Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/November 9, 2019

First sentence

Examples such as November 9's TFA suggest that the article title of the FA does not need to be reproduced exactly at the beginning of the blurb, and this strikes me as a case when it is linguistically clumsy to try to include it. It seems odd (to me at least) to speak of early history beginning at a particular time.

Maybe: "The '''[[Early history of Gowa and Talloq|rise of the allied kingdoms of Gowa and Talloq]]''' began around 1300..." Kevin McE (talk) 16:26, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

HaEr48, is there a rephrasing that works for you? - Dank (push to talk) 02:58, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

TBH I do not find the original wording clumsy - "the [early] history of so and so began at point X" sounds fine to me. But if we're rewording it, I suggest something like "the emergence of Gowa and Talloq" or something similar. Mostly, I want to avoid implying that they are "allied" from 1300. HaEr48 (talk) 13:59, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

I think this is a hard question, and a matter of taste. Are there any objections to waiting November 7 so that we can deal with this at ERRORS? - Dank (push to talk) 14:22, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

It is a matter of style, I agree, which is precisely why it should not be left over to ERRORS. If it is not a requirement to have the article title explicit in the blurb (hence my citing the 9 Nov example), then I think this construction is quite unnecessary. It invites the question as to what preceded the early history, especially if we are referring to a land area that was occupied before the stated start date. I bow, of course, to advice about it being inappropriate to refer to it as an alliance at that time: I was seeking something that referred to both realms, when this initial emergence only refers to one of them. Kevin McE (talk) 17:58, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

Okay, let's try a ping then: Gog? Thoughts? - Dank (push to talk) 18:13, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

You called? If it is a rigid requirement that the article title of the FA needs to be reproduced exactly at the beginning of the blurb then I don't think that it should be. That said, I think it helpful if we stayed as close to the exact title as we can as often as we can.

Kevin McE has a point. However, if I were copy editing the opening sentence, I would be minded to change it to something like "The early history of Gowa and Talloq is considered to have begun around 1300 when ... " Gog the Mild (talk) 18:37, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

It's definitely not a rigid requirement to duplicate the article title, but people at ERRORS will complain if it's not reasonably close. (That is, it often needs to be closer to the article title than the lead text needs to be.) Given that, I think Gog is on the right track. Kevin, does his suggestion, or something along the same lines, work for you? HaEr48, can you tell us a little bit about the support in the sources for the timeline adopted by Francis David Bulbeck and Ian Caldwell? - Dank (push to talk) 19:24, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

It seems additionally complicated in this case, whereby we are talking about the history of two realms starting but clearly only one seems to have any record for about two hundred years before the other has any record. The early recorded history of Gowa seems to long predate any mention of Talloq, so it seems very odd to claim that a shared history started then. Can we refer to the emergence/early recorded history (the article on South Sulawesi talks of 30,000 years of human presence) of Gowa, but not mention Talloq in a piped link: [[Early history of Gowa and Talloq|The early recorded history of Gowa]]? Not ideal, but the staggered start to the history makes anything awkward. Kevin McE (talk) 22:31, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

I've tried to get links like that through ERRORS before, with mixed results. We might have to wait till the 7th before we know. - Dank (push to talk) 22:58, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

If we're not keeping the title in the opening sentence, why not as well: "The Makassar kingdom of Gowa emerged around 1300 as an agrarian ..." I agree this is a matter of taste and preference varies in different people. If I were to rank I still feel the current blurb is my top preference, but Gog's suggestion is fine as well. Re "It invites the question as to what preceded the early history" this is a good point, but hopefully it is partly answered by the next passage "when the Makassar kingdom of Gowa emerged .." (as in, this marks the "early history" because previously this polity didn't exist). Also pinging Masjawad99 (who is more subject matter expert than me). HaEr48 (talk) 03:10, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

The problem is that Gowa identifies a place, not just a polity, and a place that had human settlement long before C13th. I like HaEr's proposal above, or if we are confident that there are no earlier records, we could say, "The [[Early history of Gowa and Talloq|recorded history of Gowa]] began around 1300 ... ", but we are still left without reference to Talloq to the link to the article. Which brings me back to a preference, personally, for HaEr's first "Emergence of Gowa and Talloq" (with a synonym for 'emerged' later in the sentence to avoid repetition). Kevin McE (talk) 10:50, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

I don't have anything more to say without knowing what the sources say about the extent to which other historians have fallen in line with the 1300 date, and what it signifies to them. Regardless of what we do here, Main Page people will probably have their own views. - Dank (push to talk) 12:06, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Gowa prince

"... when a Gowa prince ..." Is 'Gowa' the adjectival form? I can't see it used as such in any of the articles I have scanned other than this once? Maybe there is a principle I am unaware of that allows the nominative to be used as the adjective where there is not a clear one, but otherwise I think we should be wary. "a prince from Gowa" Kevin McE (talk) 16:26, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Works for me. - Dank (push to talk) 02:58, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

This works for me. HaEr48 (talk) 13:59, 28 October 2019 (UTC)