Hopeless polyglot

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Happy editing! Royal Autumn Crest (talk) 22:16, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Question answered

Don't feel you have to respond, but just in case the ping didn't work or you missed it, I replied to your question at User talk:Bilorv#Question from Hopeless polyglot (18:47, 2 January 2024). Thanks! — Bilorv (talk) 11:28, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the answer. If you have time, could you please give me some feedback on my edits to the Jangil page? I'd like to know what I can improve on. Sincerely, Hopeless polyglot (talk) 19:52, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

It looks much improved! I've upgraded it from Stub-class to C-class. Some thoughts:

• It's not always immediately clear which sources I would need to read to verify or learn more about each sentence. For instance I notice this source does say specifically that no photos of Jangli people are known, but the article places the citation before that sentence. I typically use at least one inline citation per paragraph such that each fact is verifiable by the immediately following citation(s).
• Unless it's a quote of historical significance, it's best to rewrite material in your own words per MOS:QUOTE. There's a paragraph-long blockquote by Portman. Even if the information needs to be attributed, you can still paraphrase or quote inline e.g. Portman suggested the Áka-Béa-da recognised the Jangli's customs as that of their ancestors or Portman said the use of "Jangli" to mean "ancestors" derived from the Áka-Béa-da, who "may have regarded the tribe as resembling their ancestors". This all said, when summarising lengthy extracts of a source it's important to vary wording and sentence structure to avoid plagiarism or close paraphrasing.
• I don't know if you meant to delete both images but I would think at least one is useful.

— Bilorv (talk) 13:57, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Got it, I've now updated the article to the best of my ability. Here are some remaining questions :

1. Is it ever possible for topics with a permanently tiny knowledge base to rise to A-class or above? For example, the Jangil people have been extinct for over a century and their language is unattested. There is only so much we can ever learn about them and we will never know their language. How do we create the best possible article under these conditions?
2. I'm personally thankful for every bit of attention paid to the topic of the Jangil, even if the edits are technically bad by Wikipedia standards, or if they disagree with me. However, I'm aware that the thanks button is reserved for good edits, not just for effort. How do I express appreciation in this case?

Sincerely, Hopeless polyglot (talk) 04:44, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

These are difficult but interesting questions!

1. Opinions vary between volunteers on the exact threshold that a topic needs to meet for us to have a standalone article ("notability"). It may be that an article, when the literature has been exhausted, is too short and should be merged into a larger article. It may also be that these articles (sometimes called "permastubs") are useful but will never show the breadth/comprehensiveness required for higher assessment classes. In my opinion articles of the length and depth of Jangil are perfectly self-sufficient and valuable to the encyclopedia.
2. You can leave a message on someone's talk page to thank them or even give them constructive criticism. Somewhat humorous WikiLove templates exist for thanking people—for instance by typing {{subst:Falafel|message=CUSTOM MESSAGE HERE}}. Barnstars are another informal community award that anyone is able to give out for any reason.

— Bilorv (talk) 19:13, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Another welcome, and about DUE WEIGHT

Just wanted to chime in and welcome you as well; it's great to have someone working on lesser-known languages. I think Bilorv gave you some great advice both here, and on their talk page. I'll underline something they said in one of their responses, namely you don't have to worry about whether it is WP:DUE to write about very obscure languages; as long as they pass Wikipedia's WP:Notability threshold, you can write as much about them as the WP:Reliable sources will support. Somewhere there is a limit, but I doubt you will run into it; I suppose if you start adding conjugation tables for the top 81 verb forms in an indigenous Australian language with 245 speakers, you could bump into WP:INDISCRIMINATE at some point. But I really wouldn't worry about that; just write what you're interested in, using citations to back everything up, and remaining in compliance with editing guidelines and policy. The question you had about due weight applies, as Bilorv said, only within an article; if you work on Languages of the World, it's possible that an endangered language might not rate a mention at all, and even at Indigenous languages of Australia, the example above might not rate more than a sentence. But then again, it might, depending on what has been published about it.

DUE WEIGHT is about the proportion of reliable sources available about a subtopic of a larger one, and about how to deal with assertions or hypotheses upon which published experts disagree; it is not any kind of assessment or rating of importance of a topic in the grander scheme of things, or on its place in a larger taxonomy. If a tiny language spurs lots of academic interest and voluminous published research, then it "punches above its weight", so to speak, and deserves coverage in our language articles in proportion to its coverage in reliable sources. That's why, for example, the Trobriand Islanders are often mentioned in articles on anthropology; although size- or population-wise they are only a few insignificant specks off the coast of New Guinea, due to the voluminous coverage of the Trobrianders going back to Malinowski, it has become an oft-studied and oft-quoted example, and thus makes up a higher proportion of an anthropology article than some other island group of equivalent size that does not have as much written about it. The same paradigm applies to minor languages, or any other subtopic of a larger, encompassing topic. Hope this helps, and once again, welcome! Mathglot (talk) 21:08, 13 March 2024 (UTC)