Wikipedia:Peer review/Etymology of Wicca/archive1

Etymology of Wicca

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because it received GA status last month, and I'd be interested in taking it on to FA candidacy; before that it'd be great to see if any of my fellow editors had any thoughts. Thanks, Midnightblueowl (talk) 23:43, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

This is my first peer review, so please bear that in mind. I have only had a very superficial look at the article so far, but thought I would get the copy-editing niggles out of the way first (which does seem to matter for FA status, and is highly relevant to the subject).

WP:ITAL: There seems to be an overuse of quotation marks. I suspect quotation marks have been used in many places where italics are more appropriate, e.g. when discussing terminology versus quoting actual text. In some cases there are both quotation marks and italics together (I think it should be one or the other). Italics seem unnecessary for a term such as us-or-them.

There seems to be a word missing from this quote: "[T]he Red Queen told Alice that she made words mean what [she] wanted them to mean." Even if it is not in the original text, perhaps adding [she] would help it flow better (see Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Brackets_and_parentheses). There is also a quote within that quote ("the craft of the Wica,") which should be in single quotation marks (see MOS:QUOTEMARKS).

I don't think the-then should be hyphenated.

There seems to be a word missing from this sentence: "The earliest known published reference for the word "Wicca" [?] to be an advertisement published in a 1962 issue of Fate magazine ...". Helen (talk) 11:41, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

This wording seems somewhat disjointed and I think it would read better as one sentence: "Although, the writer's name was not printed. It had probably been produced by one of the figures involved in editing Pentagram, such as Gerard Noel or Doreen Valiente." Helen (talk) 13:12, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your constructive comments Helen! I'll look into implementing them throughout the article in the coming week. Midnightblueowl (talk) 15:18, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

I've begun implementing your suggestions; thank you once again Helen! Midnightblueowl (talk) 20:04, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Pleasure. Those italics are tricky, I have to keep checking the guidelines myself. I committed myself to cleaning up another article this/last week, and I am wont to distraction and procrastination. After that, I will have a closer look at your article. I want to read up my offline sources first then see how it compares. HelenOnline 09:48, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Some thoughts-

• The title should probably be "Etymology of Wicca" (but I may be wrong). You can use Template:DISPLAYTITLE
• "one of Gardner's rivals, Charles Cardell—founder of his own tradition, had begun" This doesn't read well. I think you should probably replace the comma after "tradition" with another dash. That's the second listed use of the spaced en dash
• "The development and use of the term Wicca within contemporary Paganism has been a recurring topic of discussion in the field of Pagan studies,[2][3][4] however the majority of academics and independent scholars use the first, more inclusive definition." Is this perhaps worth splitting into two sentences?
• "was a masculine noun for sorcerer;[w 1] wicce its feminine counterpart" while wicce was, perhaps?
• Do you need to link to the article on the letter c?
• "the-then secret Gardnerian Book of Shadows." Firstly, would that not be "the then-secret"? Secondly, if this is literally a book, perhaps the title should be italicised?
• "Although, the writer's name was not printed." I'm not keen on this sentence. How about something like "No author was listed for the article."?
• "By presenting themselves as Wiccans rather than witches, Doyle White argued it removed some of the social stigma that they faced.[30]" How about "Doyle White argued that the practitioners' presentation of themselves as Wiccans rather than witches removed some of the social stigma that they faced."
• "It turn it began to be adopted on a wide" I assume you mean "In turn"? If not, I don't follow.
• "forms of "Traditional Witchcraft." Many" Period should be outside the quote- see MOS:LQ
• "He suggested that they had done so" Who did? No one is mentioned in that paragraph.

I've not been able to delve completely into the article (and it's late, so I doubt my full attention was there) but this comes across as a well-written and well-researched article on a fascinating topic. My feeling right now is that your use of non-academic sources is careful and considered, while scholarly work is given precedence. J Milburn (talk) 23:18, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments J! Much appreciated. I'm glad that you found the subject interesting. I'll be going through and implementing them in due course, and then hopefully it's on to FA review! Midnightblueowl (talk) 16:17, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Only two things stick out at me, at present.

• In the the GA review, Fiddlersmouth pointed out photographs of the ubiquitous Wiccans who coined the term and contributed to solidifying what it represents probably would better illustrate the article's subject matter than an image of jewellery. While I agree, I think an image with one or more shots of "the earliest known published reference for the word Wicca … in … Fate magazine", Cardell's use of Wiccen, and/or Gardner's Wica would be even better.
• I would like to see two or all four of the citations of websites replaced with those of published etymological dictionaries. (They're used to support the wicc(a/e)→witch and wicca→Wicca etymologies.) I'm not sure about Wicca, but finding an entry on witch in a conventionally publish work (such as one by Oxford) should be easy.

I haven't had the time to try addressing these myself.  —Sowlos  21:45, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

The Bosworth-Toller online Anglo-Saxon dictionary is worth a visit. While hard copy is very commendable, MOS, and Wiki-correct, the majority of readers of a technical article like this will not have access to resources to look up serious supporting printed material. http://bosworth.ff.cuni.cz/035497 Fiddlersmouth (talk) 23:28, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Good link.

It's true that the current web citations are of good sources, but web citations are known to be somewhat problematic (Linkrot being to most prevalent issue). Either way, sources should not be rejected solely on difficulty or cost of access (WP:SOURCEACCESS). Informing interested readers where to find additional reliable information is of more important than giving them a source which can be retrieved with a since click. Of course, this is a web-based encyclopaedia, so I try to include convenience links like this http://books.google.com/books?id=aDhGlKL3h00C&lpg=PP1&pg=PA567#v=onepage&q&f=false whenever possible.  —Sowlos  01:37, 18 July 2013 (UTC)