Talk:Inanna/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Seraphim System (talk · contribs) 05:04, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)
It is reasonably well written. a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists): It is factually accurate and verifiable. a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism): It is broad in its coverage. a (major aspects): b (focused): It follows the neutral point of view policy. Fair representation without bias: It is stable. No edit wars, etc.: It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate. a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
Overall: Pass/Fail:
· · ·

1a:

• "Seal impressions from the Jemdet Nasr period (ca. 3100–2900 BC) show a fixed sequence of symbols representing various cities, including those of Ur, Larsa, Zabalam, Urum, Arina, and probably Kesh. This list probably reflects the report of contributions to Inanna at Uruk from cities supporting her cult. A large number of similar seals have been discovered from the slightly later Early Dynastic I phase at Ur, in a slightly different order, combined with the rosette symbol of Inanna, that were definitely used for this purpose. These seals were used to lock storerooms to preserve materials set aside for her cult."

— hard to follow. Also, the citation is missing the page number.

• "The myth of Inanna's assumption of the me from Enki, has been interpreted as a late addition to Sumerian mythology, possibly associated with the archaeologically confirmed eclipse in the importance of Eridu and the rise of the importance of Uruk at the end of the Ubaid period.

― can be broken up into two sentences "It might..."

• "These difficulties led some early Assyriologists to suggest that Inanna may have originally been a Proto-Euphratean goddess, possibly related to the Hurrian mother goddess Hannahannah, who was only later accepted into the Sumerian pantheon, an idea supported by Inanna's youthfulness, and as well as the fact that, unlike the other Sumerian divinities, she seems to have initially lacked a distinct sphere of responsibilities."

― this sentence should be broken up.

General Comments:

• A standard citation system is preferable.
• Jargon terms like syncretism and ligature should be linked. I've added these as minor reviewer copy edits.

Review is in progress, more later.

I have read your comments and criticisms and have attempted to address all the specific ones. I have broken up the sentences that you said needed to be broken up and tried to revise some of the sentences you thought were unwieldy to make them easier to understand.

The reason why some of the citations lack page numbers is because those citations were here before I came along and the people who left them did not specify the page numbers. Because I do not have copies of those books, I have not been able to find the page numbers. Luckily, I was able to find the page number of the book in the specific instance that you pointed out above by finding the book on Google books. It took me about half an hour to find the page number, but I did find it and I have now added it to the citation. For all the citations I have added, I have always made sure to include the page numbers.

The reason why the citation style is inconsistent is because I have tried to implement the snf template in this article, but, prior to my arrival, the article did not have a consistent citation style. I have tried to convert some of the old citations to snf format, but I have not yet converted all of them. As I understand it, consistent citation format is not a requirement for good articles and is only a requirement for featured article candidates.

I greatly appreciate your quick response and your extensive criticism. The last good article I nominated was ancient Greek literature. It took almost four months to find a reviewer and, after a reviewer finally showed up, all he did was add a few "citation neededs." Then he immediately failed the article without providing much further explanation of what needed to be improved. This is only my second good article nomination, so try to be patient if there is anything I have misunderstood. --Katolophyromai (talk) 16:27, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Unfortunately I can't pass the article at this time, there are some problems with 2b, 2c, and possibly 3a, including an 1878 Astronomy book. In particular, regarding Venus/Aphrodite, I think some consideration should be given to whether this discussion should be expanded or removed entirely. This would depend on its treatment in sources about Inanna. It will not be enough to say "The planet is associated with Venus in Rome, and with Inanna in Sumerian mythology" - if this is a significant issue in comparative mythology, then maybe it should be discussed but it will have to sourced to relevant sources and care should be taken to avoid dated sources and WP:SYNTH.

Regarding 3b, overly detailed - there are some very short subsections in the mythology sections, in particular "The Humbling of Gudam" which from the text in the article does not seem essential. I think the article would benefit from some non-trivial reorganization, perhaps by source as in: Thor, or another option to consider Kali, Myrrha (these are three examples of WP:Mythology GA articles)

I have a few addtional suggestions as well:

• the text sandwich issue at the very least needs to be resolved
• move the etymology section before the origins section for consistency since this is the convention followed by most of our articles
• please link gala naturally in the text
• I don't think the photo of the planet Venus is necessary. The WP:CAPTION is not really appropriate or verifiable, and there is already a great image for the Venus association. I don't think we need two, and we already have a lot of images relative to the text.

copyediting:

• "It might be associated with the archaeologically confirmed eclipse in the importance of Eridu and the rise of the importance of Uruk" ... would change this to declined, Eridu was eclipsed by Uruk (presumably) but the use in the sentence is somewhat awkward.
• "the widely respected scholar Samuel Noah Kramer" - identify Kramer's expertise without using peacock terms
• "In his book The Sacred Marriage Rite, the widely respected scholar Samuel Noah Kramer proposes that, in late Sumerian history, towards the end of the third millennium B.C., kings of Uruk may have established their legitimacy by taking on the role of the shepherd Dumuzid, Inanna's consort in the temple for one night on the tenth day of the Akitu, the Sumerian new year festival, which was celebrated annually at the spring equinox." - this sentence has a few issues. First it is a run on sentence that should be broken up. Another is that elsewhere in the article BC is used, so it would be preferably for this to be consistent (instead of B.C. here).

• citations that need page numbers:

3, 15, 16, 17 I haven't failed it because the citations lack page numbers, though it does make it considerably more difficult in terms of checking for WP:V and WP:OR if neither the reviewer nor the nominator know the page numbers, so it would be beneficial to future reviewers if editors could address this before renomination. If the page numbers for these sources can't be found, the content could be cited to other sources that are available. Seraphim System ^(talk) 22:05, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

@Seraphim System: I have now addressed nearly all of your complaints:

1. I have removed the part talking about how Aphrodite and Venus were both identified with the planet Venus as well as the reference to the 1878 astronomy textbook. That brief statement was not really pertinent to the subject of the article and I only left it there because I thought it might give the readers some useful context.
2. I resolved the "text sandwich" you keep talking about over two weeks ago with this edit ([1]) in which I moved the modern illustration down so that it is no longer near the image of the Sumerian clay tablet.
3. I have now moved the "Etymology" section to before the "Origins" section. I was not aware that this was the standard organization until you informed me.
4. I have worked the link to the article gala (priests) into the main paragraph. I also conducted some minor revisions to the part talking about asexual and hermaphroditic persons involved in the cult of Inanna. Finally, as an added bonus, I have added specific page numbers to all citations to Gwendolyn Leick's book Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literature, which I was able to find on Google books.
5. I have deleted the photograph of the planet Venus. I did not think there was any problem with it and I actually added it because I thought the image would help the article pass good article review. I suppose I was wrong. In any case, it has now been removed.
6. I have addressed all of your copyediting concerns and removed the phrases you referred to as "peacock terms." I also changed the one instance of "B.C." to "BC." I thought I had already changed all the instances of "B.C." to "BC," but apparently I missed this one.

There are only two criticisms you have presented which I have not yet addressed, but which I am planning to address within the next few days:

1. I have not yet done anything about the section on the "Humbling of Gudam" because I was not sure what you want me to do with it. Do you want me to just delete it entirely?
2. I have not yet tracked down page numbers for what are now citations 3, 18, and 19. I have tracked down the page numbers for citation 16.

Now that nearly all these complaints have been safely addressed, I would like to inquire if you have any other specific reasons why you failed the article. I am hoping to nominate it again within the next few days and would like to know that I have adequately repaired all the problems you noticed.

I appreciate that you've worked in the suggestions. Most of these were intended as suggestions (as for the image of Venus, for me the picture is "Venus reflected over the Pacific Ocean" and the caption veers on historical interpretative fiction) - I think there are plenty of images to satisfy the GA criteria. The main issue for me was the casual introduction of comparative mythology, perhaps leaving this out is a good idea, which seems to be what you have chosen to do. The other issue which is not an easy fix is the Mythology section. I have looked though other GA articles for deities and noticed that they have made the sources of the legend clear in the subject heading, instead of breaking it up into very short sections for each myth (like Ovid in Myrrha and Prose Edda in Thor). My strong suggestion would be to review how other GA articles have tackled this issue. (Also minor issue, "Enki and the World Order" should be italicized, I will change this.) A link to Enheduanna somewhere outside the navbox and bibliography would be a good start. Seraphim System ^(talk) 04:04, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

@Seraphim System: The myths are already divided on the basis of sources. Each of the myths comes from a different Sumerian poem, most of them only containing that particular myth. (The only exception to this rule is the myth of "Inanna and the Huluppu Tree," which comes from the prologue to the epic poem Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld.) Unlike later mythologies such as Greek and Norse, we do not have the names of the authors of most of these compositions (Inanna and Ebih is an exception to this rule since we do know that particular poem was written by the Akkadian poetess Enheduanna.) I could perhaps rename the titles of all the sections after the poems they come from to make this point more obvious, but that would not be very difficult at all. In fact, most of the sections are already named after the titles of the poems from which the myths are known. The only ones that are not named after these poems are ones whose headings I deliberately changed simply because most of the titles of the poems are merely the names of the major characters involved in the myths they describe, which says extremely little about the actual content of the myths themselves. This is because the titles of the poems were assigned to them by modern scholars who were apparently not feeling particularly descriptive. The titles of the poems mentioned in the article are as follows, in the order that they are discussed: Enki and the World Order, "Inanna and the Huluppu Tree" (part of Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld), Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, Inanna and Enki, Inanna and Ebih, Inanna and Shukaletuda, Inanna and Gudam, Inanna and An, The Courtship of Inanna and Dumuzid, and Inanna's Descent into the Underworld. If I were to change all the headings to match these titles, the name "Inanna" would wind up in the heading for almost every section, which I thought would be quite redundant. --Katolophyromai (talk) 04:55, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Ok, I understand why you've organized it like this, and I see that at the moment some of the sections are sources only to primary sources. I think sitting down with a high quality, thorough secondary source will help with due weight. For example, I've checked numerous sources and few of them discuss Shukaletuda at length. In all, there are a lot of primary "texts" here - I don't think all of them will need to be mentioned. Dumuzi is major and discussed at length by all the secondary sources I have looked at, as is the descent into the underworld. I think something like Inanna and Shukaletuda could be condensed, most sources I see discuss it in two or three sentences. In this 2013 Routledge source I see a different version of the myth with a date palm, and Inanna visits the garden [2] - I don't think all the pages are available on Google Books but if you can acquire it, it may be helpful. This source (or something like it) - a good, recent, thorough overview secondary source will help with evaluating due weight, and summarizing the state of current scholarship of why the myth is significant and where (scholars think) it fits in with the other myths in the broader narrative. Enheduanna should probably be discussed somewhere, as she is hugely significant. Seraphim System ^(talk) 05:11, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! I really appreciate all your help and advice. I will admit that most of my sources are fairly dated; I have been relying heavily on Kramer, even though he is almost half a century old at this point. I may ask more questions later, but for now I will try to acquire some more recent sources on the subject and work on the suggestions you have already given. --Katolophyromai (talk) 05:59, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Image Review

One thing I notice is there are a lot of images in this article and in two places they create a text sandwich which we don't want. For an article like this with so many images available that are of historic value I think an image gallery might be a good option. For the lede photo, would you consider something stronger then fragment of a stone plaque possibly showing Inanna? Maybe the Burney relief or one of the seals Seraphim System ^(talk) 18:23, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

I do not really like image galleries because I generally feel that it is better to try to incorporate the images into the text. I may be able to eliminate the "sandwich" you are referring to by rearranging the images a little bit. The reviewer on the peer review made a comment about the "sandwich," but I did not think it was a big enough issue to require immediate attention. If it really comes down to it, I suppose I would be willing to include an image gallery, but I would prefer to try to avoid it if possible.

The reason why the plaque is currently the main image is because, according to Collins, this plaque is possibly the oldest surviving depiction of Inanna. The original main image for this article was a photograph of the Ishtar Vase, but the editor who helped with the peer review commented that it would be better to use an actual Sumerian depiction of Inanna rather than an Old Babylonian depiction of Ishtar, her Semitic counterpart. The reason I have not made the Burney Relief the main image is because it is Old Babylonian, not Sumerian, and scholars dispute whether it represent Ishtar or Ereshkigal. I would be fine with making one of the seals the main image, though. Collins states that the Adda Seal (the one showing Inanna, Utu, Enki, and Isimud) is another possible early depiction. Personally, though, I favor the seal showing Inanna and Ninshubur. --Katolophyromai (talk) 20:43, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Ok, those are good justifications for the lede image. Text sandwiches become a problem for those who use netbooks and chromebooks especially. Some of the images should be resized, like the vase image is huge. Also the "part of a series on" sidebar seems out of place. A good place should be found for it that is not too cluttered. In general, I agree that the text should match the images but sometimes too many images becomes cluttered, especially with the shorter sections that we have in this article, some of the images are not even lined up with the text. Two images I see that could easily be removed are the fantasy painting and the planet Venus. There are three images of seals, I will take a closer look at those in a bit. Seraphim System ^(talk) 21:09, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

I edit mainly using a laptop computer with a fairly wide screen, so I was not really aware of the problems that may be caused by "image sandwiches" on smaller screens. I agree that the picture of the planet Venus and the modern illustration of Inanna's descent into the Underworld could potentially be removed, but I would prefer to try to keep them if possible. I added the image of the modern illustration because I wanted to show the myth's continued relevance to modern audiences. The reason why I added the image of the planet Venus was because I wanted to place it underneath the image of the kudurru for comparison purposes. I have tried moving the image of the modern illustration down so that the text will not be sandwiched between that image and the image of the clay tablet of "The Courtship of Inanna and Dumuzid."

I do not want to get rid of any of the images of the seals, because I think those are very important for illustrating the text and they are some of the oldest surviving depictions we have of these deities. I do not like the "Part of a series on" templates at all. They only seem to take up space that could be better used for other purposes. I would prefer to simply remove it. The problem is that the article being listed in the template seems to mean that the template needs to be somewhere in the article. --Katolophyromai (talk) 23:44, 30 June 2017 (UTC)