User:Catgurr/sandbox

Article Evaluation Creole

This is an article that gives a fairly clear and nuanced idea of the concept of creole to the reader. The lead-in is good, and focused on clearly defining what a creole is, and how it differs from some related concepts such as pidgins. I do think that a small mention of the political aspects of defining a creole would be good to have in the lead-in. The political factors that led to the creation of many of the world’s creoles is mentioned, but not how these political factors have also shaped the perception of creoles over time. The article is quite neutral, and gives space to a variety of different theories and viewpoints about creoles. The article stays on topic, going from an overview of the subject to detailing its origins, classifications and different theories relating to how creoles form. There is also a section that deals with studies that have recently been done on creoles. This section contains a warning from Wikipedia that it may be too technical for a lay reader. In general the later sections of the article are written with quite technical language, but it would also be hard to give accurate information on the subject and relevant theories without using some jargon. The sections are all relevant to an understanding of the topic and remain on task and not distracting. The further reading section has quite a few links, which I think is appropriate because I think the main problem with an article on a topic of this scope is that it is simply impossible to go into enough depth on all the relevant subjects in an overview-type article. Most facts are referenced appropriately, however there are a few claims here and there that are made without citations. The article cites a large variety of sources, sources which seem to be reliable, peer reviewed academic journals. While there is always full information given about the sources (author, journal title etc), there are not always links to the relevant articles. Some of the sources seem to be a little old, from the 1960s and 70s, however this may be when much of the foundational research on this subject was being done. These sources do not appear to be biased, but as mentioned before the very concept of creole has such political ties that I think it would be beneficial to have some more recent sources that perhaps reflect a more modern political context. The talk page of the article is quite large, but not very active recently, with most of the edits and posts from 2007-10, with many fewer from more recent years. Most of the discussion has to do with concern over potential biases of the article, as the whole concept of Creole can have political implications, questions of wording are very important and debated. Thus on the talk page there is a fair bit of debate about what could be seen as quite small differences in wording, as these small difference can have larger implications for the political objectivity of the article. The article is part of WIkiProjects Linguistics, and is rated High Importance for the project. It has been given a B-class quality rating, meaning it does not have any large problems but still needs some improvements. The article discusses its subject similarly to how we discussed it in class. The article is more detailed than our class discussion, but is definitely along the same lines.

Article Evaluation Priming This is a well-written article on the topic of priming in psychology. The article largely sticks to its topic with different sections discussing the different types of priming. There is a clear and in-depth lead in section that gives a good idea of what priming is in different contexts. It could be argued that the lead in is a little too long and in depth, but I found it effective since it is a slightly complicated topic. One thing that I did find missing from the lead in was any mention of criticism of how some priming experiments are done and their reliability. There is a small section at the very end of the article containing this critique, but it would have been good to have at least a sentence addressing this in the lead in, otherwise it seems as though the article is wholeheartedly sold on all of the findings about priming, taking away its objectivity. In general however, the article seems to be quite unbiased. It describes many different kinds of priming, giving about equal space to each kind. The following section, "Measuring the Effects of Priming" seems a bit redundant. It repeats some examples already given (e.g. the nurse doctor example) and doesn't seem to add much new information on the subject that the section professes to be about. It does provide some new examples, but does not do a good enough job of explaining how these relate to how priming is measured. I think that the connections would need to be made more explicit for this section to be effective. The article then goes on to briefly describe the effects that brain injuries have on priming, and how researchers can learn from these effects more about the brain. The section is brief but interesting, and I think could be expanded upon a little bit. Specifically the subsections about aphasia and dementia are quite brief, and in the aphasia section, missing a citation. The article also discusses priming and how it affects day to day life. In this section some criticism of priming experiments’ replicability is raised, and the article does a good job of noting these problems. In general this is a well-sourced article. There are many references, and the sources are credible, usually academic journals. The links to these articles work, and do appear to support the facts that are being supported. The information cited ranges from the 1970s to the last 5 years. The information from the 70s does not appear to be out of date however, merely some of the foundational studies in the field. The article is part of Wikiproject Psychology. It is rated B-class for quality, meaning it needs some minor improvements, and of High Importance. The talk page was quite active with a fair bit of debate. However these debates and concerns were posted between 2007 and 2009, so the page is not very active currently. Much of the debate centers around distinguishing between certain concepts, e.g. spreading activation vs priming. There is also discussion about whether or not certain content should be allowed in the article, with the argument that there is not enough knowledge on some subjects for their inclusion to be worthwhile. We did not discuss this subject much in class, but the discussion on Wikipedia does include priming that has to do with language, so the article is definitely a continuation of what we discussed in class.

Article Evaluation Direct Method

The article as a whole is on-topic and informative, if a bit bare. The lead-in is clear, and establishes the content of the article. The sections after the lead in are very brief, giving the article a feel of a bulleted summary and not as detailed an overview as generally seen in Wikipedia articles. The section that is probably most detailed is the “pedagogy” section, which gives specific examples of some of the ways that this method may be used in the classroom. These examples are definitely helpful for the understanding of the topic, but it seems as though pedagogical methods may be over-represented in the article as a whole. I would have liked to see more of the history of the direct method and how it was developed, in addition to the very brief context given in the lead in of the article. Additionally, I think it would be very interesting to know the findings from studies (if they exist) comparing this method to other methods of language learning. Instead the merits/demerits sections are very general and do not provide any specific examples or evidence for the claims that they make. This also raises the question of citation. The article seems to be dependent largely on the same sources for much of its information. Nine of the thirteen citations listed are from the same two authors. There are only a few citations with links, which do work. These sources are all relatively recent, but again a greater variety of sources would greatly increase the credibility of the article.

Wikipedia also raises this issue, with a warning at the top of the page saying that the page needs more citations. The talk page is quite small, with only a few comments. One of the editors raises an issue that I had also noticed, which is that sometimes the language used is quite anglo-centric. The author assumes in these instances that either the mother tongue or the target language will be English, which is obviously not the case for all instances of language learning. The article is part of Wikiproject Linguistics, and is rated start class and of mid importance. The article is also part of Wikiproject Education, and there too is rated start-class and of mid-importance. Although the Wikipedia article on this subject provides more detailed practical information, I felt that we discussed it more thoroughly on a conceptual level in class. In class, though we didn’t discuss this method by name, we did discuss why learning a language in this way might be effective, a topic which I felt that the article on Wikipedia did not delve into enough.

Article Evaluation

This article is in general clear and focussed on its topic. In particular, the lead in is quite clear and does a good job of explaining the topic that will be discussed in the article as a whole. The article seemed to be fairly unbiased, and it gives roughly equal time to several different theories. The one exception to this was the Matrix language-frame model. This theory was given significantly more space in the article than other theories. I think that this was less an issue of bias than that it is so complicated that a lot of space was needed to explain it. There was a notice posted by Wikipedia at the top of this section saying that it might be too technical for general understanding. This was a criticism with which I agreed; there was a lot of jargon used in this section, and a previous understanding of linguistics would be necessary to understand the explanations given. I did find the use of examples throughout the article to be helpful in explaining the different kinds of code-switching that can occur. In the lead-in some of the social implications of code-switching were mentioned briefly. I think it could be interesting to have a small section on this, in addition to the explanations of the various technical aspects of code-switching that are discussed. I also found the article to be a little bit Western-focussed, perhaps because those are the easiest examples to translate into an article written in English. I would have liked to see more about a greater variety of languages however. The sources appear to be credible and relatively recent. The sources are usually academic journals or textbooks, sources that are generally thought to be unbiased. The sources do appear to support the claims for which they are cited, however not all of the sources had links, and not all of the links successfully take the reader to the source. Most of the claims in the article have a citation, however in a few places it would have been better to have more citation. For instance the “reasons of code-switching” section has absolutely no ciations. The article is part of WikiProject Linguistics, and is rated C-Class and of Mid-level importance. The talk page is mostly concerned with the organization of the article, with an editor sharing my concern about the length of the Matrix language frame model. There is also some discussion as to whether the article should be classified under sociolinguistics, or simply under the broader term of linguistics. There is also an editor who shares my view that it would be interesting to look in greater detail at code switching in a greater variety of languages. We did not discuss this topic in detail in class, but our discussion was along the same lines as the Wikipedia article, with the article going into much more detail. The article was a bit more technical than our discussion, which was more concerned with the general concepts and thought processes involved in code-switching.

Article Evaluation

The article generally stayed focused on its topic of baby sign. I felt that the end of the article was a little bit distracting. The last few paragraphs focused on “learning baby sign.” I found that this devolved too quickly into just a listing of different books that were written on baby sign. I thought that this could too easily be biased information, as it is very difficult to have an objective opinion on which books are best. I also thought that this paragraph was a little out of place, as it was technically in the “media and internet influences” section. I think that this kind of paragraph would be more appropriate under a different heading, such as “resources for baby sign” or similar. There definitely was an effort made to have many viewpoints be represented, however. The possible benefits of learning baby sign were discussed, but so too were the studies that had shown that it had made no difference to children’s overall language skills, with a section headed to this effect. I did find that the overview was a little biased in favor of baby sign being beneficial. I thought that perhaps a few sentences should be added indicating that there are some studies that suggest that children do not really derive any benefit from learning baby sign, because, based on the overview, a casual reader would think that baby sign was proven to be solely beneficial. I think that this is made clear enough in a later section, but should be emphasized from the start of the article. It would have also been interesting to learn a bit more about baby sign in different contexts, for instance with bilingual children (as suggested on the talk page), or with children with special needs.

I found two citations where there was no link, but enough information was given that the article could be searched for. The information seemed to be in date, with most of the articles being from the last 15 years. My concern with the citations was if the sources were neutral enough. Most of the citations were from journal articles and peer-reviewed research, however there were a few from “how-to” type books, which are obviously biased in favour of baby sign. This was a concern shared on the talk page of the article. It appears that efforts have been made to make the article more neutral, but there had been concerns about the bias of the article, and the instructional nature of some of the article. There is an official warning from Wikipedia on the external links section, noting that the links may not be appropriate based on the rules of Wikipedia. In the talk section this is also noted, as one editor complained that the links often lead to websites where a product is being sold. In general, the behind the scenes conversation between editors is focused on making the article less biased, and ensuring that sources are sound. There is also discussion over the language of parts of the article, whether it is too scholarly or too persuasive etc.

The article is part of two projects, WikiProject Deaf, and WikiProject Linguistics. From both of these projects, the article gets a C-Class rating, meaning that it is an important article, but still has many problems. It is ranked as high-importance for WikiProject Deaf, and mid-importance for WikiProject Linguistics. We did not discuss baby sign much in class, but I would say that the article discusses it in a more practical way than we did in class. In class we have tended to be focused on the features of a particular type of communication, and if it qualifies as a language. The article is more about the possible effects of using baby sign on children, and how baby sign is practically used in everyday life.

Article Evaluation Two Comparative Linguistics

In general the article kept to its topic of comparative linguistics. However, while the lead-in gave a fairly concise and understandable definition, I didn’t think that the article did a good enough job of differentiating the individual methods of comparative linguistics from defining what the field is as a whole. The lead in explains that the goal of comparative linguistics is to establish language families, and figure out the changes to a proto-language that led to the separate languages being formed. Once the methods section begins however, the only method really mentioned is the “comparative method.” In the history section, other methods such as “internal reconstruction,” “lexicostatistics,” “glottochronology,” “mass comparison,” and “phylogenetic method” are mentioned. While it does make sense to put these methods in context of their place in the development of comparative linguistics, I think it would have made the methods section more robust and clear had they been briefly described there. As it was however, the methods sections was misleading, as it overrepresented the comparative method. There also were only two examples provided one of when the comparative method worked, the other of when it did not. While these examples were an attempt at being even-handed, neither of them provided any citation, making them difficult to trust. I did like the fact that the article mentioned that there were pseudolinguistic comparisons made in the past that should not be thought of as comparative linguistics. This helped clarify the standards of the field a little bit, by showing things that were not acceptable. I think that a few more examples of successes in comparative linguistics could have been helpful however, as a way to better demonstrate the kinds of work being done in the field. The article alluded to some of the things we discussed in class concerning problems with lack of information and accuracy when trying to determine a protolanguage.

There was a disturbing lack of citation in the article as a whole. Many facts were presented with no attribution to a source of any kind. This led me to more broadly question the material as it was being presented. Without the knowledge of from whence this information came, it was very difficult for me to determine if the claims were valid, and if certain views were being overrepresented, misrepresented, or left out all together. There were only eleven sources on the reference list, which, though appearing to be recent, credible, unbiased sources, seems a very small number of references for an article of this length. There were at least two citations that did not provide a link, even though enough information about the source was given that a person could conceivably find the original source by searching. These sources did seem to support the claims made in the article, however there were just too few citations to know that the authors were not cherry-picking information. The article comes with a warning from Wikipedia on the top, warning that it contains “weasel words” meaning it might be unclear or biased. The article is part of wikiproject linguistics, for which it is rated C-class, but of high importance, and it is also part of Wikiproject Anthropology, for which it is rated B-class of top importance. The talk page is not very active, but contains some arguments as to the verifiability of some of the claims of the article, and also some complaints that it is too focused on certain methods.