Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Cuisine of Madagascar/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by Laser brain 23:05, 30 January 2011.

Cuisine of Madagascar

 * Nominator(s): Lemurbaby (talk) 18:58, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article because I believe it satisfies the criteria and the topic is important to expanding coverage of Madagascar, Africa and cuisine-related topics on Wikipedia. Lemurbaby (talk) 18:58, 4 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I plan to do a review of this article, but don't have time at the moment. I did start reading into it and noticed an incorrect date and the omission of the island's megafauna in the "Prior to 1650" subsection.  I suggest reviewing (and using) sources #33 and #34 on Subfossil lemur.  (It might also help to skim that article as well, focusing particularly on the extinction details.)  You don't need much more than a sentence or two about the megafauna and the possibility that early hunting prompted their decline.  But people might be interested to know that the early settlers may have eaten giant lemurs, dwarf hippos, and giant birds (or their eggs), giant tortoises, etc.  As for the date of arrival for humans, the sources I've seen suggest 2,300 to 2,000 years ago.  If you need access to these sources, I can email you the PDFs or I'm sure someone else here can also.  Just email me though Wiki and I'll reply with the files. –  VisionHolder  « talk » 22:45, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The dates of arrival in the humanities literature (history etc) vary widely; I've seen an article published in 1993 arguing for the colonization of Madagascar in the 8th century CE, which is obviously incorrect. What it seems to come down to is waves of colonization from Indonesia over several hundred years or more, which helps to explain the confusion, not to mention the later waves of settlers from other parts of the world. The earliest date I've seen anyone propose for the settlement of Madagascar was what I listed here, from a very knowledgeable source (and her statement is that the date range of 100-400 CE is a majority consensus among historians and others), though she doesn't discount the likelihood that small, scattered communities may have settled there (and possibly died out) prior to that date (which might explain the older subfossil lemur bones with evidence of butchery). What we can say with certainty is there is still debate in the scholarly community about this. I haven't seen any articles that propose dates of settlement as early as 300 BCE, so if you would pass me the citations I'll track down the articles through my university sources. That way the statement included in this article can be one everyone can agree upon, and once we have it nailed down I will go through the other Madagascar articles and make sure the dates of settlement are consistent from one to the next, citing the source we choose and framing it using defensible language. -- Lemurbaby (talk) 16:19, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Reviewing one of my most recent sources (2010), your assessment is probably correct. Small populations were on the island by ~350 BCE, but the effects of larger populations weren't seen until 230–410 CE.  (My source is "Chapter 21: Subfossil Lemurs of Madagascar" from Cenozoic Mammals of Africa (2010), ISBN: 978-0520257214.)  Per the editor's proof PDF sent to me by the author, see the 3rd to last paragraph before the "Acknowledgments" section at the end.) I guess that muddies the water for giving dates.  They clearly "arrived" earlier, but it's hard to say they didn't "settle" until later.  Technically, we need to go by the wording of our sources.  Your source is dated from 1996.  Is there anything more recent that supports the date it gives?  The chapter I mentioned above might be a good source to follow since it discusses both arrival and increase in human populations (effectively using both dates or close to them).  So rather than saying: "Austronesian seafarers are believed to have been the first humans to settle on the island between 100 and 500 CE," we could say, "Austronesian seafarers are believed to have been the first humans to reach the island,(Gade 1996) arriving as early as 350 BCE, with sediment cores suggesting an elevated human presence by 230–410 CE.(Godfrey et al. 2010)"  Of course, that's just a suggestion and could be tweaked considerably. –  VisionHolder  « talk » 17:35, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Comments: Article really looks good, especially with a lot of the in-progress changes. Here are the points I've come up with so far.
 * Do your sources not mention other fruits, such as jack fruit (mokonzy) or Cœur de Bœuf] (bora bora = Custard-apple?)? There was another fruit I bought while on the taxi-brousse, but I don't remember what it looked like or what it was called...  There were also some berries that a guide offered me to eat while we were trekking through the forests in Petriky, but I doubt it's a well-known fruit...
 * My sources haven't specified other fruits although they certainly exist. I'll keep my eyes peeled for additional fruits and maybe new sources. -- Lemurbaby (talk) 05:40, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I was hoping the Bradt guide would offer some help, but if it's in there, it's not indexed very well. If I see something, I'll let you know. –  VisionHolder  « talk » 16:18, 8 January 2011 (UTC)


 * What are ranonampango and ranovola, besides traditional beverages?
 * They're first introduced and described in the section on rice since they are beverages made by burning rice. Do you think it would be helpful to reiterate that information in the beverages section? -- Lemurbaby (talk) 05:40, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Typically, no... But in cases where it's a term from another language, it might help. Unless the reader is familiar with a word, they may forget that they've already encountered it.  This question should probably be addressed by other reviewers as well. –  VisionHolder  « talk » 16:18, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm fine with this now. –  VisionHolder « talk » 01:04, 23 January 2011 (UTC)


 * "...has increasingly grown in popularity at upscale urban restaurants over the past ten years." — Please try to avoid statements that can become dated. Maybe: "...starting around 2000."
 * Good catch - I thought I'd removed all of those kinds of statements. I'll have another look. -- Lemurbaby (talk) 05:40, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Were you still planning to fix this? –  VisionHolder « talk » 01:04, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I have just changed the wording in two other instances where this was a problem. -- Lemurbaby (talk) 16:13, 23 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I mentioned it on the articles talk page, but what about the practice of bushmeat? Shouldn't that receive a mention?
 * I briefly mentioned bush meat right after the discussion on hunting subfossil lemurs; I don't want to overemphasize this because it isn't normally a severe problem (although admittedly it's become a major problem since the coup). I don't want to mischaracterize the severity of the issue by drawing excessive attention to it. -- Lemurbaby (talk) 05:40, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I must have missed when that sentence was added. However, not everyone may be familiar with Madagascar's situation, and another sentence should probably be added to note that the 2009 Malagasy political crisis, as well as poverty and famine, have had an impact on people's diets as well as the use of bushmeat. –  VisionHolder  « talk » 16:18, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Any thoughts on this? –  VisionHolder « talk » 01:04, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I would prefer not to politicize this article with links to the current political crisis. Mentioning that bush meat is being poached more often at the moment does not strike me as fitting within a historic and contemporary overview of Malagasy cuisine because the spike in poaching is ephemeral; if I could make a more generalizable statement, like "the practice of poaching bush meat increases with each political crisis or in times of severe economic depression" then that could be more easily integrated into this larger general narrative, but I don't have the evidence to support that kind of statement. It would perhaps be more appropriate to mention if I also incorporated discussion about the famines in Imerina in the 1700s, but I omitted that as well because the famines didn't have a lasting impact on the composition of the cuisine of the area once they had ended (unlike the famines in the south, mentioned as a consequence of the permanent loss of a food staple). -- Lemurbaby (talk) 15:59, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I wasn't trying to suggest politicizing. It's more of a documentation issue.  As you said, as food becomes more scarce, people turn to the forests—thus is the nature of (most) bushmeat hunting.  The next time you're at the library, you might be able to cobble together a non-politicized statement about bush meat from pages 79–82 of the Lemurs of Madagascar, 3rd edition.  If they don't have the new 3rd edition, which was published in November of last year, the pages will be different the the information may not be as helpful.  If you can't access it, I could try constructing a statement and submit it for your approval.  But the issue of bushmeat used to be considered a minor issue, but recent studies have shown that it's an ongoing, complex issue.  The fact is that the native wildlife is on the menu for various people in Madagascar.  The article doesn't need to dwell on it or turn it into a soapbox issue, but it should be noted.  Do any other reviewers agree or disagree? –  VisionHolder  « talk » 17:35, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The fact that some people continue to eat bushmeat is acknowledged in the current wording... Is your concern about how the statement is worded, or is there more content you'd like to see added (without making it a soapbox issue)? It's undeniable that wildlife is eaten by some people (as the article mentions), and it appears that number might increase in times of greater food insecurity based on recent news articles - although the ones I've seen emphasize hunting lemurs for foreign consumers, not local ones (not mentioned due to lack of supporting evidence). I haven't been able to find the book you suggested. If you have the time to scan the pages and send them my way, I can read them and propose a modification. Otherwise, maybe you could paraphrase the gist of it for me so we can come to an agreement about what needs to be there.
 * For me, since this is an article about cuisine, it seems to me that the essential is to talk about *what* is consumed (i.e. lemurs) and *how* it is prepared (i.e. grilling, smoking etc) since this is the essence of cuisine and the focus of the article so far. To make a lengthier discussion of bushmeat make sense in the context of the article, I think what would have to happen is to write a separate section about the pressures that some food practices put on the environment, in which case we'd have to discuss the consequences of slash-and-burn, overfishing, international trade of foodstuffs and coral reef destruction in addition to poaching, although I'm hesitant to do it since that would so clearly lend a political overtone to the article when cuisine articles for other countries manage to sidestep their political issues (pollution caused by industrial agriculture, animal cruelty, genetically modified foods and all that). I wouldn't want to unjustly cast the cuisine of Madagascar in a more critical light than other cuisines on WP. I'm especially reluctant to write that section in this article because where it really belongs is in the Agroecology in Madagascar article. There are also several other Madagascar-related articles that address issues related to pressure on the land and resulting animal extinctions that do not touch the issue of bushmeat or over-hunting, such as Ecoregions of Madagascar and Fauna of Madagascar, but in my view are better candidates for an in-depth discussion of issues like this than this article on contemporary cuisine.
 * That being said, I'm open to adding a new section in if similar sections have been added to other cuisine articles. And if we decide not to go with a new section, then that brings us back to how to word the part about bushmeat (or what to add) so that the passage (or sentence) contains the necessary information while ensuring it still fits with the flow and focus of the article. You said earlier that the issue is becoming more complex - I wasn't able to find the more recent resources you've read that are informing your view, so clearly I need to be caught up... let's start there. Do you think you might be able to scan and send me those pages, or if not, give me the rundown? Thanks in advance. -- Lemurbaby (talk) 16:34, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

That's all I have for now. Now I wish I had taken pictures of the street markets and the food they sold, as well as the meals prepared for me by the Malagasy families I stayed with. I really wish I had written down the names, too. Oh well... next time. –  VisionHolder « talk » 02:44, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Disambig/External Link check - no dabs or dead external links. -- Pres N  00:50, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Comments
 * Current ref 1 (Gade) - is this a journal? If so, I'd expect an article title. Or is it a book? If so, I'd expect publishers…
 * Current ref 2 (Kent) needs page numbers.
 * Again, I can't figure out if Current ref 4 (Campbell) is a journal or a book - it has a volume number like a journal but no article title, but there is no publisher as I'd expect with a book.
 * Current ref 6 (Flacourt) needs page numbers
 * Current ref 7 (Stiles) has the same issues as refs 1 and 4
 * Current ref 10 (Pearson..) needs page numbers
 * Current ref 11 (Olson) has the same issues as 1, 4, and 7…
 * Current ref 13 (Grandidier) needs page numbers
 * Same for current ref 14 (Raison …) and 15 (Ogot) and 16 (Oliver). Just because you give urls doesn't mean you can escape the need for page numbers on books.
 * Same for current ref 19 (Robinson), 20 (Sibree), 21 (Ade Ajayi), 23 (Karner), 24 (Chan), 25 (Spolsky), 30 (Sibree), 31 (Sandler), 33 (Nativel) - urls don't negate the need for page numbers
 * Current refs 22 (Campbell), 26 (Slawecki), 32 (Espangen-Ravo), 34 (Jacob), 37 (Ecott) need page numbers.
 * Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. I ran the article through Coren's tool and Earwig's tool and nothing showed up in regards to plagiarism with those tools. Ealdgyth - Talk 17:42, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I did not realize page numbers were a must. I'll get to it pronto. -- Lemurbaby (talk) 00:56, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I have done all page numbers except for two books that will require a trip back to the university library downtown. There should be time for that on Wednesday. -- Lemurbaby (talk) 16:00, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Images there is little documentation regarding Malagasy copyright, I have concerns regarding File:Three_Horses_beer.jpg as an image of a copyrighted subject, can you explain the copyright of this image? Fasach Nua (talk) 18:57, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I have a link to the original text of the copyright law of Madagascar here. It's in French. I read through it and here are the elements of the law that strike me as most relevant to this photo:
 * 1) According to Ch.3 Art.11 the photo may qualify as a "composite" work: "Est dite composite l’oeuvre nouvelle à laquelle est incorporée une oeuvre préexistante sans la collaboration de l’auteur de cette dernière" = "A composite work is defined as a new work into which a preexisting work is incorporated, without the collaboration of the author of this preexistant work."
 * 2) According to Ch.3 Art. 13, the rights involved are as follows: "L’oeuvre composite est la propriété de l’auteur qui l’a réalisée, sous réserve des droits de l’auteur de l’oeuvre préexistante" = A composite work is the property of the author that created it, reserving the rights of the author of the preexisting work."
 * But this kind of scenario is always a gray zone in law. Whether copyright infringement happened would have to be argued in court, and the burden of proof for this kind of case rests with the claimant - at least in the US. Since no money is being made off its use and it is a small element in a larger image the case would typically be difficult to make... not to mention copyright law is absolutely unenforced in Madagascar. But if you'd prefer to simply remove the image to play it on the safe side, feel free. -- Lemurbaby (talk) 16:38, 9 January 2011 (UTC)


 * All images are now in the Commons. -- Lemurbaby (talk) 16:00, 17 January 2011 (UTC)


 * The Wikimedia foundation taking on a potential legal liability is probably something we don't want to do, especially for such as small benefit to the project. The intention of this project is to make material available for commercial re-use, so suggesting no money is involved is not the case. The de minimis argument doesn't hold either as the bottle is the primary subject of the image, as for enforcement of copyright this has no relation to the legality. Fasach Nua (talk) 00:46, 24 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I replaced the THB image with another. There are still two THB cans in the shot, but they are partially obscured and not the main subject in the image. Do you think this is all right or would it still pose potential copyright problems? -- Lemurbaby (talk) 19:42, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * FA Criterion 3 met Fasach Nua (talk) 18:41, 28 January 2011 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.