than the unfounded estimation of the Ethnologue.

The article did not change very substantially since it was promoted to GA, although there was some activity in the phonology section if I have the temporal order right. So the old review against the GA criteria from 2009 should probably be still valid. You can try to recheck it, if you want.

The Mongolian sources are all on paper and surpass the volume that anybody could reasonably ask to be translated. Many of them have publishers that show them to be reliable in the sense of wikipedia. There are a number of publications without publishers, but if you look up these books, you will usually still find an editor that serves as peer-reviewer. You are free to enter any Mongolian library, take out those books and see who reviewed them. The Academy of Sciences, Mongolian State University etc. have websites from which you can learn whom they employ in what position. Given the conventions for bibliographical information that are biased towards western-centered standards, information on editors is not given among the bibliographical information. But usually this is quite unproblematic. A good example is “Tömörtogoo, D. 1992. Mongol helnij tüühen helzüj. Ulaanbaatar“, [Historical grammar of Mongolian] a book written by an internationally renowned scholar and member of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences. You can find a number of journal articles which are easily identifiable from their outer shape even if you don’t understand a word of Mongolian. The reliability of these again depends on who peer-reviewed them, but they are peer-reviewed. You might be more concerned about the Japanese-language papers which are often mere working papers of universities! (Another suggestion that I can give you is to cross-check the authors of more recent publications quoted here with those cited in Linguistic bibliography.)

Still, I’d be surprised if you could find other arguments against the literature cited here except that you could not read it. But while the notion of verifiability lies with the editor, verification itself is a task for the reader! A person who is not an expert on Mongolian studies can neither write nor easily assess a lexicon article on Mongolian. You might want to try to recruit such an expert, but you cannot seriously demand that I enable you to do so!

G Purevdorj (talk) 20:49, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, well I suppose all that's alright then. But as I'm the nominator, not the reviewer, I can't recheck it against the criteria. Would you care to do it?

If you say it hasn't really changed much except the Phonology section, it might be OK. But I still want it checked against the criteria, even if it is a Quick Pass. Thanks, Rcsprinter^{Gimme a message} 06:55, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, it is a bit strange for me as the main contributor to this article to do so, but given that you have not put forward serious objections of any kind and I cannot see any sense in keeping this review open, here is my impression:

1. Well written? - not engaging, but sufficient: pass.

2. Factually accurate? - good sourcing and referencing, i.e. verifiability: pass.

3. Broad in coverage? - all areas usually treated in language articles get treated: pass.

4. Neutral point of view? - not aware of any controversies nor any obviously one-sided discussions. A more extended discussion of different opinions historical phonology might be desirable, but that is only an aside and probably is a subject deserving an article of its own: pass.

5. Article stability? - stable: Pass.

6. Images? - not quite extensive, but this tends to be difficult in language articles: pass.

But you seem to be wrong on who is to close this discussion. Here's what's written on the template at Talk:Mongolian_language:

Please add comments to the reassessment page, but the decision to list the article as a good article should be left to the editor initiating this reassessment.

You initiated it, so you can close it. G Purevdorj (talk) 16:17, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Overall

Well, I suppose in that case I'd better then. Thanks for your help. This article is still a Good Article (). Rcsprinter^{Gimme a message} 16:43, 8 April 2011 (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.