Talk:Internal reconstruction

message: This is less a Wikipedia article than it is an original-work treatise by a very knowledgeable expert who knows how to write essays and books for consumption by other budding experts; but quite clearly not for a merely interested reader who might happen by. The style and tone in particular are out of place, featuring narrative rhetoric and colloquialisms such as "Now, ...", and suffering at times from Wall-of-Text syndrome. GavinZac (talk) 14:58, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree.  The text is informative, but it needs its tone reworked. Ke6jjj (talk) 04:09, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  I suppose by now you've succeeded in dumbing this down?  Thanks loads!  Do you know how much money a person can spend on decent linguistics literature??  And Sihler is a master in his field!  What makes you think everyone who turns here should be "merely interested"?  -- Your complaints seem to be saying, "This is too hard for me/us (or my/our friends)."  Have you also gone and watered down the math, chemistry and physics articles so that they don't strain you?  And if not, why not?  Why is it okay to draw a mustache on this Mona Lisa but not on them?  Your attitude is very much unappreciated.  :~[   IfYouDoIfYouDon't (talk) 08:36, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Style, tone and complexity

message: (In response to IfYouDoIfYouDon't)
The information in this article is important. It is written in beautiful, flowing prose by an obvious expert in the field. It is understandable to those relevant in the art. It just doesn't conform to the norms of a good Wikipedia article.
It needn't be deleted nor dumbed down; it simply needs to be restructured.
Wikipedia is meant to be a trustworthy starting place on just about any subject. To be trustworthy it must be verifiable—meaning that any user should be able to cross-reference the statements made in the article against another trustworthy source. To be trustworthy it cannot be the sole source of a statement, it must reference other, published, material. To be a starting place no single article can delve too deeply into any subject without risking being unapproachable. These are not my requirements, nor are they GavinZac's requirements; they are Wikipedia's core principles (see WP:VERIFY, WP:ORIGINAL).
This masterful article, as it currently stands, violates these principles. This is a harsh statement. However, is not a disagreement with statements such as "Sihler is a master in his field!". It is not a call for "dumbing this down" so that it can only be read by someone who is "merely interested" in the subject, nor is it an exhortation to "draw a mustache on 'this' Mona Lisa". On the contrary! This article simply needs to be restructured.
Here's what needs to happen:
# The article's tone needs to be re-worked.
# It needs inline citations.
# It needs to be broken into more sections.
# It may need to be broken into more articles.
# The lead in needs to be shortened and summarized.
# The text might be better published as a Wikibook. (See WP:TEXTBOOK, "Wikipedia is not a textbook")
===Re-working the tone===
The article's tone (who its writer pretends to be, whom it purports to talk to, how it introduces factual data) needs to change.
It does not take a neutral point of view.
  
It directly addresses the reader,  
and even poses pedagogical questions. 
All of these examples make great copy for a textbook! I would surely read more of Sihler's texts, if I had them. The examples aren't, however, acceptable in a reference work. Wikipedia seeks to make the writer nearly invisible and pretends that the reader doesn't even have a body. A day may come when Wikipedia is engraved on the surface of an asteroid and read by an intelligent, alien race of machines who seek to understand our long-lost civilization; words like "we" and "you" make a lot of assumptions about them.
Statements that something "is interesting", or that something "should not be done" are not neutral in tone. They advocate a position, however uncontested it may be, and assign subjective values that can't be quantified. They don't make good encyclopedic facts. What would make a good statement? Perhaps something like,
and so on.
===Adding in-line citations===
There is one in-line citation provided in this entire article and I must admit, it is a miserable link to a Powerpoint presentation of a class outline of linguistics course at UNC that I added mere hours ago. This article contains hundreds of blanket statements which deserve citations. It needs citations not just to inject more authority into the discussion, but also to help interested readers explore the ideas behind the statements in more depth. They might introduce the reader to other books and websites dedicated to the subject. Without further clarification, we have to assume that all of the text in this article is just Sihler's original research. 
===Breaking into more sections, sub-sections===
As GavinZac noted, this article suffers from "Wall-of-Text syndrome". It engages the reader for paragraphs and paragraphs (nine in one case) without taking a break to produce a heading, or any other navigation aid, that allows an interested reader to skip over sections they already are familiar with or allows a hurried (but knowledgeable) reader to jump into a section containing information they really need. In short, it's just hard to navigate.
Wall-of-Text is curable. The cure comes from creating sections and sub-sections. Introduce a topic in a section, then show examples, counter-examples, and debates within. Move on to the next topic with a new section.
===Breaking into more articles===
Sometimes a concept is so complex that it warrants breaking the article into several articles. This subject could be one of them. Perhaps "Latin" and "English" under the "Examples" section could become new articles: "Internal reconstruction of English" and "Internal reconstruction of Latin".
===Shortening the lead in===
The article's lead in needs to be shortened and summarized. The sentences that read "For example, ..." need to be moved elsewhere. An introduction is meant to introduce, not to tell a life story. Examples are great...in later sections.
===Publishing as a Wikibook===
Finally, if all of these fixes are just too hard to bear, consider moving the article, as is, into a Wikibook. Wikibooks are maintained by the Wikimedia foundation, have tremendous prestige, and are free (as in beer) for all to read for countless generations. This article is already in textbook style and would make a great start as a Wikibook.
Ke6jjj (talk) 01:31, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Why style, tone, and complexity matter

message: Finally, if all of these fixes are just too hard to bear, consider moving the article, as is, into a Wikibook. Wikibooks are maintained by the Wikimedia foundation, have tremendous prestige, and are free (as in beer) for all to read for countless generations. This article is already in textbook style and would make a great start as a Wikibook.
Ke6jjj (talk) 01:31, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Publishing as a Wikibook

message: Why has someone messed up the spelling in the Spanish example? If you want a phonemic spelling, use the IPA. There's no need to go messing around with orthography.101.166.150.53 (talk) 14:07, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spanish Spelling 

message: As of revision 577155539, the article still references examples in Samoan, which were removed in 2010. I propose that the references go.
LLarson (talk) 15:54, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Either that or some expert(s) rework it entirely. Citations are needed anyway. 151.177.58.208 (talk) 12:20, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Samoan examples 

message: meet and bleed actually are denominal verbs, though meet is much more common than moot in modern English, and read is a strong verb, so it shouldn't be in this list. In German, senden is in both classes. phma (talk) 23:03, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  ''-t'' and ''-ted'' verbs