Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Zduhać/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by SandyGeorgia 13:36, 15 February 2011 [1].

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Zduhać

Zduhać (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

• Featured article candidates/Zduhać/archive1

Nominator(s): Vladimir (talk) 18:57, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article because I believe it meets the FA criteria. It is a comprehensive ethnographic account about people believed to be able to protect a village or region against destructive weather conditions. Vladimir (talk) 18:57, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

• Vladimir, for the benefit of reviewers, can you provide some more information on the nature of ref 4? The link will not load for me, there is no catalog information, etc.; considering you have vast tracts of text sourced to it, we need to know what it is. Is it a secondary source? --Andy Walsh (talk) 19:42, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
  • Andy, it is a facsimile of a 270-page book in Russian, dated 1981, printed in Cyrillic. A lot of it appears to be in verse form. I've no idea what it's all about. Brianboulton (talk) 23:07, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
    • It is a publication of the Institute for Slavistics and the Balkan Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It is the 5th volume, named "Ritual. Text", of the series "Slavic and Balkan Folklore". Collection of articles by prominent ethnographers. The title of the article I used is "Notes on Slavic paganism. 5. Protection from hail in Dragačevo and other Serbian zones". (It is the 5th work in the authors' own series "Notes on Slavic paganism"; 1-4 had been published earlier in other publications). OK? Vladimir (talk) 11:43, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
    • Correction: "Ritual. Text" is actually the 3rd volume of "Slavic and Balkan Folklore" (as is correctly stated in the ref 4). And it is indeed a secondary source. Brian, what appears to be verses are ritual texts recorded by Serbian ethnographers. They are translated into Russian and commented by Nikita Tolstoy (great-grandson of Leo Tolstoy) and Svetlana Tolstaya, the authors of the article. Vladimir (talk) 16:22, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Disambig/External Link check - no dabs or dead external links. Whatever was the problem with the link Andy is referring to above, it's gone now. --PresN 19:56, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Leaning oppose - an interesting article, but I don't feel it yet meets the FA criteria. It needs copy-editing throughout for prose clarity and flow, and some parts have an "in-universe" or otherwise unencyclopedic tone. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:22, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose
  • "The protector from bad weather fought with them" - so he fought with all of those demons? I'm confused, since the article says "these calamities were believed to be brought by [various demons]".
    • Is the new wording any clearer? Vladimir (talk)
  • "or used magic to ward them off" - sentences shouldn't end in propositions
    • Of course they shouldn't end in prepositions, but it's quite obvious that off is used as an adverb in this sentence. Vladimir (talk)
  • "the attacking zduhaći of some other area" - sort of clunky. Why not "the attacking zduhaći of another area"?
    • OK, corrected. Vladimir (talk) 11:43, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
  • "Individuals among some domestic animals could also be regarded as zduhaći." - I'm confused, as it's a pretty short sentence with little context. Could you elaborate a little more? I suppose I'm most hung up on "among some domestic animals"
    • Any clearer with the new wording? Individual means, e.g., an individual shepherd dog which is regarded by people to have those supernatural abilities of a zduhać. Vladimir (talk)
  • "The zmajevit was a man whose spirit left his body whenever he perceived the approach of an ala, a demon who led hail clouds. He was able to defeat the ala, thus saving the crops of his village, an ability he shared with dragons" - it's sort of redundant, or just too much detail for the lede. I'm also confused why you're not talking about zduhaći anymore, but aside from that, I'd rewrite those two sentences as one. When you say "the zmajevit", that implies plural, but then you say "was a man". I'd do something like "the zmajevit were able to leave their bodies to protect the village crops and defeat the ala, a demon who led hail clouds; the ability is shared with dragons", IDK, something like that to make it less confusing than it already is.
    • I'm giving here a summary of all types of protectors from bad weather. Zduhać is one type, and zmajevit another. The zduhaći fought in one way and and the zmajevit in another. I've combined the sentences as you proposed, and removed the explanation of the meaning of zmajevit, to make it shorter. Vladimir (talk)
  • "In some regions, such as Dragačevo and Banat" - the former location should be linked, as that's its first usage
    • No article on that as yet, but I've stated its location: "such as Dragačevo in western Serbia and..." Vladimir (talk)
  • "there were stories about men who flew bodily into the stormy sky" - the bolded part is confusing
    • How to say in a short way that these men were believed to fly with their bodies (like a bird), as opposed to the zduhaći and the zmajevit, who flew with their spirit leaving their bodies on the ground? Could replacing bodily with in the body make it less confusing? Vladimir (talk) 11:43, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
  • I did a brief grammar check in the article for split infinitives, and found just one usage that should be fixed
    • "to successfully confront" (in "Zmajevit and alovit")
      • Corrected (though I think I've read somewhere that split infinitive is not incorrect). Vladimir (talk)
  • One thing I'm concerned about overall is the level of detail, sometimes unnecessary. The first three sentences of "Bringers of bad weather" highlight that. It could easily be written as:
    • "As punishment for villagers' sins, supernatural forces were believed to have produced adverse weather such as hail or torrential rains, thus jeopardizing the livelihood of farmers by devastating their fields, orchards, and vineyards."
      • But adverse weather was not always regarded as "punishment for villagers' sins". It was just one of the viewpoints on why bad weather came, as is obvious already from the second half of the forth sentence. Supernatural forces comprise a wide spectrum of entities, from God to demonic beings. It seems that the latter didn't care about "villagers' sins", and didn't give a damn for the villagers' moral improvement. So, adverse weather brought by them could by no means be explained as "punishment for villagers' sins". Vladimir (talk)
  • The writing is much more succinct and clearer, and that's just one small example. I'm sorry, but that's my primary reason for opposing the article, in that the writing simply isn't up to par. --♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 06:01, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
    • Succinct is good, but it must not relate a wrong or incomplete information. Anyway, thanks for your comments and suggestions. Vladimir (talk) 11:43, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

• Comment You should have time to get a copy-editor to go through the article during the course of this FA discussion. Maybe you should drop a line over at the Guild of Copy Editors? Silverseren^C 22:27, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.