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I've been thinking about these tags and I have to say I am perplexed. The complaints are
1) the article relies on primary sources rather than third-party sources: this article is a description of a type of dictionary. This type of dictionary was developed principally by Igor Mel'cuk, and the article draws primarily on his work to describe the artifact he developed. Saying this is a fault is rather like criticizing an article about Syntactic Structures that cites a lot of Chomsky.
2) the article may be been written by someone close to the source: I don't see how this is at all relevant if the information contained is factually correct. This is an article about an academic topic, not a controversial or political issue, and it really isn't subject to much spin. I can see why we don't want articles about Sarah Palin written by people from the Tea Party, but there really isn't anything here to whitewash or distort. In fact, we want technical articles to be written by experts, and the experts in most cases are people "close" to the sources. In the interest of full disclosure, I know Mel'cuk and many of the people he collaborates with, and I have collaborated with him from time to time in the past (though not on lexicography or anything at all related to this article). But this should have no bearing on the article, which has to be judged on its own merits.
3) the article reads like a personal essay:??? sorry, that one makes no sense to me. The article is a description of a particular kind of technical dictionary and follows a standard expository pattern in technical writing, beginning with establishing its subject matter, then breaking it down into its component pieces, and finally giving an example to illustrate. I can't think of a better way to present this kind of material
4) the subject is not notable: I'm not sure what this objection is based on. The ECD is part of the field of lexicography and is recognized by people in that field. It is in use by a large and growing group of lexicographers and computer scientists, primarily but not exclusively in Russia and Europe. It is also part of a larger linguistic theory called Meaning-Text Theory which holds biannual conferences that attract over 100 participants, has been the subject of number of books and anthologies (NOT all by Mel'cuk), including a book series published by John Benjamins, and which is of interest to linguists all over the world. The references given in the article show that ECDs by various people have been published by reputable publishers, and the acdemic references show that articles about the ECD and related subjects are published in respected journals.
5) the article presents too much detail: well, maybe, in the sense that most readers won't read the entire sample lexical entry from start to finish. But some might, and each part of it illustrates something mentioned in the (very brief) description above. If Wikipedia is running out of server space and needs the 100 Kb or so that would be saved by cutting out the example, then I suppose it could be cut. But I should point out that the primary sources for this are not the easiest things to get, so having them available here will be useful to those do are interested in this type of lexicography.
Can we please remove these tags? Davidjamesbeck ( talk) 14:58, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
It's been about a month with no objections, so the tags have been removed. Davidjamesbeck ( talk) 03:56, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
The article is very problematic so I just restored the tags (you didn't give an edit summary, but having read the above maybe I'll tweak it a bit). It's far too detailed - I'm a linguist with a degree in said field but the whole thing is very confusingly written - almost to the point of it being worth deleting 95% and starting again. I'm sure you wouldn't want that though. Anyway, it has to be rewritten for non-specialists to be able to understand it. Finally, I'm highly suspicious of the title - can you show a reference that shows a native English speaker using this phrase in a reliable source? It sounds like a direct translation from another language.
Oh, also it started with "A Explanatory Combinatorial Dictionary" :) Don't we say "an" before vowels? Malick78 ( talk) 20:33, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
I have to admit I'm a bit put out by this. I tried to start a discussion and instead I find that rather than addressing any of the points I raised, you (Malick78) simply deleted the portions of the article you objected to (and that section was a lot of work on my part). You personally may find the article confusingly written, and I'm willing to clean it up or work with someone to make it clearer; however, it is a technical article on a technical topic and isn't any more opaque than dozens of other Wikipedia articles. I also have a degree (more than one) in Linguistics, and I could also say that I "don't understand" a lot of WP articles on the topic, at least in the rhetorical sense I assume is implied above. I don't react to these articles by deleting large portions of them (however great the temptation), nor do I respond to their authors with snide comments about typos or implications that they are non-native or incompetent speakers of English. I also don't presume, just because I personally have not heard of a particular topic, author, approach, or methodology, that it is not of value or interest to the discipline, or others on Wikipedia interested in the discipline. The suspicions you express about the title are unfounded, and could be alleviated simply by consulting one of the cited English-language references (all of which are reliable). "Explanatory Combinatorial Dictionary" is a direct translation from another language, but that is what is used in English academia. An idea doesn't have to be expressed elegantly in English to be valid.
Davidjamesbeck ( talk) 03:52, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
The statement "The term "Explanatory Combinatorial Dictionary" is not widely used in English and is a direct translation from Russian and French." is one part factually incorrect, one part irrelevant. It is the term used in every English-language source that refers to this type of lexicon (see the references provided for this article, as well as any number of additional references that I can provide on request). I suppose it is true that the term is a translation from Russian, but that is hardly relevant or interesting. Unless I have simply been unlucky or unobservant, I have not noticed similar statements on other Wikipedia pages in English (or Spanish) dealing with calqued or translated terminology, and I don't see the point of mentioning this, other than perhaps as a snide way of pointing out that it is not the most elegant English turn of phrase. Davidjamesbeck ( talk) 02:42, 23 March 2012 (UTC)