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Wikipedia article on Polyliteracy

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19 messages over 3 pages: 1 2
Alphathon
Groupie
Scotland
Joined 4182 days ago

60 posts - 104 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Scottish Gaelic

 
 Message 17 of 19
26 April 2015 at 1:49am | IP Logged 
schoenewaelder wrote:
Quote:
Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications

The way I read that is that there needs to be some reason to consider the person an expert, not that what is being cited also has to have appeared in a pier-reviewed journal. If it did then there would never be any reason to cite a blog or video because there would by necessity also be a paper, which would be a preferable source.

I’m pretty sure the “subject matter” in this case would merely be “linguistics”, and I’m fairly confident he’s been published on that. In some cases you might be right but in this case what he’s suggesting, as far as I can tell anyway, is merely that a particular field of study should exist (as a subset of linguistics). He isn’t proposing any models to describe languages or their acquisition or anything like that. If he were then he certainly would have to have specific expertise in those particular areas (which he may well have, I don’t know, but that’s largely irrelevant). He isn’t doing that though. Basically it’s a question of whether we should take his opinions and statements on the subject seriously.

That of course only covers whether blogs etc can be used as sources. It has no bearing on whether its inclusion would be giving it undue weight (which seems probable). Given that, if it were to go anywhere it would probably be on the Prof’s page rather than the polyglotism one.

At the end of the day though this kind of discussion is almost certainly better done on Wikipedia itself. Wikipedia advocates that people be bold in their edits and additions, so one course of action may be to just go ahead and add it and see what happens. If it turns out that its inclusion is inappropriate then it will simply be removed and there will be no harm done. Alternatively one could ask for some other opinions at the linguistics WikiProject (a group of Wikipedians devoted to improving linguistics-based articles).
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luke
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 7207 days ago

3133 posts - 4351 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Esperanto, French

 
 Message 18 of 19
26 April 2015 at 3:05pm | IP Logged 
I really appreciate your contributions to this discussion!

Alphathon wrote:
I’m pretty sure the “subject matter” in this case would merely be “linguistics”, and I’m fairly confident he’s been published on that. In some cases you might be right but in this case what he’s suggesting, as far as I can tell anyway, is merely that a particular field of study should exist (as a subset of linguistics).


I don't know think his vision is "merely" a subset of linguistics though. He's looking for a rebirth and renewal of Comparative Philology with both a broader focus and domain. As I understand it, linguistics has become extremely specialized. Professor Arguelles seems to be more in a humanistic, scholastic vein. Linguistics seems to be becoming more and more scientific.

Edited by luke on 26 April 2015 at 3:06pm

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schoenewaelder
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5562 days ago

759 posts - 1197 votes 
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch

 
 Message 19 of 19
26 April 2015 at 3:59pm | IP Logged 
Alphathon wrote:

At the end of the day though this kind of discussion is almost certainly better
done on Wikipedia itself. Wikipedia advocates that people
be bold in their
edits
and additions, so one course of action may be to just go ahead and add it and
see
what happens. If it turns out that its inclusion is inappropriate then it will
simply be removed and there will be no harm done.



They also say, if a wiki doesn't already exist, there's probably a reason.

Look at the Prof's
wiki. Much as
we love him, he is not a giant in the world of linguistics. He has published a
handful of minor dictionaries, and appears to have published no academic papers
whatsoever (I know that seems bizarre, I welcome being corrected)

To write a wiki article, you need a referenced source for every
statement you make.

I personally have never seen a reference to anything other than published
materials. I probably have only looked at a few dozen, so again, I welcome
counter examples.

I expect online refrences would be useful in a fast developing field, where an
expert updated information that was relevant to an already published work.

I know the Lîngq people tried to get a wiki started a couple of times, and they
just got deleted.

I fear you would be wasting your effort. But you could begin by adding a few
sentences, and see if they survive, before comitting yourself to an opus.

ps. You write and argue your case very nicely though. [edit: that wasn't meant
to sound condescending or imply that I thought I had won the argument despite
your better style]

Edited by schoenewaelder on 26 April 2015 at 5:24pm



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