Wikipedia:Featured article review/Thou/archive2

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

The article was removed by Dana boomer 01:17, 13 April 2010 [1].

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Thou

Review commentary

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

Notified: Ihcoyc and WikiProject Linguistics

Possibly one of the oldest Featured Article as of now, its obivious that this article isn't up to standards.

There are reference problems. There's citations needed, un-referenced sections, and two dead links.

Also, there are prose issues troughout the article.

I also think the article isn't comprehensive as well. So please give your thoughts and opinions. GamerPro64 (talk) 02:04, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

• Comments:

1. The nominator did not specify what is missing on comprehensiveness or what the prose issues are.
2. Characterizing this as one of Wiki's oldest FAs is less than accurate, since it was reviewed at FAR in 2006.
3. Please review the version that passed FAR in 2006 to see if a revert to that version will address issues.
4. Citation tags needed and dead links should not be taken at face value; they are sometimes added to information that does not require citation (see Wikipedia:When to cite) and dead links can sometimes be recovered from archive.org.

Discussion of whether a revert to the reviewed version would address problems, along with a full description of the alleged problems, would be helpful. The FAR page is significantly backlogged at more than 24 noms, so careful consideration of when to add a FAR, and how else problems might be addressed, will also be helpful. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:24, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

• I'll take a crack at elaborating:

Intro

• "Thou was later used to express intimacy, familiarity, or even disrespect" — followed by a [citation needed]; using "or even x" is inappropriate tone
• "For this reason, many falsely associate the pronoun with solemnity or formality, connotations at odds with the word's history. Many dialects have compensated for the lack of a singular/plural distinction caused by the disappearance of thou and ye through the creation of new plural pronouns or pronominal constructions, such as y'all, yinz, youse, you lot, your lot, and you guys." Also informal in tone and weaselly. ("Many dialects" - which ones?)
• Many of the points in the intro, such as the two cited above, are mentioned nowhere else in the article.

Grammar

• Table at "declension" is entirely unsourced .

Conjugation

• "The anomalous development from -es to modern English -est, which took place separately at around the same time in the closely related German and Frisian languages, is understood to be caused by an assimilation of the consonant of the pronoun, which often followed the verb. This is most readily observed in German: liebes du > liebstu > liebst du (thou lovest)." — also unsourced

Comparison

• Absolutely no source in the comparison to Frisian and German. Pure synthesis.

History

• First two paragraphs are unsourced.
• "In French, tu was eventually considered either intimate or condescending (and, to a stranger, potentially insulting), while the plural form vous was reserved and formal." — Unsourced. Is the parenthetical even needed?
• "Thou persisted in a number of religious, literary, and regional contexts, and those pockets of continued use of the pronoun tended to undermine the obsolescence of the T-V distinction." — Unsourced.

Use as a verb

• "Many Indo-European languages contain verbs meaning "to address with the informal pronoun", such as Dutch jouen, German duzen, French tutoyer, Spanish tutear, Russian тыкать (tykat'), Polish tykać, Romanian tutui, etc." — Not only is that unsourced, but using "etc." is a major copout.

Religious use

• "When referring to God, "thou" is often capitalized for clarity and reverence. While Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic (the languages of the Bible) do not have a special orthography (such as capitalization) for indicating that the Deity is being referred to, their grammars are more successful than English in making noun/pronoun agreement unambiguous." — Unsourced, as is the paragraph under it.
• I snipped out this paragraph, which read more like a thesis, using an unqualified "recently" and a dash of first-person:

More recently, the philosopher Martin Buber has been translated into English as using the words I and Thou to describe our ideal familiar relationship with the Deity. Most languages which maintain both a formal and familiar second person pronoun address God with the familiar pronoun (the Dutch language is an exception here), since its usage derives from older times when the distinction between the pronouns was in number only, not in degree of familiarity. Because in current English usage thou is perceived, however wrongly, as more reserved and formal than you, the translation does not convey the intended meaning well—a closer, colloquial translation of the idea would be Us or You and me, or in Australian English, "Mates".

Literary uses

• "Thou is often falsely interpreted as having been formal; its use today can give an impression of stiltedness." — Unsourced.

Modern usage

• Removed these examples which had no relevance or sources: "In the 2000 film, O Brother, Where Art Thou? (directed by Joel and Ethan Coen), the word is used in the informal sense (reflecting usage in 1930s Mississippi, USA, in which the film was set)." and "In 1967 Pink Floyd debut album, Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Roger Waters' debut composition is Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk."

Other

• Snipped out some egregious tl;dr synthesis and inappropriate tone, which ended with "Note that in the last sentence, the first "you" is nominative, and thus "ye" could have been used, whereas the second "you" is the object of "awaits" and therefore "..awaits ye all.." would be incorrect."

Sources

• This (#34) definitely isn't reliable. What's it even doing here?
• Overall, none of the sources is formatted properly: minimal attribution to author, publisher, page number, etc.

And that's just for starters. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Many otters • One bat • One hammer)} 20:16, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Did you review the current version, or the 2006 version I linked that passed FAR? The main query here is, does the older version provide a better sarting place? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:19, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that it does. The 2006 diff is just as laden with OR and just as lacking in sources, questionably relevant information, a weak intro — it would need just as much restructuring as the current form would, if not more. For instance, that revision had a bunch of coatrack info on British Isles' usage of words that aren't "thou," and still has the German synthesis. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Many otters • One bat • One hammer)} 20:20, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

• I'm not very impressed with these arguments. several of the tags were added in a bout of questionable edits by Matisse in January [2]. I have removed one from the lead as the point was, contrary to your point above also, adequately covered further down, though it could certainly have been expanded on. I think the article is rather thin for an FA, but find the tone & substance of the comments above unimpressive. I'd like to hear what a proper linguist thinks. Anyone who thinks "In French, tu was eventually considered either intimate or condescending (and, to a stranger, potentially insulting), while the plural form vous was reserved and formal" is "OR" is not only wholly ignorant of the language but excessively confident in offering his "views" as well. But then we knew that already. The verb form table may (or may not) be unreferenced; that is is "OR" seems wildly unlikely. Johnbod (talk) 23:57, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

• How is that not OR? There's no source in the article that supports the statement about "tu was eventually considered condescending," so it's OR. And when is "eventually?" Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Many otters • One bat • One hammer)} 18:33, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

There's a difference between OR and unreferenced. The trouble is TPH, if you go round, as you often do, describing statements like "Paris is the capital of France" as "OR", people just discount your views as, well whatever. Johnbod (talk) 21:47, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Fine, then it's unreferenced. Nitpick nitpick nitpick. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Many otters • One bat • One hammer)} 00:02, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

• Comments

1. Violates the title naming policy WP:Article titles (it's not a noun, it's a pronoun). Possibly this article shows that the policy is wrong, nevertheless it violates the current policy. Or quite possibly it should be merged with Early modern English.- Wolfkeeper 14:55, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
2. Article covers a term, not a concept; encyclopedia articles are not supposed to be about the meaning and use of a term. The entire article is on usage of the term thou but WP:Wikipedia is not a dictionary. The article cannot be completely translated into other languages, since the article is specifically about the title. If you accept that pronouns are valid, this raises the question as to whether we need pronouns from most or all other languages as well, since the English Wikipedia is not about English, it's about summarising all knowledge.- Wolfkeeper 14:58, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
3. Article is not sufficiently well referenced for current FA standards. Most FA articles use the cite format, unlike this one- Wolfkeeper 14:44, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Is that all that's wrong? The article goes well beyond dictionary material, and plenty of similar linguistic articles exist. Would a change to History of the usage of thou, or similar help? There is absolutely no FA criterion requiring the use of cite formats, and suggestions that there should be are always strongly rejected on FAC talk. Johnbod (talk) 15:01, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

That would theoretically help the title, but the WP:NAD policy also states that articles aren't usage guides. I don't think just renaming the title is really following the spirit of the rules.- Wolfkeeper 15:06, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Wolfkeeper is absolutely wrong on cite formats. Almost all FAs written by Moni3 or Awadewit, for instance, don't use citation templates. Donner Party, which was just promoted today, doesn't. rʨanaɢ (talk) 13:36, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Comment: Points one and two from Wolfkeeper both daft and irrelevant; this is not afd. Point 3 is annoying and refuted I notice. Ceoil (talk) 17:20, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Comment I agree this is not an AFD but for an article to be FA quality the policy specifically says it must meet the requirements for all Wikipedia articles. The policies linked under requirements include WP:ISNOT and it in fact fails that. I don't think we should hold up articles that fail policies to be featured articles, and I'm therefore voting for delistment.- Wolfkeeper 01:54, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Comment To justify this a little further. The wikipedia deliberately doesn't have individual articles on verbs. It doesn't have individual articles on adjectives. It doesn't have articles on individual prepositions. It doesn't have individual adverbs. It's not supposed to even have articles on nouns; the articles are on what the noun word refers to, not the noun itself. This is not accidental; encyclopedias are about things or types of things, not words for things. That's what dictionaries and similar works are for. But somehow, somewhere, people thought it was a really great idea to have articles on individual pronoun words, and then hold one of them up as the best work of the Wikipedia????- Wolfkeeper 02:07, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

It does have articles on adjectives; see "gay". Prepositions is not a fair comparison (see content word vs. function word). rʨanaɢ (talk) 13:34, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

The relevant policy is at WP:ADJECTIVES; gay isn't FA quality either, for that, and other reasons (primary topic is homosexual).- Wolfkeeper 22:18, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

FARC commentary

Featured article criterion of concern include references and prose. Dana boomer (talk) 22:26, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

• Delist per large chunks of unsourcedness and synthesis. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Many otters • One bat • One hammer)} 16:04, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
• Delist FA articles should not violate policies. They're supposed to be showcases for the Wikipedia. Either the policies need to be changed or this article, because it has been shown not to meet them. I also agree that the referencing is somewhat substandard for FA quality right now.- Wolfkeeper 14:44, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
• Delist Per the comments from Ten Pound Hammer and I. GamerPro64 (talk) 17:15, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
• Delist, regrettably, because of inadequate sourcing. This vote is only because of the reference problem, though, not because of the encyclopedicness of the topic. Wolfkeeper's points above are largely irrelevant to how good or bad the article is, his use of FAR to further a campaign to change WP:NOT (i.e., voting on an article based not on its own merits, but in order to ring up a "win" in his quest) is inappropriate, and my vote should not be taken as support of that crusade. rʨanaɢ (talk) 13:34, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

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