Talk:Toki Pona/GA3

GA Review

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Reviewer: IJzeren Jan (talk · contribs) 14:17, 10 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The article has been much improved recently, and it would be great if this article could be reworked into a Good Quality article, but in my opinion it still has a long way to go. First of all, the article in its current state leans too heavily on primary sources, which is a pity, since there are better sources available. Furthermore, there is an obvious disbalance between the sections: some of them are ultrashort, others are over-filled with irrelevant info. At last, I see discrepancies between the contents of the infobox, the rest of the article and the categories it has been placed in. To be more specific:

The introduction is rather short. The first paragraph(s) should give a brief overview of what the rest of the text is about. Instead, I see several challenging facts being presented there, some of which are not elaborated in the article at all.
The article contains several extremely short sections. What the article lacks, however, is a history section.
The writing system really deserves better than just a few lines of text. The infobox mentions a syllabary, which is not mentioned in the article at all, the hieroglyphs are mentioned only in passing, only to appear a few sections later in the form of an image. Elsewhere in the article writing TP in Hangul is mentioned (why?). It is not explained at all what the purpose of these different writing systems is, nor whether they are actually used and what for. Also, the text: "Because of the structure of the language it can theoretically be written in any script" is kind of stating the obvious, since practically any language can be written in practically any script.
It does not become really clear what exactly the purpose of the language is. According to the introduction, TP is "designed to shape the thought processes of its users", the infobox mentions "testing principles of minimalism, the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis and pidgins". The infobox classifies TP as "a constructed language, combining elements of the subgenres personal language and philosophical language", the introduction states that it "is not designed as an international auxiliary language", yet the article has been placed in both categories International auxiliary languages and Engineered languages, but not in the category Artistic languages.
TP is known to be inspired by Taoism, but except for mentioning this very fact in the introduction, it is not explained why and how.
The infobox mentions 3,500 online users, but no source for that is given. Earlier versions of the article suggest that this number refers to the membership of the Facebook group. There is, however, one problem with that: there's no way joining a group on Facebook makes a person a speaker or even a user of a language, lots of people join groups without ever even looking at them. It would be best to mention a number that has been established by some neutral, reliable source. The number of members of the Facebook group can of course be given in the article, as long as it's mentioned explicitly what it refers to. People can draw their own conclusions, then.
The community section, on the other hand, is over-detailed, and all references but one point to primary sources, basically making this entire section original research. It would be better to stick to information that is relevant. There's no need to mention trivialities like informal meetings of a few people, presentations that have mentioned or discussed the subject or various places on the Internet where it has been talked about.
Some of the footnotes do not match the information referenced. For example, the statement that "Lang has translated parts of the Tao Te Ching into English and Esperanto" is provided with a footnote, but the article in question does not mention this at all. Same goes for footnote #30, which mentions a talk with this title but doesn't say anything about Toki Pona.
The Research section could do with some expansion. Instead of mentioning that TP has been used in certain studies, one might as well mention the conclusions of that research. In general, I think this information would rather belong to a broader section about "usage" or "history".
The article doesn't say anything about the brief existence of a Wikipedia in Toki Pona, nor about the existence of its successor on Wikia.
Although the workings of the language are explained in some detail, it still doesn't become clear how (or: if) TP makes it possible to communicate using just ±120 words. Even the relatively short article in German is more informative here. Also, the sourcing is clearly insufficient here.
No sources are given for the sample texts, so it is completely unclear where these texts come from and whether they are official or even correct. Also, if you want to name the translators, use real names and not some internal Internet handles.
The External links section is too much of a link farm, yet lacks a link to substantial information about the language itself, like a grammar and a dictionary. Even tokipona.org doesn't contain much more than a link to a commercial website.

Hope this helps! —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 14:17, 10 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a Toki Pona syllabary? — Jonathan Gabel's "syllabary" is a misnomer, since each segmental phoneme is represented by a consistent, unchanging grapheme (unlike in hiragana and katakana, for instance, which are syllabaries). Jonathan Gabel's "syllabary" is a true alphabet, even if it uses glyphs that are syllable-length (like Hangul, which is a true alphabet as well). Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 15:14, 10 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for the comments; I believe all of the points have been resolved by now. Would you be so kind as to provide us with any further thoughts and remarks? Ddrahoslav (talk) 18:52, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@IJzeren Jan: I am just pinging you to see whether you are still interested in reviewing the GA nomination. Ddrahoslav (talk) 22:40, 4 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

There is at least a toki pona ASCII syllabary - https://www.seximal.net/tkpn but I've never seen it used. PieterJansegers (talk) 15:54, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]