Talk:History of the family

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Former good article nomineeHistory of the family was a Social sciences and society good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
July 25, 2009Good article nomineeNot listed

{{helpme}}

Untitled

Thank you for any/all suggestions and help. English is not my native language and this is just a rough draft.Koliber (talk) 21:47, 9 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Where is the article? This should be on your talk page. --The New Mikemoral ♪♫ 21:53, 9 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Draft review

Good start - needs a "to do" task list for different members and input (content) from them. Current content looks good but (1) reference to "wiki polygamy" is not good - Wikipedia is not considered an acceptable reference for itself - see Wikipedia:CIRCULAR (2) raw http references should be properly formatted (author, name, last access date, etc.) - see Wikipedia:CITE. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 02:53, 15 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]


TO DO

Califae work on the changes in post-industrial family section, and anything else that comes to mind Koliber work on the intro paragraph (and anything else that comes to mind)

What other sections could we introduce ??? Is the scope good ??? --130.49.234.36 (talk) 15:09, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:History of the family/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Hey everyone. I'll be reviewing this article for possible GA status. Cheers, Nikkimaria (talk) 22:37, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, this article is not yet at GA status. You are welcome to try to get it to standard; I will leave it on hold to allow you time to work on it. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:24, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Writing and formatting

This article is problematic from the writing standpoint in that it mixes specialized terminology with grammatical errors. Both should be avoided, per WP:Jargon and WP:MoS respectively. These issues need to be fixed before the article can reach GA status.

  • The lead is highly specialized, and assumes a detailed knowledge of sociology on the part of the reader - a requirement that, in most cases, won't be met. Per WP:Lead, the article's lead should be a general overview/introduction to the subject, and specialized terminology should be avoided.
  • There are a number of problems with your section headings. WP:Name is used for section headings as well as article titles, and I would advise you to take a look at it. Additionally, these section titles are at times so long as to become unwieldly, and some (notably "Methodology") are arguably not the best choice for an encyclopedic article.
  • Despite the fact that "universal" starts with a vowel, convention advocates "a" instead of "an"
  • Consider using "patrilineal" instead of "patrilinear"
  • In the phrase "roman law", Roman should be capitalized
  • By convention, when the short note-long ref format for referencing is used, a) it is used for all references, and b) the second of the two is titled "References" (the first is usually "Notes" or "Footnotes").
  • "based on theory of the three stages of human progress" - are these his theories, his theory, general theories, or a general theory? Please specify.
  • "inspiration for Friedrich Engels book" - need an apostrophe
  • "expanded the scope of Morgan's interest including..." - needs editing for clarity + grammar
  • "The 1960 book by Philippe Ariès Centuries of Childhood sparked new interest in the history of the family studies" - edit for clarity + grammar
  • "childhood as a modern invention that emerged in conjugal family when the role of the family changed to become more private" - clarity + grammar
  • "genealogy of the family of Greek Gods" - are they all in the same family? This should be made clear.
  • "In ancient Greek tradition Hesiod in his Works and Days poem traces the lineage of the mankind" - awkward, should be edited
  • "In the Bible the account of Judeo-Christian creation story is in the Book of Genesis and the genealogy is shown in patrilinear tradition from first men Adam to Noah, from Noah to Abraham, from Abraham to David and from David to Jesus and the Holy Family" - run-on sentence, edit for clarity
  • "The Bible often references to" -> "often references" or "often makes references to"
  • "under the roman law.[12] In the Roman times" - remove both "the"s
  • "Methodology" needs editing for clarity, but its inclusion in its current state is, IMO, unencyclopedic. This is not a research paper, nor is it specifically an article regarding sociological practice/research (such as Sociology of the family).
  • Creation needs to be disambiguated
  • All later sections need internal links
  • Specialized terminology should be linked, explained, or omitted
  • "joint family household system" should be italicized, not quoted
  • "high mortality rights" - do you mean "high mortality rates"?
  • In "post-industrial", only the last two sentences actually deal with the post-industrial era
  • This page is an orphan, as no other articles link to it

Accuracy and verifiability

  • "The 1960 book by Philippe Ariès Centuries of Childhood sparked new interest in the history of the family studies" - according to what reliable source?
  • No other issues noted

Broad

The article does not meet this criterion. It is Western-focused, does not deal with the entire historical period in which the family existed, and is focused largely on the sociology viewpoint.

Neutral

  • As stated above, the article is focused on the Western conception of the family
  • Look at WP:Weasel - certain words add an editorial bias to the article and should be avoided

Stable

No issues noted

Images

This article may benefit from the addition of another image or two, particularly in the lead; however, that is not required for GA status. The image is tagged correctly.

Comments from a second WP editor

  • I am happy with all of the above. I wanted to add a couple of things.
  • First, I would emaphsise Nikkimaria's comments about the use of technical language - words like "neolocality" or "patrilocality" will be completely unfamiliar to almost all readers and will need explanation (wikilinks are not enough when it gets this technical).
  • Second, I endorse the comments about scope. "History of the family" is a huge topic, crossing disciplines, the globe and recorded history. Of course you would not be able to traverse such broad terrain in the weeks available, so it is inevitable in that regard that this could not be a GA, but it hopefully lays the groundwork for an important encyclopaedia article that, remarkably, did not already exist.
  • I allowed myself to use your phrase in the lead, I like it. ThanksKoliber (talk) 19:49, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Third, I will leave an issue to Piotrus, but I would want to check that this material is not direct quotes from the cited sources. If it is, it needs to be surrounded by quotation marks. Some of the language here sounds like the original scholarly references to me, especially in the"Organization of pre-industrial families" section.
  • Third, in contrast to some of the other assignment articles, this piece is very carefully crafted and more properly referenced. So long as it is in the editors' own words, it is an excellent piece of work in that respect. hamiltonstone (talk) 00:56, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Quickly addressing the second point: I think it is feasible to assume that a team of five editors working over the period of a month and a half, in theory, should be able to write a GA-class article. I think it is possible for this article to reach close to a GA level.
  • As for the third point, I don't see evidence of copyvio or plagiarism, but one sentence is borderline ([1]) and should be rewritten. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 03:53, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks so much for the specific pointers. I will try to fix the English grammar stuff and overtechnicallity ASAP. In regards to the scope it is more problematic because the subject is huge. I am still not sure if this should be written as the history of scientific theories and studies of the family or family as such throughout eons and cultures to which I would say good luck I am out :) too complicated and not particularly objective. Thank you again for the comments and especially Hamiltonstone for your kind words. Koliber (talk) 17:20, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Interesting, you picked up on the thought I had as a read it - is this about the history of the family, or about the history of family studies, or about the study of the history of the family (not the same thing). Rather than wrestle with this question right now, just stick to your original thoughts and improve it from there. There can always be another future discussion about whether the title and scope are precisely correct. Good work. hamiltonstone (talk) 00:08, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • All of those are notable but different subjects, hence I'd suggest concentrating on the history of the family, as other subjects should be covered in separate articles. That, of course, does not preclude discussing them here till such articles are created, and it would certainly improve the article. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 17:00, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

English troubles

English is not my first language. I am trying my best to write in grammatical English but... you can see yourself it is not working very well. I especially have a hard time with the "the". Please feel free to correct it because I cannot, I just don't see it. Writing in Polish would be much easier, oh well...Koliber (talk) 18:51, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I totally sympathize with that. Hopefully the rest of your group members, who are native speakers of English, will be able to help you with that. You could also ask for help from the Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 17:02, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Further suggestions

An argument for nature

Cali, I think that the argument for nature fragment is unnecessary, but I don't want to remove it. I think it is an archaic language and concept as well an quite irrelevantKoliber (talk) 18:20, 26 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

How is it relevant to the article, particularly considering the data (1904!)? Now, sometimes citing old sources make sense, if they are important for the later discussion, but I would like to hear a justification for that quote here. Do note that quotations of little relevance to the article should be moved to wikiquote. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 20:39, 26 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't write that part so therefore I do not want to delete it. I think deletion should be discussed with the person who wrote that segment. Am I correct on this?--Koliber (talk) 01:02, 27 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It would be vastly preferable, yes. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 15:47, 27 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Further feedback

There are still some problems with grammar and technicality, but the main problem with the article as it stands is breadth. You've done a much better job with referencing than most of the other groups. I would suggest cutting the "Argument for Nature" section, possibly incorporating some of the main ideas into the rest of the text. At this point, the main thing standing between this article and GA status is the scope. Perfect writing would be nice, but it's a secondary issue. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:04, 30 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I was trying to expand it a little bit to include LGBT family but that subject is HUGE and I certainly as novice would not do good job in finding neutral sources, plus the LGBT parenting has a fine article on wiki, so instead I just put it as a link. I am not sure if the genetic genealogy section is pushing it, seems to me a little bit, but I will leave it for now. Any idea about the breadth, which direction should it be expanded. I have time until tomorrow, thanksKoliber (talk) 22:58, 30 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
As I see it, there are two major areas in which it could be expanded. First, there's the "controversy / evolution" stuff - rising divorces rates, interracial, laws about marriage, adoption, etc. This might be tricky for a new user, considering the potential for arguing/vandalism/NPOV violations. The second would be worldview - the Latino, Native American, African and Asian family, its evolution, etc. Either, though, would take a considerable amount of work. The article also needs to cover all of history, from the emergence of prehistoric kin groups to the present, and that's a whole other target for expansion. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:47, 31 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
History of the family
  • What is the proper unit for the study of history of the family — the individual? Group? The civilization? The culture?
  • Are there broad patterns and progress? How to present a universal family history?

This box is not very encyclopedic; remember - encyclopedia is not a textbook. If those questions can be referenced and attributed, and/or rewritten to an encyclopedic style, they could stay, but if not, the box should go. Rule of thumb: encyclopedias should give answers, not ask questions :) --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 21:34, 1 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The question box definitely should go, and some of those "see also"s should be in the body of the text instead of the see also section. The most important thing for you to do at this point is to pick a focus and stick to it. You're currently trying to cover the actual history of the family AND the history of family studies equally. You can include the history of family studies as part of the history of the family if you like, but they should be integrated together. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:49, 4 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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