Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Pe̍h-ōe-jī/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 Karanacs 15:55, 17 August 2010.

Pe̍h-ōe-jī

 * Nominator(s): Taiwantaffy (talk) 02:56, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article status because I feel it's ready. The orthography known as Pe̍h-ōe-jī has a fascinating history of use, abuse, suppression and revival, and is central to the story of the "Taiwanese language movement". The article is comprehensive, stable, extensively referenced, and contains appropriate images. It has been reviewed successfully against the good article criteria, and subsequently peer-reviewed, which generated some very helpful suggestions to improve the article. These have been carried out, and I believe that, certainly as far as the information contained within the article is concerned, it is about as good as it can be. Subjects related to Taiwan are underrepresented at FA and GA class in Wikipedia, and I'm trying to get more of them up to this level. This is my first FA nomination. Taiwantaffy (talk) 02:56, 28 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Comment—no dab links, no dead external links. Ucucha 06:24, 28 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Comments -
 * What makes http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/0358/index.htm a reliable source?
 * Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:29, 28 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for pointing that out! I'll find a reliable source for that statement later today. Taiwantaffy (talk) 00:34, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Reference replaced with one from unicode.org. Taiwantaffy (talk) 02:21, 29 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Oppose per criterion three:
 * File:Peh-oe-ji.jpg - Needs a verifiable source per WP:IUP (sourcing to "Taiwan Church News" is like sourcing text to "Time Magazine" - that's not sufficient or helpful). Incorrect license (PD-self) and authorship attribution.  This work purports to be from 1892 - Taiwantaffy is more than 118 years old?
 * File:JVNT1.png - Needs a verifiable source. Hitherto deleted en.wiki page is not acceptable.
 * File:Thomas Barclay.jpg - Source links directly to the image. Where can we confirm the copyright status?  If the author is unknown, how do we know s/he's been dead 70 years?
 * File:Kau-hoe-po.png - Needs complete source - the original what? PMA is not relevant for published works in the US; should be supplemented by the appropriate tag.
 * File:Taiwanese kana.png - Mere text is not eligible for copyright protection. Should be re-licensed accordingly.
 * File:POJ tone marks.png - Mere text is not eligible for copyright protection. Should be re-licensed accordingly (can't release a copyright that never existed).  Эlcobbola  talk 16:35, 28 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Image issues raised by Эlcobbola addressed: licenses have been corrected where necessary, and two images (File:JVNT1.png and File:Thomas Barclay.jpg) have been switched for images which can be verified as being in the public domain. Taiwantaffy (talk) 00:25, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Almost there, just need to correct the license on File:Peh-oe-ji.jpg. Эlcobbola  talk 16:19, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I've replaced that image with one that more clearly demonstrates the system, and which also (hopefully) has the correct license. Taiwantaffy (talk) 03:57, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
 * File:POJ text sample.svg has issues. If it's a quote from Pe̍h-ōe-jī ("Sample text in Pe̍h-ōe-jī"), authorship should be attributed to the creator of Pe̍h-ōe-jī and the source revised accordingly.  The license is also incorrect; while individual characters and words are generally not sufficiently original to be eligible for copyright, prose formed therefrom is.  If this is the work of Barclay and was published in 1892, the PD-old-50-1923 (not a redlink on the Commons) would suffice.  Эlcobbola  talk 14:00, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Oops, thanks for catching that. I've updated the info for that image - text was taken from Minnan Wikipedia so I've used the CC licence from that site together with a link for attribution. Taiwantaffy (talk) 15:59, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, issues resolved. Эlcobbola  talk 12:57, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Comment: This is a challenging article on an unfamiliar subject, which looks (and is) daunting to most would-be reviewers. I'm sure that is why the nomination has so far lacked content reviews. Having gone through roughly the first half, I'm inclined to agree with the peer reviewer that the article is professionally put together. My main concern is that of accessibility to the readership of a general encyclopedia rather than a linguistic journal, and my comments are generally related to that particular issue.
 * Lead
 * Give dates for the Japanese era in Taiwan,  the Kuomintang martial law period and the establishment of the PRC
 * Be careful about the use of "today", which is inderminate. In a few years, the situation "today" might be a lot different from that described in the article.
 * Name
 * The first sentence is over-complicated, with too many parenthetical insertions. The sentence would read adequately as: "The name Pe̍h-ōe-jī (simplified Chinese: 白话字; traditional Chinese: 白話字) literally means "vernacular writing2, i.e. written characters representing everyday spoken language". I question whether the later insertions are necessary; the certainly affect the readability of the article and perhaps would be better omitted.
 * "vernacular writing" should be in inverted commas, not italicised. Likewise other English terms such as "Church Romanization".
 * Informalities such as "didn't" should be avoided.
 * "The term "romanization" is also disliked by some, as the word connotes a supplementary phonetic system rather than an orthography." Remember, this is a general encyclopedia. Most readers would have great difficulty understanding sentences like that.
 * Early development
 * "...the tonal structure of Hokkien..." Suggest "the tonal structure of the Hokkien dialect..."
 * "with regard to", not "with regards to"
 * Overlong sentence: beginning "The first major work to represent this new orthography..." It needs splitting, and some word re-ordering, e.g. "can be therefore regarded" → "can therefore be regarded"
 * "tinkered with" is maybe a bit informal; perhaps "adjusted"?
 * I suggest a paragraph break at "In 1842..."
 * To proselytize means to convert someone from one religion to another. It would be more accurate to write that the missionaries began the proselytising process,  rather than that they "started proselytizing", which makes the business sound rather routine. I wonder whether the word itself is the best choice; it may not be altogether familiar to many readers.
 * Maturity
 * "...donated a small printing press to the local church,[24] which Thomas Barclay learned how to operate..." Ambiguity, since in this construction "which" refers back to the church.
 * The structure of this section becomes very confusing after the words "...became the first printed newspaper in Taiwan." We first have an unintroduced section written in POJ, followed by what I assume is its translation. These excerpts are unexplained. A table then intrudes, again without introduction and therefore puzzling to the reader. What are we supposed to understand from the table? When the text resumes, I'm afraid I had lost the thread completely.

I will come back with further comments later. Should the article be archived meantime, I will continue my comments on the talkpage. Brianboulton (talk) 18:37, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I appreciate the time you have taken to make these suggestions. I find them almost universally good and have done my best to implement them, although I have refrained from using the term "Hokkien dialect" as suggested above, because of the thorny dialect/language in Chinese linguistics (I went for "Southern Min" instead, as it is used and explained earlier in the article).


 * With regards regard to your comments about the "Maturity" section, I am interested to hear your thoughts on its reorganisation. Tidying up the references for the table and adding explanatory text is probably uncontroversial. Removing the images has also improved it, I think, but I worry that relevant images are one of the things encouraged in the FAC criteria, and that by losing two here the article may fall foul of that particular expectation. Taiwantaffy (talk) 14:23, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.