Talk:Ethnologue

Citing sources in Ethnologue

I appreciate the additions made by @Neil P. Quinn:, adding scholarly opinions about Ethnologue. Nicely done!

In response to Hammarström's criticism, the "failure" to cite sources, I'd like to say three things. (Full disclosure, I'm one of Ethnologue's research editors, which is why I'm doing so here rather than trying to adjust the article.) 1) The criticism is not entirely accurate, in that Ethnologue does disclose its sources in many cases. See, for example, the Ethnologue article on American Sign Language, which cites four sources. Hammarström's criticism, as quoted, could give the impression that Ethnologue never cites sources, which is not accurate. Ethnologue's citation practices are described in its http://www.ethnologue.com/about/plan-site introductory articles]. So, I'd like to request that some editor address this concern in the article; it is obviously not appropriate for me to do so. 2) In the past, citations were kept to a minimum, partly to save space in an already large printed volume, and partly to make reading easier for people who are not specialists, who constitute the primary audience. (In publications for a mixed popular and scientific audience, it is common to provide fewer citations than in scholarly articles.) Now that Ethnologue is primarily an internet publication, we are working to report more sources, especially for certain types of information like population that especially need backup. 3) People are always welcome to write and ask the editor for the source of any information. For changes made in the last several years, we have been careful to keep track of all sources in our database. Unfortunately, sources were not always recorded in earlier days, but in this case, if you have better information, we welcome corrections and we will remove controversial information from the past that we can't back up. AlbertBickford (talk) 14:33, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

Now that I've read Hammerström's article, I'll add a couple more comments. 1) Hammarström makes it clear that Ethnologue does cite sources, especially in more recent editions. His concern is that it still does not provide enough citations. So, the quote given (taken from the abstract) comes across as more absolute than his more nuanced (and, in my opinion, entirely fair) position in his article. 2) He also indicates that many other similar publications (p. 735) have followed the same practice of not listing sources. It is thus clear that Ethnologue's former practice is a by-product of its origin as a print publication, where space was at a premium, and many other publications made the same choice. Changes this extensive take time. AlbertBickford (talk) 17:47, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

I completely agree with you, AlbertBickford. Ethnologue was created in an era long before the example of Glottolog et al., when the internet as a whole was lacking in sources. Just look at some of the earliest Wikipedia articles. They are virtually citation-free. Indeed, many older, shorter articles still have very, very few citations. It was certainly a different era in Wikipedia just ten years ago, not at all like today's era where some editor or other demands a citation for every single sentence. --Taivo (talk) 19:19, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

@AlbertBickford: thanks for pinging me, and sorry it's taken so long to respond. (By the way, I deeply appreciate your scruples in not editing the page directly. I know I've been tempted to edit my employer's article as well.)

I think you make a good point. To be honest, I added that quote without reading the full article (which I haven't been able to access), thinking that a quote from the first page and a citation was more useful than no mention at all. Do you think you could send me a copy so I could more accurately characterize it? My email is mail (at) myfullname (dot) com. In the meantime, I've moved the quotes out of the introduction to a separate "Reputation" section so they're not unnecessarily prominent.—Neil P. Quinn (talk) 06:57, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

@Neil P. Quinn: I tried the regular email route, and it bounced. So, I sent you an email through the Wikipedia system. AlbertBickford (talk) 22:06, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

@AlbertBickford: Thanks for sending me the article! I've (finally) read it and updated the reputation section. Let me know if you can think of any improvements. Also, I'd be very interested to know about any other scholarly sources which review Ethnologue or discuss its history and reputation.—Neil P. Quinn (talk) 19:45, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

@Neil P. Quinn: I think what you did is fair both to Ethnologue and to Hammerstrom. Thanks for doing it. I'll keep an eye out for other reviews, commentary, etc. on Ethnologue. AlbertBickford (talk) 21:57, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Relative importance of the paywall

How significant is the paywall? Important enough to include it in the lead of the article? Or, would it be better down in the main body of the article? By comparison, the articles on Encyclopedia Britannica and the New York Times do not mention income generation from their websites until later in the article. I'm guessing that the mention of the paywall in Ethnologue was stuck in the lead without much thought--or maybe because people were upset enough about it--which isn't exactly a NPOV. I recommend moving discussion of the paywall to the end of the Overview section. Comments? AlbertBickford (talk) 23:16, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

No one responded to my proposal, so I went ahead and made the change. If anyone objects, they can revert, but if so, I'd appreciate discussion of the reasons. AlbertBickford (talk) 04:13, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale · history; only one edition: 04:18, 5 November 2016‎ . (←Redirected page to Ethnologue) 24 bytes. Then its use at this article (Ethnologue) like an internal link is recusrsive and worse it's useless. I change it, now.

it's useless. I change it, now

Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale · Revision history

(cur | prev) 04:18, 5 November 2016‎ John Vandenberg (talk | contribs)‎ . . (24 bytes) (+24)‎ . . (←Redirected page to Ethnologue) (thank)
... estimate of language viability using the Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (EGIDS) · · · · · · · · versus the actual one:
... estimate of language viability using the Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (EGIDS)
Then its use at this article (Ethnologue) like an internal link is recursive and worse it's useless. I change it, now. --PLA y Grande Covián (talk) 08:56, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

only

• I've found only this caWp (wp article) about ca:Escala EGIDS; with the wikidata link: EGIDS. --PLA y Grande Covián (talk) 08:56, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

and I wanna cite here this small talk section archived

• Talk:Ethnologue/Archive 1#New reference for EGIDS

--AlbertBickford (talk) 21:31, 2 December 2014 (UTC)