Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics/Archive 22
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Long-term OR abuser, now inactive
Thanks go to Doric Loon for this removal of an entirely unsourced OR paragraph at English phrasal verbs. Unfortunately, that paragraph survived ten years in the article, added in 2012 by Tjo3ya (talk · contribs), now inactive. Glancing at their contrib history, they were a heavy contributor to linguistics-related articles, and I notice an unusual proportion of their edits being reverted by other editors, some fat cuts and restores, and where content is added, it's either unsourced (diff1, diff2) or appears to have a citation or two, but they often don't back the preceding article content, instead, they are more of a forward-looking, "see-also"-style explanatory note within <ref> tags, of the "See Foo & Bar (2000) for a debate" type thing. There are a lot of big cuts of 5, 10, or 20kb of content, indicating a bold style, but that bothers me less, as at least they don't introduce OR content (well, one can't be sure without examining the diff, but probably not) and mostly they are not reverted.
The 2012 OR paragraph at English phrasal verbs is the first time I've encountered Tjo3ya, so I don't really know how much damage they may have done. I wonder if anyone who enjoys gnoming articles for old OR content would like to try and tackle this, or at least, provide a better idea of the scope of the problem? I notice that Botterweg14 appears to have tangled with them in April 2021 at Predicate (grammar), and had edits at half a dozen other linguistics articles around the same time, so perhaps they will recollect those edits and be able to give their impressions about this editor, in order to to better scope the extent of the problem, if indeed there is a problem. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 22:45, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
- The problem is generally WP:NPOV more than WP:OR. Their contributions often argued in Wikivoice for their idiosyncratic version of dependency grammar, and even their less argumentative contributions still give undue weight. I removed some blatant instances, as did Kaĉjo, but there's still a lot out there. This isn't trivial to fix, since this editor was the main person working on syntax articles for quite a while, and their problematic contributions are often intertwined with good ones. I'll do what I can when I have time, but unfortunately their battleground behavior contributed to an unwelcoming environment for many of the people best positioned to fix it. Botterweg14 (talk) 03:51, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
- To add to this: their idiosyncratic version of dependency grammar is based on the notion of a catena, so I used Special:WhatLinksHere/Catena_(linguistics) a couple of times. The trouble was that, when edited to give a neutral point of view on catenas, the passages generally looked OK to me, but gave undue weight to this theory in the context of the article. So the best solution (I thought, not being very familiar with wiki guidelines) would be not so much to cut down on the catena content but to add content about other approaches to make articles more representative. Unfortunately this would take much more work than simply cutting down on catena content, and should also be done with someone with much more knowledge of syntax than myself. Kaĉjo (talk) 16:01, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
- Perhaps some of this text can be moved to catena, since it wouldn't be undue weight in that context. Botterweg14 (talk) 04:48, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
- To add to this: their idiosyncratic version of dependency grammar is based on the notion of a catena, so I used Special:WhatLinksHere/Catena_(linguistics) a couple of times. The trouble was that, when edited to give a neutral point of view on catenas, the passages generally looked OK to me, but gave undue weight to this theory in the context of the article. So the best solution (I thought, not being very familiar with wiki guidelines) would be not so much to cut down on the catena content but to add content about other approaches to make articles more representative. Unfortunately this would take much more work than simply cutting down on catena content, and should also be done with someone with much more knowledge of syntax than myself. Kaĉjo (talk) 16:01, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
- Pinging Mundart and RM_Dechaine, since their syntax expertise goes far beyond mine. Botterweg14 (talk) 03:59, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
- Your diagnosis of the effects of Tjo3ya's edits is exactly right: a very large weighting of a very marginal (in the literature) theory using the catena, and a driving away of editors who didn't want to engage in endless small skirmishes over how to make the catena theory appropriately cited, and not give it undue weight. It was exhausting, and more than one of us simply decided to cut back on editing wikipedia. Really, as you say, all the syntax articles need a pretty thorough eye to rebalancing. Perhaps once I retire! Mundart (talk) 16:37, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
Difrasismo and Dvandva
There's a discussion regarding a merge between Difrasismo and Dvandva at Talk:Difrasismo#Merge? that could do with some input (there). The key current query is whether there is a suitable over-arching article into which both could be merged, but please also consider the reasonableness of the primary proposal. Klbrain (talk) 18:45, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
Komi languages
According to Oxford Guide to the Uralic Languages (2022), there is a single Komi language, for which two literary languages, Komi-Permyak and Komi-Zyryan were created. Neither of these languages seems to be primary one in any sense and deserve the designation as 'the Komi language', but for some reason Komi-Zyryan now holds that title. Also, Komi-Permyak is under a name Permyak, contrary to the reliable sources. I am not familiar with linguistics articles in Wikipedia, so I am asking for opinions on what should be done.
Should we move Permyak > Komi-Permyak, Komi>Komi-Zyryan and make Komi language into a disambiguation or a short article explaining the variants and the historical reason for their existence? This would probably affect many links. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 23:17, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
- I expect the move to Komi-Permyak to be the least controversial step so I opened a discussion about it at Talk:Permyak language#Requested move 30 December 2023. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 14:01, 30 December 2023 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Voiced palatal approximant § Do not undo the alveolo-palatal approximant. Nardog (talk) 15:54, 30 December 2023 (UTC)
Linguistic input could be useful in a WP:V wording matter
Wikipedia talk:Verifiability#Merge WP:SELFSOURCE and WP:BLPSELFPUB to WP:ABOUTSELF has stalled out, with stonewalling by a single party, who claims that the syntactic problems in the policy material's opening sentence, which I've outlined in considerable detail, are just "[my] opinion" and that doing anything about them is "not needed" and is "WP:CREEP". I think these grammatical-meaning and parseability issues are objectively factual and not a matter of subjective opinion, but that editor will not engage on the matter further, there or in user talk [1], where I demonstrated that the revision actually complies with is not against the goals of the CREEP essay.
The discussion has too few active participants (despite "advertising" the thread to WP:VPPOL) to move past this issue. Either I'm correct that the sentence is syntactically faulty or I am not, and additional voices should get us past this blockage one way or the other. If I'm simply wrong about the problems I see in the original wording, then feel free to say so.
It's basically come down to a choice between the versions in the last two subthreads there (unless someone wants to propose a new revision); no real need to pore over the entire revision process. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 23:26, 31 December 2023 (UTC)