Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Rongorongo


 * 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 promoted by User:SandyGeorgia 19:39 June 19, 2008.

Rongorongo

 * previous FAC (19:02, 9 April 2008), earlier FAC

Self-nominator: All previous issues have been addressed. The main remaining problem had been the unresolved copyright status of the images, under the mistaken impression that this depends on whether an object is 2D or 3D. (A coin lit up and framed in an original way is not PD; the same coin copied on a scanner is PD. The 2D thing is a rule of thumb, not a legal principle.) Although nearly all the photos were ineligible for copyright (original copyright long expired, no original work in their reproduction), this takes months to resolve at Commons, so I have removed the numerous thumbs and moved two of the images to Wiki-en with Fair Use tags (they are actually Template:PD-ineligible). Another objection had been the length of the article; it has now been split in two. —kwami (talk) 09:10, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Oppose - Serious lack of footnotes to most paragraphs throughout. In the past FAC, Ealdgyth said: "I do note that large sections of the article are lacking inline citations, at least to page numbers of the various sources." - This has not changed. Fails criteria 1c of the FA criteria. — Wackymacs ( talk  ~  edits ) 12:52, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Isn't the lack of footnotes due to the use of author-date referencing? :) Fvasconcellos (t·c) 13:40, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
 * In that case, footnotes should not be used. It's either Harvard referencing, or footnotes - not both. See Citing_sources. — Wackymacs ( talk  ~  edits ) 14:10, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
 * The footnotes are being used as actual footnotes (i.e. for commentary), not as a referencing system. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 14:13, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
 * OK, You've got me now. I'm more used to the footnote system being used for references, since I've come across very few articles on Wikipedia using Harvard referencing. — Wackymacs ( talk  ~  edits ) 14:33, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
 * They're a dying breed ;) Fvasconcellos (t·c) 15:27, 26 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Support. All I can say is: Wow!  I tried using this article months ago for a story I wrote about the Rapanui, and it was all but worthless.  This is better than anything that can be found in most libraries!  I'll say support, but I don't regularly participate in FAC discussions and am not terribly familiar with the criteria, so feel free to disregard.  It's definitely a fine piece of work.  Fishal (talk) 17:11, 26 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Oppose until image problems are resolved. Images such as Image:Rongorongo Qr3-7 color.jpg and Image:Anaokeke.jpg are clearly 3D and eligible for copyright. If you want to use something like this, trace the script to make it into a PNG/SVG and get rid of all the lighting/surface irregularities. Mangostar (talk) 21:55, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
 * The response on Commons to your earlier complaint of Anaokeke was "Looks two-dimensional to me!". Under your interpretation, all of the photos of paintings on Wikipedia would have to be deleted, since they all have lighting, and they're all three dimensional (they all have texture, if only from the canvas). Do we need to make a PNG tracing of The Last Supper? (Look, I can see a crack in the plaster—that makes the object 3D, so it's copyrighted!) The legal principle is not whether the object is 3D (that's only a rule of thumb), but: Did the photographer frame and light the object in such a way as to add originality to the photo? A photograph of a two-dimensional surface, with only the lighting necessary to expose the film, does not qualify for copyright. (The Last Supper is painted on a building, so it is also clearly a 3D object, but it's common sense that the photo is of one approximately 2D surface of that object. And in the Qr3-7 photo the lighting is that of the display case in the museum, and not a contribution by the photographer.) Neither, for that matter, does a scan of a fully 3D object qualify for copyright. Commons suggests that we crop images of paintings of their frame, to avoid the possibility of a problem. The Qr3-7 photo follows this advice and is cropped of all its edges. (I've noticed that in addition to claiming that surfaces are three dimensional, you believe that pre-World War I photos are ineligible for PD because they're "recent".) If we followed your advice, we'd have to strip a large number of articles of their FA status. kwami (talk) 22:46, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Also, why is Image:Roro-I01frottis.gif marked GFDL? Did the uploader actually make the rubbing? If not, it's either copyrighted or PD - an uploader can't make a PD image GFDL... Mangostar (talk) 22:00, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
 * The uploader works with the archives the image came from, but you're right. As a rubbing, it's ineligible for copyright regardless. Tag changed. kwami (talk) 22:46, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Last thought: the 2D reproduction is a legal principle, in that it was specifically established in Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. in at least one US district court, and hasn't been departed from since. Mike Godwin has specifically advised Wikipedia users not to claim that photos of coins are PD, without specifying that distinctions should be drawn between the two types you cite. (I could dig this up if you want.) The threshold of originality required for copyright protection in the US is extremely low. The merger doctrine comes into play where an idea simply cannot be separated from an expression, but here it is inapplicable--for example, this problem could be solved by vectorizing the text alone, as I have suggested. Mangostar (talk) 22:05, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
 * [edit conflict] On Commons they specifically state that a coin imaged with a scanner is not eligible for copyright. It's not the dimensionality of the object, but originality. It's simply assumed that there is insufficient originality in a photograph of a painting to qualify for copyright.
 * Also, a tracing is not a viable option. Since the script is undeciphered, no-one can know what they're supposed to be tracing, and there is therefore a concern that any tracing would miss essential details, or introduce errors. This is a serious issue with attempts at decipherment. An illustration of what the script looks like needs to be a photo, not a tracing. As I said above, the edges have been cropped, and the lighting is environmental, so this is simply a photo of a 2D surface. kwami (talk) 22:46, 26 May 2008 (UTC)


 * If you insist, I can certainly make a case for Fair Use. kwami (talk) 23:01, 26 May 2008 (UTC)


 * PS. Reading the court case, under US law, the issue is originality. The only time "two dimensional" appears is in a report of MOMA admitting that a photo of a 2-D PD work of art "might not qualify" for copyright. That isn't the court's wording. They also make the point that a cast of a 3-D object does not qualify for copyright, even with minor variations from the original. They "must be original, that is, the author's tangible expression of his ideas". When the "point of the exercise was to reproduce the underlying works with absolute fidelity [c]opyright is not available". Posing a statue and giving it dramatic lighting is copyrightable, but photographing the artist's signature on the statue is not. kwami (talk) 02:01, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Comments Sources look good. Links checked out okay with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 01:58, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Comments Very interesting article. But should you not have footnote citations to specifically source material? Or am I wrong that this is preferred? Also, I don't like the colon in the lead and will change it. Revert if you like. I will look through article more as it seems very good. – Mattisse (Talk) 20:39, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
 * O.K. It's a little confusing at first but I see what you have done reference-wise. – Mattisse (Talk) 20:46, 30 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I personally find it disruptive when footnotes are used both for notes and for references. I always want to read the notes, but flipping down to the footnotes just to find it's a page reference is really annoying. Thanks for your corrections. kwami (talk) 21:34, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, the problem I am having now is that the article does not seem to be well sourced. Phrases like "tradition has it" are not sourced. There are so many  "is said to have" (see my comment on talk page) that even though a source is given, it does not clarify.  – Mattisse  (Talk) 22:12, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I've checked all instances of those wordings, and they're all supported by the following citations. kwami (talk) 22:43, 30 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Support. I thought this should have succeeded last time around, and don't have any remaining comments that were not taken care of in the previous FAC. Now that more parts have been split out into subarticles, one could almost nominate the whole collection. Anyways, per Fishal above this painstakingly researched and well-written article provides the best encyclopaedic treatment of the topic you're likely to come across anywhere. Nice work, kwami & co. --cjllw ʘ  TALK 09:13, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Oppose Comments


 * Use harvnb for references instead of the way you are doing now
 * Really large image in "Published corpus" — needs something done about that. Perhaps a thumbnail and center it?
 * "References" looks really strange, at least to me, because of Aut usage and no bullets before each item

Gary King ( talk ) 16:40, 4 June 2008 (UTC)


 * You oppose because I've followed Wikipedia formatting conventions? Are you serious?
 * Anyway, your citation template is ungainly, the normal-sized image is part of the text, which would be disrupted if it were a thumbnail, and the "really strange" reference format is found throughout Wikipedia. Since when do references need bullets? kwami (talk) 17:48, 4 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I've never seen inline references like what is used in this article. Please point me to where it says in the Manual of Style that this is appropriate. Gary King ( talk ) 19:07, 4 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm going to strike out my oppose because this is just beyond what I've seen. It's such a mysterious way of doing it... Gary King ( talk ) 19:09, 4 June 2008 (UTC)


 * The MoS directs the reader to Author-date referencing for how this is done. That gives "(Smith 2008:1)" in its first example. kwami (talk) 19:35, 4 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Support - A very interesting, thorough, well organized article that is clearly written. There are some idiosyncratic aspects to the style, but nothing that interferes with the pleasure of reading it. (I fixed aspects that bothered me the most.)  – Mattisse  (Talk) 20:38, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

 Oppose —Support 1a. Disappointed after all this time to see poor writing in the lead: Look, this is not FA material. Sorry; please have a good copy-editor lift it to professional standard first.
 * figures or words for two-digit numbers? In any case, read MOS, which insists on one type for centuries. The infobox hints at more precise chronological info than a whole century. And see further down in the article.
 * "Although some calendrical and perhaps genealogical information have been identified"—Perhaps? What is the uncertainty? It's unclear.
 * ", even these inscriptions cannot actually be read."—Remove "actually", unless you're contrasting with the fictional, maybe? Even what inscriptions? Unclear connection with the foregoing statement.
 * "some ... some". Then a tiny sentence. After that, ungrammatical.
 * "There are a few very short petroglyphs which may also be rongorongo."—There are? Fuzzy.

And at random further down:
 * "Due to its scarcity"—two very similar wordings.
 * "The fact that the islanders were reduced to inscribing driftwood, and were extremely economical in their use of wood, may have had consequences for the structure of the script (Fischer 1997:383)."—Can you briefly explain what effect this might have had on the script?
 * Snake: "German ethnologist Thomas Barthel believed that carving on wood was a secondary development in the evolution of the script based on an earlier stage of incising banana leaves or the sheaths of the banana trunk with a bone stylus, and that the medium of leaves was retained not only for lessons but to plan and compose the texts of the wooden tablets (Barthel 1971:1168)." Split into two?
 * The left-side image is messing with the formatting of the text and the lower image.
 * "Other glyphs look like sea turtles, fish, crayfish, grubs, and so on."—Last three words: MOS discourages such usage as far too informal. Try "such creatures as ...".

Needs a good copy-editor. TONY  (talk)  14:10, 9 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I hesitate to ask a question here, but I do not understand all your comments above. Here is an example: "Figures or words for two-digit numbers? In any case, read MOS, which insists on one type for centuries." I just read MoS and it said (seemed to say) either 20th century or 20th century was correct. Am I misunderstanding? – Mattisse  (Talk) 14:58, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Where's your boundary between spelling out a number and rendering it as a figure? 18 or eighteen? Seems to be mixed. This is aside from the century issue. TONY   (talk)  14:56, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Tony, some good points, but the lead is an introduction. It is not the place to explain things in detail. If comments are "fuzzy", they are explained in the text. The centuries have been spelled out as you suggest (I prefer that as well). "Actually" contrast reading with interpreting, though it is not necessary here. [No, I take that back. It is required here. We're saying the contents of some texts can be identified, which most people would assume means they can be read.] This takes care of objections (1), (2), (5). The word "these" makes (3) perfectly clear in context. As for (4), I agree that "some ... some" is awkward, and it's been changed. However, there is nothing wrong with the occasional tiny sentence, especially when its contrasting length has a contrasting function, as here. Following that, I fail to see what is ungrammatical.
 * Centuries are supposed to be expressed in numerals, aren't they? See MOS. TONY   (talk)  14:56, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Done. The MoS itself says either way is okay, but one of the subdocuments does specify numerals. kwami (talk) 02:10, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Second set: (1) Which are two very similar wordings? (2) I was afraid that would be OR, but it can be read between the lines of the refs. Done. (3) Splitting would require adding "he also believed that", which would be unnecessarily repetitive. The sentence is fine as it stands. (4) No matter how you arrange the images, they will cause formatting problems on some browsers at some screen resolutions. I've done the best I can with a variety of browsers. [Actually, that image was moved where it currently is by another editor, who objected to its previous location. I'll put it back.] (5) Done.


 * I think that covers everything where it's clear what you object to. kwami (talk) 18:16, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Still more precise chronological info in the infobox (1860s?) than the whole century given in the lead. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding.
 * Since the info box is for the entire article, not the lede, I don't see a problem. However, the dates are for different things: when most of the tablets were destroyed vs. when the surviving ones were collected. Some tablets were collected after the 1860s, and some were apparently collected before then, but for most we simply don't know. kwami (talk)
 * Try this: "German ethnologist Thomas Barthel believed that carving on wood was a secondary development in the evolution of the script based on an earlier stage of incising banana leaves or the sheaths of the banana trunk with a bone stylus; in his opinion, the medium of leaves was retained not only for lessons, but to plan and compose the texts of the wooden tablets (Barthel 1971:1168)."
 * But it's not an opinion, it's a belief: perhaps speculation, but more likely an interpretation of people's recollections. So I would have to say "Barthel believed that X; he believed that Y." I don't see how that's an improvement. "And" is the normal word used for compound predicates such as this. kwami (talk)
 * Claims in the lead should make sense in the lead.
 * Your objection was to "There are also a few very short petroglyphs which may be rongorongo." That makes perfect sense; it means exactly what it says. You objected that the word "may" is "fuzzy", but I don't see how to make the sentence less fuzzy without going into details which don't belong in the lead. kwami (talk)
 * The prose is looking better. TONY   (talk)  14:56, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Similar wordings: "due to the scarcity of wood", "due to this scarcity of wood". TONY  (talk)  14:56, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
 * That was intentional, to help the reader make the connection, since they refer to the same thing but the instances were not close together. Anyway, Matisse changed the wording a bit. kwami (talk) 02:10, 16 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Support - I and others did some copy editing to try to take care of Tony's concerns. If there are other concerns I am willing to do more. (I don't know about the image concerns, though.) I think it is a clearly written article on a fascinating topic that draws me in to it the way most feature articles do not. – Mattisse  (Talk) 23:25, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
 * You've already entered a support declaration above. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 18:21, 14 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Support, my concerns have been addressed and I'm convinced this is a great piece of work on the subject. -- Laser brain  (talk)  23:18, 17 June 2008 (UTC) Comments The prose seems to be shaping up nicely, but there are some puzzlers that need clarification:
 * "It is thought that irregular pieces of wood were used in their entirety rather than squared off due to the scarcity of wood on the island." Thought by whom?  No citations here.
 * Done. kwami (talk)
 * "The rongorongo glyphs are contours of living organisms and geometric designs about one centimeter high ..." Height is normally a third-dimensional references.. if these are two-dimensional, please stick to length and width.
 * Actually, for scripts "height" is used. Length and width both refer to the same dimension, along the direction of writing. The third dimension is usually "depth". kwami (talk)
 * "The remaining hair-line cuts were then either errors, design conventions (as here) ..." As where?
 * Done. kwami (talk)
 * "On the other hand, glyph 067 is thought to represent the extinct Easter Island palm, which disappeared from the island's pollen record circa 1650 and thus suggests that the script is at least that old." No citation.. who said this?
 * Done. kwami (talk)
 * Your commented image of glyphs in "Glyphs" needs a source displayed below the figure. -- Laser brain  (talk)  05:03, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * None of our other images have a source displayed. Why this one? kwami (talk) 13:37, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, even though it is technically an image, it is being used as a "figure" in the article and is displaying interpretation. I'd recommend doing the reader the courtesy of displaying whose interpretation it is and not forcing them to click the image to find out. -- Laser brain   (talk)  13:52, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't know whose interpretation it is. The photo is attributed to the Trocadéro Museum, and in the legend for this image and another it gives the dimensions according to one Father Alazard, but it would be inference on my part that because those same dimensions were written on the photo it was therefore Father Alazard who indicated the reading direction. kwami (talk) 14:12, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Are we talking about the same image? I'm referring to Image:Rongorongo-sample.gif, which is attributed only to the person who uploaded it.  So it's Guy's interpretation, isn't it?  -- Laser brain   (talk)  19:35, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh, I left one century spelled out:
 * described in some mid-twentieth-century publications, was "an early twentieth-century geometric invention"
 * It seems odd to write "mid-20th-century", especially when it's spelled out immediately afterwards in the quote. kwami (talk) 13:51, 17 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment about possible conflict of interest. I noted that User:JacquesGuy is the second most prolific editor of this article.  He uploaded at least one image (Image:Rongorongo-sample.gif) that is not sourced in the article and contains interpretations of symbols.  Technically it's original research but maybe that doesn't matter since he is possibly a scholar in the field and maybe we can source it to one of his own published works.  I also note that one of his works is cited several times in the article.  What is the prevailing attitude toward scholars citing their own works in articles?  Does it create a conflict of interest because they might favor their own research even if it's not mainstream? -- Laser brain   (talk)  19:45, 17 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Oh, sorry, wrong image. These are all common guesses of meanings that can be found in Barthel and other references. Thus the question marks—they're sometimes simply assumed as if they were obvious, but we really don't know. They're more cautious than the sources would require. (The turtle, fish, and frigatebird are almost certainly just that, but we can't be sure what the human figures are supposed to be doing. The "lozenges" etc. are simply descriptive terms.) I'll source the image and caption.


 * As for the potential conflict of interest, I certainly understand your concern, and to some extent share it. I've removed a fair amount of material of Jacques' that was personal opinion or otherwise unsubstantiatable, but Jacques is the reason this article ever got off the ground, and he has been essential to separating the wheat from the chaff. Before him this was one of the most atrocious articles I have ever seen on Wikipedia, not much better to a linguist than flying saucers building the mo'ai, some of it quite literally gibberish, and I restricted myself to deleting garbage. One of the problems with rongorongo is that there is so little actual scholarship. Fischer, for example, is extensively cited because his $700 (!) book is so useful as a reference, but he misquotes many of his sources, ridiculing them for saying the opposite of what actually say if you follow up on his references. And then there's that ridiculous "translation" of his—he proposes a single reading, one which no-one else in the field accepts, and he's written up in New Scientist as having "cracked the code". Daniels & Bright (The World's Writing Systems) has a 5-page chapter on rongorongo (2pp of text, 2pp of illustrations, and 1p of bibliography) by Macri, who's a fine linguist/epigrapher, but who has never published anything else on the subject, and whose promised syllabic analysis of RR has still not materialized 14 years later. When I started out, I had no idea who Jacques was, but he was the only contributor (as opposed to copyeditor) who made any sense, and if you check his sources, they say what he claims they say. As part of my research for this project, I joined a rongorongo discussion group of general linguists, computational linguists, archaeologists, and epigraphers, most of them professors at respectable universities, with only a couple amateurs like myself. Several of them use Jacques' website for research projects for their students, one said Jacques is the most important contributor to RR studies since Barthel (in the 1950s) and no-one disagreed with that assessment, and all respect his publications, though they may not buy all of the interpretations which Jacques himself considers to be speculation, and which are therefore only obliquely referred to in this article if at all. Also, I asked the discussion group to review this article as I was writing it, and a couple of them did, though by email rather than on this Talk page. (I'm still waiting for permission to use an image one of them made to replace one I made, but he found an error in the glyph identification.) I incorporated all of their suggestions, but I don't recall any that contradicted what we've inherited from Jacques. kwami (talk) 22:52, 17 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, you've got me sold. I really appreciate the time you took to respond and address issues. I've changed my comment to support above. -- Laser brain   (talk)  23:18, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Karanacs (talk) 02:53, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Comments. The article is much improved from its last appearance here, and much easier to digest for those of us unfamiliar with the topic.  A few comments:
 * I see several lines of whitespace after the section header for Writing media. I think this is because there are two images on top of each other and not enough text to fill in.  It would be best to move one of the images.
 * I'm also seeing lots of whitespace between the sentence "Barthel speculated that the banana leaf might have served as a prototype for the tablets, with the fluted surface of the tablets an emulation of the leaf structure:" and the quote that follows.
 * "they note that no explorer prior to Eugène Eyraud reported the script" - for those of us unfamiliar with Eyraud, it might be wise to include the dates of his expedition(s) here
 * Quotations of less than 4 lines should not be offset per WP:MOSQUOTE. There is a short one in the Discovery section


 * Date added. All the other stuff is display and browser dependent, and cannot be fixed absolutely. The quote, for example, is four lines as I see it. There's only a single blank line after the banana-leaf comment. Several people have complained about this, and some have moved the image around, only to have different people complain. I see no whitespace at all after the Media section header. This is the case using both IE and Firefox. kwami (talk) 03:03, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I checked the article on three computers, and the image spacing is an issue on one of them. If other people have also been complaining, we really need to figure out a solution to this.  Since K is considered suspect, you might want to just remove that image, which would solve the first problem.  Possibly trimming the caption on the banana leaf image could fix that white space issue. Karanacs (talk) 13:03, 18 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't think we should be removing content for aesthetics. The K image is important to show how valuable wood was on Easter Island, something which most of us find remarkable, and something which may very well have affected the structure of the script and therefore needs to be taken into account when attempting decipherment--and a large number of people reading up on RR are interested in decipherment. A little white space never hurt anyone. However, if you find some combination which solves the problem, great! I've tried various things, only to have the problems migrate to someone else. (The complaints, BTW, have been during FAC, not from regular readers.) kwami (talk) 22:08, 18 June 2008 (UTC)


 * This is a problem with small font sizes or large screen sizes on a lot of FAs. I just took a look at the planets, which are all FA (and edit protected so they don't get messed up): Most of them either have images spilling into the wrong sections, messing up the section headers, or occasionally have white space when that is prevented. We have white space here because of the clear template that I used before the quotation. It disappears if I remove the template, but then it looks bad in other ways, and is not as legible. I have no idea what the problem with the K image is; I haven't been able to replicate it. kwami (talk) 00:20, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Okay, I've cut some info from the caption. At really small font sizes (9 pica on my screen) there is still a little white space, but there isn't at larger font sizes. kwami (talk) 00:29, 19 June 2008 (UTC)


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