Talk:Defaka people

Defaka people was a good article, but it was removed from the list as it no longer met the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. If you can improve it, please do; it may then be renominated.
Review: March 30, 2008.

A fact from Defaka people appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 1 June 2005. The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the Defaka people of Nigeria are gradually abandoning their language in favour of the language of the Nkoroo, their close neighbours?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2005/June.

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Sundar's comments

Very informative article. -- Sundar (talk • contribs) 09:10, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)

Failed GA

Sorry, I just don't think there's enough here to make this a Good Article. Keep at it, though! —BorgHunter ^ubx (talk) 16:13, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Have to say I disagree with that and think it looks perfect for a good article. Worldtraveller 16:33, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

...so I've done what the tag said and made it a GA. Worldtraveller 16:34, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I just started thinking that GA and these kind of articles are simply incompatible (there isn't much to expand when you've pretty much exhausted all published sources). — mark ✎ 16:46, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Is this technically plagiarism?

Source: "The history of migration of the Defaka is a long narrative of the adventures of a small people constantly harassed by their numercally superior neighbours."

Article: "The Defaka have always been a people small in number, and their history is a long narrative of harassments by numerically superior neighbours and subsequent migrations."

Source: Jenewari, Charles E.W. (1983) 'Defaka, Ijo's Closest Linguistic Relative', in Dihoff, Ivan R. (ed.) Current Approaches to African Linguistics Vol 1, 85–111.

Large chunks of this article seem to be paraphrasing (borderline plagiarizing?) the source. It's listed as a reference, but at this point, shouldn't it just be quoted? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Hrivers (talk • contribs) 10:18, 19 February 2007 (UTC).[reply]

I reverted the deletion of this question by Littlestbirds — mark ✎ 20:35, 21 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The sentence you're citing certainly is a close paraphrase. In fact, the rest of that paragraph, which reports on the history of the Defaka, also follows Jenewari's account quite closely. Thing is, Jenewari's 1983 article is the only detailed source we have on the history of this people, which makes it kind of difficult to 'synthesize' information from more sources into one encyclopedic overview. I think that particular paragraph does make quite clear where the information comes from; you may be right however that a direct citation might have been better.

As far as I can see, this is the only part of the article that comes close to a simple paraphrase of Jenewari's account. For the rest, info from other sources (sparse as they are) has been brought in, and the content has been reorganized and summarized. — mark ✎ 20:35, 21 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]