Talk:Sikidy/GA1

GA Review
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Nominator: 00:37, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: SnowFire (talk · contribs) 00:51, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi! Nice work on this topic. Happy to take a look and review it.

That said, before we get too deep in, there is one issue that I think merits putting the review on hold until resolved. GA criterion 2 requires that the content be verifiable. However, there are currently no less than 16 citations to all of Ellis's History of Madagascar, a 517 page book if these are just to Volume 1, and another 537 pages in Volume 2 (although I presume V2 is not relevant? But then the citation should say just "Volume 1", which it currently doesn't). This is fine for most articles, but at the GA level, there's an expectation of more specific citations - it's a lot to ask of a reviewer checking the citations to read / search through 500+ pages. Additionally, Ellis's book was written in 1839, meaning it is quite dated. Is it still considered a good source by modern historians of Madagascar? (It can happen! There's another topic I've written on where one guy's 1890s histories (Emil Schürer) are still cited and discussed by books written in 2010 & afterward...  if sometimes to disagree with him, sure.)  For example, does Mervyn Brown's 1995 "A History of Madagascar" cover the relevant topics?

If Ellis is still considered good, then I would recommend adding in some more specific page ranges, so that a person verifying the citations has an easier time. There are a number of ways to do this. First, you'd probably move the Ellis citation to a separate section called "Bibliography" or "Sources" or "Works cited". Then you'd use some templates to make "short" citations to Ellis. Template:Sfn is one popular one - you'd make something like in the source editor. If you prefer to use Visual Editor or just like more flexibility, you can also use Template:Harvnb - the result is something like. You can also just straight-up do raw text citations, like. (I am also legally required to inform you Template:Rp exists, but I am firmly in the RP-haters brigade, so I can't personally recommend it... but it is technically an option.)  If you find a more up-to-date source than Ellis, then similar page ranges might also be useful.

This one is also very optional, but given that Ascher 1997 has 27 citations, you could potentially divvy up Ascher's article into three sections and do something similar - i.e. move the full citation to a Bibliography section, and have page ranges for the start, middle, and end of the paper as a rough guide for where to look. But Ascher's article is much shorter, and I myself have used citations to a full journal article repeatedly, so like I said, just an optional thought.

Finally, this is also optional, but per MOS:NOTES, "if the sections are separated, then explanatory footnotes are listed first, short citations or other footnoted citations are next, and any full citations or general references are listed last." You've placed explanatory footnotes last. It's not a big deal, but if you want to be consistent with how most articles do it, it might be worth considering moving the "Notes" section to be between "See also" and "References". (It also might be worth considering repeating the relevant citations within the footnote itself, rather than leaving it for the end of the main sentence - but again optional, up to you.)

Looking forward to taking a closer look! No hurry, I realize that getting the more specific cites for Ellis, and/or partially replacing with a more modern source, might take a little bit of time. SnowFire (talk) 00:51, 18 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Thanks @SnowFire! It’ll take me a while to get the pages/ranges, but as for the relevance of the source, Ellis is just reproducing Lars Dahle, whose account is very widely cited (I don’t believe I know of any sources on the rituals of sikidy that fail to cite Dahle). ꧁ Zanahary ꧂ 03:52, 18 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Are you sure? I don't see Dahle's name coming up in a search of Ellis's book, and this website indicates Dahle was born in 1843 - but Ellis's book is from 1839.  (Also, looking more closely, I suppose it does seem like most of the information is in Chapters 15 & 16 of Ellis's book, which helps narrow things down a bit more than "all 500+ pages."  But still a pretty broad range.)  SnowFire (talk) 06:23, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Hah, I must be wrong! Thanks for checking. I’ll do a review of the source. ꧁ Zanahary ꧂ 18:53, 18 July 2024 (UTC)