User talk:Joshuawilliamsamuels

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Journal of Social Archaeology
Hi, do you realize that you're well on your way to get this article deleted as spam? Please have a look at our writing guide for journal articles and then revert back to the clean version that existed before. Thanks. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 22:29, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi Guillaume2303, this is the first article I've edited, and I'm doing my best to learn and abide by Wikipedia's standards. I appreciate your edits and suggestions, but don't quite understand some of the finer points. First, I think my tone is very formal...I really don't understand what I'm being faulted for with that.  I did not intend for the language to sound promotional, I am condensing it from the journal's published materials, as the WP:JWG article suggests, and have added direct quotations with citations when necessary to make it more transparent. Also, I listed some examples of the journal's contributors in order to give a sense of what kind of scholarship it attracts.  After reading the "WP:JWG" and "WP:NOT" articles, I think that your note about some of the items not being encyclopedic is meant to alert me to the fact that articles should not list information just for the sake of  listing information.  Many of the authors listed have Wikipedia articles...can I include them in the list if I link to them? (I'd rather not put in the effort if it will all just get deleted). I appreciate your help and vigilance.
 * The problem is, that you are doing this condensing using the publisher's words/intentions. We usually only take facts from those sites: name of the editor-in-chief (no other people need to be listed, unless there are independent reliable sources that discuss their role in the journal in a more than in-passing way), publication frequency and start year, stuff like that. Language suc as "It explicitly encourages archaeologists from varied backgrounds to engage scholarship etc" is just promotional blabla and does not give any real information about the journal. As "references" for some of these promotional tidbits ("prominent social theorists") you cite an "editorial statement". Well, obviously no journal is going to say that they interview obscure people. But you cannot say that these theorists are "prominent" unless you have an independent source for that. That (some of) the people in the lists of contributors/interviewees are notable and have wiki articles is immaterial. As the writing guide for journal articles clearly states, such lists are unencyclopedic, not important to show the journal's notability, and usually also arbitrary (who decides who should be listed and who not?). In short, this version of the article contained all necessary and encyclopedic information, adhered to all guidelines, and was not promotional. It did not contain useless statements (like that the journal "publishes research by international contributors working around the world": are there any notable journals that will not accept material from researchers from all over the world?), it does not contain unverifiable/unsourced claims ("opening up new debates and areas of exploration"), duplicate info ("triannual" and "published three times a year"), or trivial things ("Each issue contains 5-7 articles"). I strongly advise to return to that version. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 10:06, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The earlier version of this article that you prefer contained no information about what the journal actually does. The "fact" that it covers "the field of archaeology, in particular on social interpretations of the past" does not mean much without more context.  There needs to be an Aims and Scope section for this article to be useful to anyone, and I don't understand how a third-party source for that information could possibly be more reliable than what the journal itself "explicitly" printed in its first editorial and in the Aims and Scope on the inside cover of every issue.  It's not intended as promotion; it is a fact that this is how the journal defines itself.  I modeled the layout and language of this article on other Wikipedia articles about journals, particularly Environment & Urbanization.  I see that you've also worked on that page, so why is their Contributors section okay and mine is not? Not to mention their Distinguishing Features section? And other "trivial" details? I'll try to further neutralize my language, but I'm at a loss for how to communicate Aims and Scope in a manner that is neutral enough for your standards, and think it's a mistake to remove the Contributors section entirely. And again, I do recognize your experience in these matters and greatly appreciate your assistance.
 * WP has millions of articles and I have over 5000 of them (mostly journals) on my watchlist. That means that many articles will not adhere to our guidelines and policies (even if I edited them before), because people simply may not have had the time to clean them up (we call that a bit irreverently "WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS"). I had a look at the article you mentioned (E&U) and it was indeed quite horrible, so I took a moment to bring that up to our standards. As for JoSA, I have edited the scope statement for clarity and brevity. I think the info on which months issues appear and the usual number of articles/issue is quite trivial (and bound to change over time), but, who cares, if you want to leave it in, let it be. The "history" section, though, should go: I have tweaked the lead to make it clear that Meskell was the founding editor, so this section now only contains duplicated information (the citation is already given in the scope section). As I have said before, the editorial board section needs to go, too, as we only list EICs. And, of course, the same goes for the "contributors" section. Once that is done, I'll remove the remaining tags from the article.