User:Jesus051/Sanumá language/RussianAnt Peer Review

General info

 * Whose work are you reviewing?

I am reviewing the work of User: Jesus051


 * Link to draft you're reviewing
 * User:Jesus051/Sanumá language


 * Link to the current version of the article (if it exists)
 * Sanumá language

Evaluate the drafted changes
Hi Jesus051! Here's my peer review for you,

Lead


 * You do a good job following the guidelines we were given in your lead. I found the information on other names of the language, number of speaker, geographical information, as well as origin of the language and its family. I think you did a good job covering all of your bases in the lead so far. However, I do think you should try to describe the sections of the article more in the lead. For example, you could mention when the language was discovered, or how long it has been around to tie your lead into your history section.

Content


 * While the content is relevant to the topic, it tells us little about the topic itself. Your history section talks a lot about the movement of the people and how they were affected by the world, but it doesn't talk much about the language itself. For example you could mention how the language itself has been affected by outside influence, are the speakers switching to a lingua franca. Think of the texts about other languages like Toga, think about how they mention how the language shifts and changes over time from generation to generation. I think that is more along the lines of what you should include in your history section. Do not forget you are writing an article on the language, not on its speakers.
 * Furthermore, your dialects section is lacking more in depth information. Why and how are the dialects different is important, as well as if there are any resulting cultural differences in the speakers.

Tone and Balance


 * Overall the tone was good in my opinion. There was nothing that really jumped out at me as biased or persuasive. The only thing is in the end of your history section there is this sentence: "In the last 40 years or so the western world has been knocking at their doorsteps wanting lumber and gold." While there is nothing upfront biased about it, the language of the sentence does not sound neutral. Maybe attempt rewording it using historical terms such as colonization and imperialism (if you do not know the difference between the two make sure you do as they are two different historical time periods). You could also instead say something along the lines "In the last 40, however, the western world has shown an increased amount of interest in their gold and lumber".

Sources and References


 * I think you could use more references in your lead paragraph. Information such as the number of speakers, language family, origin, etc. can easily be found in a language encyclopedia. While not many readers will doubt that information, it is still useful to back it up with a reference. In your lead paragraph make sure that all this factual information is backed up by a reference.
 * Good job on collecting your sources so far. They are up to date, links work, sources are varied. Something I want to mention, is a bit of an issue I am facing myself, it seems that a lot of your sources are from Ramos Alcida. While there are other authors you reference, you have about 8 references to this author. I have the same issue on my article, where there is one researcher that studied the language for a long time and published many works. I do not think it is bad to rely on these references, but I think we should try to find some more other ones. It gives more credibility to your article if the authors of your references come from more different backgrounds.

Organization


 * The article flows pretty well so far. It was easy to read through and the wording is not confusing.
 * It is also well organized so far. You do not have any miscellaneous sections. Obviously the sections you do have need improvement, as mentioned earlier, and you need to add more sections, but you know that yourself.
 * I have to be honest, I am not good at checking grammar and spelling. That being said, I think you're good. I didn't see anything and I read through a couple of times just to make sure.

Overall impressions


 * I think the work you've done on the lead paragraph is really substantial. Obviously as I said it needs references, but the info included is good. It's hard to tell whether you will be only adding relevant information or not, but judging from your sources and lead paragraph it seems like you are on the right track.
 * I think it's great that your references shed a lot of light on the grammar and structure of the language. Keep going in that direction, that is exactly what your article needs.
 * Keep working on the body of your article.

Additional Questions


 * Does your peer have 5-7 reliable sources? You have enough sources so far, which is good, but as I said try to find more different authors.
 * Does the topic link in some way to our course material? It is an endangered language, so yes.
 * Does your peer add historical context to their article? Not yet, but judging from a couple of sources, you are planning to do so.
 * Based on what you know from course content, what do you think Wikipedia users should know about this topic? In other words, what would you recommend adding and/or considering further? Add more stuff about the language itself. Look under the assignment description on Sakai, the last part mentions this. Make sure all your content is directly relevant to the language itself.

-Anton