User talk:Alyssandra Bako/sandbox

Review by Benjamin Miller
Hi folks. I think the lead is a little bulky, and perhaps the comparison to analytic language should be moved into the bulk of the article. This is probably a comparison that should be explored a little and the lead is just not the place to do that, so removing from "...as opposed..." to "...analytic language..." might help clean that up a little. Also this is super heavy on the academese; maybe try to use some plain folks wording when possible. I mean frankly, the first paragraph (Synthetic and Analytic Languages) makes the idea way more clear, especially to somebody who's unfamiliar with linguistic terminology. I think "evolution" should either be expanded to show examples of drift of merged completely with "examples." The derivational and relational synthesis sections are murder, suffering, and pain to my eyeballs. I was glad to see you agreed to work on that section, as it will definitely improve readability. Structurally, I think this is good, starting with the history of the languages that use synthesis, and then going a bit more in depth about the particular words. The section length and weight is all good and great and then falls on it's face in poly/oligio - more information there perhaps, or find a way to bring them into relevance in other sections. Overall it seems pretty neutral and it's definitely not something I think most people have opinions on, so I would just be diligent in checking your sources biases. There's a lot of links out of there, so maybe draw on those for some more clarity in the article. And yeaaaah, bulk those sources up. Key points for review: make this normal-people-literate, and merge those tiny sections into relevant bigger sections or expand them so they can hold their own. BenjMill907 (talk) 08:34, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Review by Ryan Horton
I agree with you guys on your breakdown of the article. It is indeed too technical for laypeople, and laypeople are wikipedia's main audience. the 'single paragraph broken up' style, as mentioned by Erika, gives the sense that the article is written by a single individual, most likely someone who is already familiar with the subject. This gives the article a sense of bias as well, though not as a result of the actual content - the unbroken style of the writing (you could call it the 'flow') does give the sense that you're reading a single source and, given the lack of references in the article the reader not only goes away with a total lack of understanding, but also a sense that they've just gotten one guy's opinion on a subject. Doesn't mean that it's not all accurate, but we have no way of verifying. There's just a couple things I'd recommend, which you've already touched on: add clarity - this means taking the technical jargon and reducing it to layman's terms; giving non-technical examples of the technical jargon you do keep (giving an example of a 'morpheme, for instance); establishing some clear citations, and make each section independent: don't let them begin with words like "however" and "for example". You guys are already off to a great start! Most of what I've mentioned you've already discussed to some degree. I'm both impressed and a little jealous of the level of interaction of your group. Keep up the good work!!Theantiryan (talk) 19:16, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Nicole's Peer Review
You all have actually already discussed a lot of what I noticed so some of what I say will just be an agreement, but that means you are off to a great start! It’s really impressive to see the way your group is interacting in the sandbox.

I definitely think the lead could be more concise and easier to read- the whole thing really will need to be made less technical. I honestly think that everything after the first sentence in the lead belongs later in the article. I think it would be helpful to put a single example of a word from a synthetic language towards the beginning of the article so that people can see exactly what is being described from the beginning. Especially for those who don’t already know what a morpheme is, I think this could really help with comprehension.

One thing that seems really strange to me is that in the content map it goes: 1. Synthetic and analytic languages 2. Examples '''<- These are examples in the loosest sense. Literally just two lists of language. This really needs to be fleshed out.''' 2.1	Evolution <- I get why the writer put this here, but it doesn’t belong here. 3. Forms of synthesis '''<- These are what I actually think of when wanting an example of this. At least one of these should be up above if not simply having the entire synthesis section a subsection of examples.''' 3.1	Derivational synthesis 3.2	Relational synthesis

I also think there is a better overall way to show the derivations. Even if that includes nothing more than adding an indentation to the text following the word being used as an example e.g. German: Aufsichtsratsmitgliederversammlung Aufsichts + Rats + Mitglieder + Versammlung = "supervision + council + members + assembly" "Meeting of members of the supervisory board" ("with" and "link" (as in link of a chain) form a derivation that is the German word for "member"; similarly, "completion",        "collect" and "noun" form a derivation that means "meeting", with both "ver-" and "-ung" being bound morphemes)

As for “Degrees of synthesis”, the top thing that sticks out to me is please make sure “rather analytic”, “rather synthetic”, and “very synthetic” are actually the terms that should be used here. Also, if so, wouldn’t this be missing a “very analytic” section here?

Overall, you guys seem to have a good grasp of where to go with this article. These are just the things that stood out to me the most in addition to the obvious of add citations. Goodluck with the rest! MadelynNicole (talk) 21:38, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Response to Peer Reviews and Current Plan
Hi everyone! Thank you so much for your feedback, it’s been very helpful.

So far we have focused on streamlining the lead to start with. We have basically drafted an entirely new start for a lead, which we have included in the very bottom of Alex’s (Alyssandra Bako) sandbox. Along with that streamlining we’ve attempted to rely on referencing within Wikipedia to minimize extra-article definitions/terminologies, using plain wording (as per Benjamin Miller’s suggestion). The more technical parts of the article are indeed painful to read, and we plan to try to adjust the subsections so that they make more sense (we haven’t finished doing that yet).

Hopefully with all of our group working on this article, it will begin to sound more like a group effort rather than an article written by one person (addressing Ryan’s note that it really does sound like one person writing the article as it is now). We plan to include references to prove the points and continue to adjust the clarity.

One of our main goals it to make the article less technical and forbidding (addressing Nicole’s suggestion for less technicality) and the excessive number of examples that the original author provided are definitely in need of some streamlining and re-formatting. While we haven’t gotten to actually drafting that section yet, it’s one of our top priorities, since that seems to be one of the scariest elements of the article.Alyssandra Bako (talk) 21:53, 14 November 2018 (UTC)Alyssandra Bako