Talk:Leprechaun/GA1

GA Reassessment

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GA Sweeps: On hold

As part of the WikiProject Good Articles, we're doing Sweeps to determine if the article should remain a Good article. In reviewing the article against the Good article criteria, I have found there are some issues that needs to be addressed, listed below.

Parties notified: I have notified this article's top 5 (by number of edits) editors (excluding a vandalism-only IP). I appreciate editcount does not necessarily mirror significant contributions of the content. Both bannered WikiProjects were also notified. The article talkpage update shows to anybody who has watchlisted it, too. I was unable to find out who was the original nominator in October, 2006; a user added a banner for the Paranormal wikiproject, and the parameter was just updated to GA the same day: A simpler time. If there is a primary author you would like me to notify please comment and let me know—I'll be happy to do so. Thank you. –Whitehorse1 18:58, 15 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The main difficulty in producing a strong article on such mythology subjects, is adequately covering primary written sources, portrayals in literature, and academic studies of mythographers & folklorists. The article has some problems here, which are explained further down.

Prose issues

Currently the lead does not adequately summarise the article, though this is easily fixed. Likewise the see also and pop culture sections need a little pruning. Done

In politics section

This is a small section covering depictions in tourist advertising. While it certainly belongs, its title and wording/links are only a loose fit to what the section is about. Tourism, is a key part of any country's economy. Consequently, a focus of their government is to market, promote and develop that. The title and main sentence refer to the "Politics of the Republic of Ireland" article. The section, notwithstanding that a politician lamented that advertising during a discussion in the national parliament, is not really about politics in the manner of political parties, their operations, or govermental structure. Within the wikilinked article there is no occurrence of the words tourism or visitor.

A better, more appropriate title, opening phrasing & link destination is one directly related to tourism or the accompanying tourist industry. It's good to be specific. This is what I found from a search:

The Category:Tourism in Ireland hatnote states the main article for this category is "Tourism in Ireland", which redirects to a (not particularly good) list "List of tourist attractions in Ireland", and is the most closely related, by title, on List of Ireland-related topics (the link there is "Tourist destinations in Ireland", which again redirects to the first list). There's also marketing body Tourism Ireland and a "Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism (Ireland)" article. Now it may be none of those are suitable or appropriate. I suspect, the politics article may have been selected simply due to of a lack of a suitable strong candidate at the time. The article's regular contributors are most suited to determining the best option.

Broadness, sourcing

Verification

There are 3 or 4 citation or page needed tags.
Some of the link are broken or time out for me. You can see a breakdown of link results using this tool.

The primary article problem is most content is built from portrayals in poetry and information from folktales, the primary sources:
- Samuel Lover was a poet and novelist. The Yeats featured article reads "[Yeats'] early poetry drew heavily on Irish myth and folklore..."
- The Appearance section has "According to McAnally, "He is about three feet high, and..." The Irish Wonders work by D.R. McAnally c.1888 is really an anthology, of folk tales. The traits and exploits are presented using the different tales; there's no significant analysis or comments on meaning or origin (there's a passing comment "Such a being is the Leprechawn of Ireland, a relic of the pagan mythology of that country."). ~~Incidentally, the linked Project Gutenberg has him as David Russell McAnally, while the article has David Rice?~~ The Jane Wilde work is along the same lines.
- The Thomas Keightley Fairy Mythology work is again a compendium; it does have some light background information, which it uses to introduce the tales.

To give broad encyclopedic coverage of the topic, the article needs improvement by drawing on secondary sources with analysis by academics specialising in mythology, on specifics, meanings, interpretations; translations, if applicable, should be from reliable published sources. Related GA or FA articles may be useful for ideas.

You're right, I don't have time to do this, so I suggest you delist it. - Francis Tyers ·

It may be possible for the article's contributors to overhaul and address the issue of depth during a hold period. I will leave the article on hold for seven days. If no progress is made, the article may be delisted, which can then later be renominated at WP:GAN. If you have any questions, please let me know here and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. –Whitehorse1 18:58, 15 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I was notified as one of the main contributors, although I mostly just did some rearranging and referencing. I agree that the article needs a significant amount of work. It's an interesting subject, but I don't have the time to do the research and editing right now. Lesgles (talk) 22:02, 15 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That's fine; thanks for letting me know. –Whitehorse1 19:06, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

The article has degraded quite considerably, I'm going to remove some stuff, and restore some stuff that has been removed. - Francis Tyers · 09:57, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Actually I'm just going to revert back to an older (and better) version of the article. Note: Some of the links marked as 'dead' in the -1 version are not dead (e.g. the RSF link and the sacred-texts.com links). - Francis Tyers · 10:00, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I undid that revert, because it was a significantly worse version of the article... it was full of completely unsourced claims, the reference section was wayyyy outdated with hard coded refs (it took a long time to update those to modern standards), and so forth. The current version isn't great, but at least it's not as bad as that one. DreamGuy (talk) 14:51, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Francis, thanks for the work you did on the article. I'm neutral on removing a couple of the depictions in modern culture; regardless, it certainly needed heavy pruning, for the cereal preference comments & list of mascots! Either way, the reduction of see alsos and pop trivia factoids is a definite improvement. I saw the revert and re-revert. Hmm. There are some advantages in each version over the other, though both have weaknesses. I guess a version with the legacy good stuff and none of the bad is best. –Whitehorse1 19:06, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Tom, Good call on removing the fact-tagged stuff from the middle. If and when it's found in a reliable source, then we can add it back and cite it there. Thank you for adding those journal refs; that's exactly the kind of thing we're looking for. –Whitehorse1 19:06, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Noted your later comment above, Francis. It can always be improved and renom'd at GAN later, so delisting would be okay. As Lesgles says the research'd take a little time. There've been a few other improvements since, so I'm wondering if it might be worth waiting a couple of days to see how things go, subject to suggestions otherwise. –Whitehorse1 19:06, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I spent quite a lot of time researching this originally, as far as I could find there isn't much academic level stuff written on Leprechauns, at least not that was available 1) online or 2) at my local library.

Searching for more results on "Leprechaun language" brings up:

At least two RS, and I'd say the Celtic League are reasonable people to quote. I don't particularly see why it was removed, but neither am I going to get into an edit war about it. - Francis Tyers · 12:32, 17 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I can answer that. At the time I removed it, it wasn't tied to any article text, and was just commented out. The sources (e.g. RSF) had no apparent particular focus on or study of myths and folklore. On reading the links (and I did read them before removing) I found a single occurrence of the term "leprechaun" with no coverage on the entity itself; the use referred only to an individual(s) use of the term as a pejorative for the Irish language. (I've also read the content in the previous revision.) It seemed like school playground level conduct, silliness not worthy of attention, save condemning them as unacceptable stereotyping slurs. My removal ([1]) edit summary included "... one's an allegation of a slur by a police (PSNI) officer a person was speaking "leprechaun language", nor was other substantively relevant, having a single use of term in same way". That was my thinking behind removing it.

On reading the new RS links you've given above, the term "leprechaun language" does seem a degree more prevalent, with recorded use by politicians, compared with if there were a random person appropriating an element from someone's cultural heritage to use as an insult. I'd say its omission or mention in the article, either way, could be okay. –Whitehorse1 18:19, 17 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

On academic level stuff, another editor researching managed to find and add Kane, Winberry sources to the Bibliography. The Winberry one has lots of useful material, covering Leprechauns in some depth; I didn't d'load the other. With more in the folklore section on what's said in the tales themselves, using primary sources or secondary, along with the scholarly analysis, the main GA issues will be taken care of; limits on my time mean I can't do much on it myself. If an article's seeing active progress, I don't mind being flexible and keeping the reassessment open. Let me know if this is desired. If you're really not going to have time in the immediate future though, delisting is probably the way to go. Whatever happens, various people worked to clean up the article a lot, which can only be a good thing. Thanks, Whitehorse1 21:09, 17 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Result: Delist. If the article is improved in the future it can be renominated at GAN. Thanks, Whitehorse1 17:31, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]