User talk:Sjcollier

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Comparative method article
Agent X 16:27, 28 June 2006 (UTC) In reply, regarding citations, I can help a bit, but maybe not a lot. I agree that the content of the Comparative Method article is good. For Wikipedia articles, the challenge seems to be in keeping things brief, because a topic can have many interesting subtopics and details, but if one tries to include all of them, then the article eventually gets too long for a "general reader". I think the length and coverage are pretty good as it stands now. It has some nice graphic images too. As you indicated, it will be strengthened with in-line citations. If you don't already own copies of the stuff listed in the References, then you should buy or borrow them. Print out a "scratch copy" of the Comparative Method article. Then read or skim through each reference work, taking notes of the page numbers that have the information you are including in the article. You can note/write the citations directly onto the scratch copy of the Comparative Method article. If the ref books are so huge that there's no time for ordinary reading, then use the book's index (or table of contents) to speed up your search for pages to cite. When done, go back online to Wikipedia and just type in those citations. It can be kind of tedious when reading the refs to get page numbers to cite, but that's a personal sacrifice of one's time, made for the cause. Of course, you already know these things, so consider these comments as just some friendly encouragement from a "co-worker" of sorts.

I'll try to re-visit the Comparative Method article in the future, and help some with the Polynesian stuff. I have no knowledge of the AmerIndian data, etc., so I won't be able to evaluate and help with that. Aloha!

Agent X 02:31, 29 June 2006 (UTC) The adjustments you made for the tables are good. Looks like you have plenty of references and citations now also. Seems like there are two "styles" regarding the colon preceding page numbers --- (1) a space, (2) no space. You can do whatever the manual specifies, but one consistent way throughout the article. I added several citations to Lyovin 1997. If my style was not consistent, go ahead and make it conform to the one you are using. Same thing for any quirks in the use of the round brackets.

I tried to find a mention in the article of the importance of shared innovations (as opposed to shared retentions) for subgrouping, but didn't see any. If it can get a one-sentence mention at least, that would be good. I didn't see non-genetic areal difusion mentioned either. But maybe there's not enough room to cover everything that interferes with reconstruction. Perhaps the article should focus primarily on how the comparative method does work, and only secondarily on how it does not work. In other words, the focus is the method itself, rather than other things which can interfere with the method.

Regarding the lead section, the manual of style has a bit on "the lead". It says the lead should be essentially a summary of the article. So that's easy to write. Just repeat the main points of each section (and subsection), in the same order in which they appear in the article. If I remember correctly (??), it suggests that citations are NOT used in the lead, but are required in the article. So if that's right, then take the citations that I put in the lead, and transfer them to the article.

Agent X 00:34, 30 June 2006 (UTC) The bit about saving citations for the article goes like this: "All of the various points should be expanded upon later in the article, and the appropriate references provided at that point, rather than in the lead section." (italic added) When I was adding citations yesterday I was getting sleepy and started "spacing out". So I (wisely?) decided to quit editing and just leave you the message about my potential errors. I looked at some of the comments made by reviewers (for FA status), and I think one of them specifically objected to the lead being too short. So you might reconsider doing the summary-of-main-points-in-sequential-order type of lead. It's really easy to write, cuz all you do is follow the logical structure of the article. If doing it that way results in a weird lead, then it may indicate weirdness of the article's structure. Maybe try it to see what happens. In the "real" (??) world of publishing articles, you nearly always have to change something, in order to suit the publisher's reviewers, even though you'd rather keep it as you first had it. (So maybe look again at those reviewers' comments, and check whether they still apply to the current revision of the article.)

Hello sjcollier,

I've replied to you on my own talk page. Opus33 03:59, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi Sjcollier. I'm semi-away from Wikipedia for a while (I think I'll edit occasionally, but there'll be long stretches where I don't). So I might not respond quickly and stuff. If you need to get in touch with me it'd probably be better to just email me.

One suggestion I have on the Comparative Method article might be to nominate it for GA status first--and use feedback from that to improve it further. Best, --Miskwito 07:05, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

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