Wikipedia:Peer review/International Phonetic Alphabet/archive2

International Phonetic Alphabet

I'm refiling a peer review for this article. We started a sort of cleanup drive a few months ago in order to improve it, and the article has really come a long way. Many editors have done a lot of work on it. I'd like some response to how well the article shapes up, and what needs to be fixed (I'm already looking into the {{fact}} parts). Thanks. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 22:25, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

• Remove the "For a treatment of the English language using the IPA..." paragraph from the lead. It's irrelevant to a general article on the International Phonetic Alphabet.
  • Done. It's mentioned in the nav template anyway. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 18:18, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
• History section is too short. I think it should also adress a few of the most important revisions, for example the 1989 one. Also, the most recent addition (labiodental flap) could be mentioned (it is only alluded to in some footnotes).
  • I added more info to this. It was a little sloppy, but the section was quickly cleaned up by User:Skal and a few others. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 18:18, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
• I think this article would also need to cover the policy governing changes and additions to the IPA. It is my understanding that linguists can propose new symbols (on the basis of their own research), and that these proposals subsequently are voted on by the IPA Council. However, any details are unknown to me, and it would be nice if this article covered this procedure.
• The section on Educational initiatives seems very vague to me. 'There is some interest' -- where? 'The rationales for such projects' -- it would be better to specifically name some of them. Also, there are some well-known projects based on rationales 1 and 2 (for example the UCLA Archive), but I would be curious to know a project based on the 3rd rationale given ('universal language acquisition').
  • This section was mostly written by a single editor, I'll find them and request references. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 18:18, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
• The statement "The labiodental nasal [ɱ] is not known to exist as a phoneme in any language." is rightly marked with {{fact}}; in fact, I think Constance Kutsch-Lojenga has argued for its existence in some central African languages she worked on; I'll try to find a reference for that.
  • I'm hiding it with <!--these things--> until we can reference it. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 18:18, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
• The section on "Unicode and tonal symbols" seems out of place to me. I would expect it in one of our articles on Unicode, but not in our most general article on the IPA. It's too specific.
  • These were originally footnotes, but they were so large that I made them into a seperate section. Perhaps we'll begin migrated a good deal of this info to the correct article. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 18:18, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
• In "Other phonetic notation" (shouldn't that be notations?), it might also be good to mention a few well-known historical phonetic alphabets, such as Lepsius' Standard Alphabet and Westermann's Africa Alphabet.
  • I am going to create a subsection of "See Also" which shows other phonetic systems. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 22:09, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
• I must say don't really like the See also's for Dutch and English, especially because both currently are requested to be merged into their respective "X phonology" articles. Besides, why only these two languages?
  • Well, I'm keeping them there until they become merged or whatever happens. IMHO, there should be a few of these articles on different languages. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 22:09, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
• That'll be all for now. — mark ✎ 08:37, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

• Comments. I can't speak to the content, but the structure needs some improvement. Per WP:LEAD the lead should be 3-4 full paragraphs summarizing the most important facets of the topic. The prose overall is very choppy. Part of this is from the short paragraphs that should either be expanded into a full idea, merged with related material, or removed. Some of the problem is also from having so many lists. Convert lists and bullet points to prose wherever possible — I don't really see any that couldn't be done, the charts already summarize the material that isn't ideal to be in prose. - Taxman ^Talk 14:49, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

  User:Ikiroid had asked me for more detail on what the lead should cover, and I'm not sure I can help more specifically. That would have to be handled by those that know the subject well to prioritize what's most important to cover and to summarize the article. The current lead does seem to do that pretty well to me at least. The biggest thing left I can see, as I mentioned above is the flow of the prose throughout the article needs to be improved. - Taxman ^Talk 03:55, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

  One thing I think should be added to the lead is a sentence or two on the history, since the lead should function as a short summary of the article per WP:LEAD. — mark ✎ 13:40, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

The following suggestions were generated by a semi-automatic javascript program, and might not be applicable for the article in question.

• Per WP:CONTEXT and WP:MOSDATE, months and days of the week generally should not be linked. Years, decades, and centuries can be linked if they provide context for the article.
• Per WP:MOSNUM, when doing conversions, please use standard abbreviations: for example, miles -> mi, kilometers squared -> km², and pounds -> lb.
• Please reorder/rename the last few sections to follow guidelines at WP:GTL.
• Please alphabetize the interlanguage links.
• Per WP:WIAFA, this article's table of contents (ToC) maybe too long- consider shrinking it down by merging short sections or using a proper system of daughter pages as per WP:SS.
• This article may need to undergo summary style, where a series of appropriate subpages are used. For example, if the article is United States, than an appropriate subpage would be History of the United States, such that a summary of the subpage exists on the mother article, while the subpage goes into more detail.
• There are a few occurrences of weasel words in this article- please observe WP:AWT. Certain phrases should specify exactly who supports, considers, believes, etc., such a view. For example,
  • it has been
  • correctly
  • might be weasel words, and should be provided with proper citations (if they already do, or are not weasel terms, please strike this comment).
• Watch for redundancies that make the article too wordy instead of being crisp and concise. (You may wish to try Tony1's redundancy exercises.)
  • Vague terms of size often are unnecessary and redundant - “some”, “a variety/number/majority of”, “several”, “a few”, “many”, “any”, and “all”. For example, “All pigs are pink, so we thought of a number of ways to turn them green.”
• As done in WP:FOOTNOTE, footnotes usually are located right after a punctuation mark (as recommended by the CMS, but not mandatory), such that there is no space inbetween. For example, the sun is larger than the moon [2]. is usually written as the sun is larger than the moon.[2]
• Please provide citations for all of the {{fact}}s.
• Please ensure that the article has gone through a thorough copyediting so that the it exemplifies some of Wikipedia's best work. See also User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 2a.

You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions for further ideas. Thanks, Ruhrfisch 14:21, 13 October 2006 (UTC)