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Talk:Ala (demon)

Good articleAla (demon) has been listed as one of the Philosophy and religion good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
July 22, 2007Peer reviewReviewed
October 26, 2007Good article nomineeListed
Current status: Good article

/Archive 1

GA on hold

The article is a great start towards GA status. The following should be addressed to pass the GA nomination.

  • The article needs consistency when referring to the Ala, it is sometimes written as "ala" and sometimes as "Ala". Also, it is not clear whether ala is a single creature or there are multiple alas. Also, why is it referred as a she?
    • I can't find any instances of Ala used except on the beginning of sentences. Multiple. The word is of female gender in Serbian language. Nikola 18:16, 18 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • Ok, then the only fix needed is for the multiple stuff. For instance, When people encounter ala should be changed to When people encounter an ala; Ala’s appearance is quite diversely and often vaguely described in folkloric sources should be changed to The appearance of alas is quite diversely and often vaguely described in folkloric sources; and so on throughout the article. --Victor12 18:41, 18 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        • This would better be done by a native English speaker. Not suggesting that you do it, of course. Nikola 19:15, 18 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
          • As I was still planning to do another run through the whole article anyhow, I'd be more than willing to take care of it at the same time; the problem is that I almost certainly won't have time for a while, thanks to school. I'll try, but if there's concern about getting GA this week, rather than re-nominating it a little later, someone else should do it. -Bbik★ 20:15, 18 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
          • What's funny is that I'm not a native English speaker! LOL Don't worry, if all objections are taken care of except this one I'll do it myself before passing the article. --Victor12 15:00, 19 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • In the "Origin" section, prose needs to be improved. The first sentence lacks context, try to write as if the reader knew little about this subject. Also in this section, the beliefs of the pre-Slavic population of the Balkans need some further explanation, specifically which beliefs contributed to the development of the ala concept.
  • In the "Appearance" section, the first paragraph lacks references. The last three paragraphs also lack references. In-line citations are needed so that readers can tell which sources were used for this accounts on the ala. Also, in the last two paragraphs, it is not clear where this stories come from. Are they from Leskovac or from another region?
  • In the "Effect on humans" section the word "ale" is introduced. This may cause confusion for readers as it has not been explained before, except in a footnote. Also, this section seems to deal with the same matter as the "Appearance" section, maybe both should be merged and content reorganized so that tales from the same region are grouped together. Prose needs to be improved in this section, there are some really long sentences, for instance, in the second paragraph. In the paragraphs dealing with the ala's voracity it is not clear where do these stories come from. This is important as it seems folklore about the ala varied from region to region. Also the sentence In a tale recorded in eastern Serbia and Bulgaria, a man killed an ala who destroyed his vineyard - she was in a skinny man in a distant village needs to be rewritten for clarity. Finally, what are the differences between ala and humans?
    • I'll do something about the ale issue with the ala/an ala fixing, too, if no one beats me to it. -Bbik★ 20:15, 18 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • Fixed where do these stories come from. Rewritten the sentence. Concepts, beliefs, customs, etc, are grouped according to their relatedness (damage to agriculture, voracity, attacks on health, etc). From where they came is of a secondary importance. Appearance is a matter for itself. Merging these sections wouldn't be good. The differences between ala and humans are in no source explicitly listed, but from the given tales, at least some of them can be clearly seen. VladoTalk 19:21, 19 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        • Fixed ale. I'd thought about merging/reorganizing the two sections, but without some sort of split, it would make for one incredibly long, unwieldy section, and there doesn't seem to be any better way of splitting it up than the current one. -Bbik★ 18:08, 20 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • In the "Connection with Baba Yaga", the last sentence seems to me the key to the whole article. Could this point be expanded?
    • That's all that the source says about it, and, also, I wouldn't regard it as the key to the whole article. VladoTalk 19:21, 19 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • Sorry, key was way off, however it is a very interesting point. Curious to see a demon of wind and rain being called of a chthonic nature. Sad to see there's no more info on these or the alleged "he snakelike mistress of the underworld". --Victor12 04:53, 20 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • An answer to your question may lie in the concept of the chthonic part of year, lasting from the late autumn to the early spring, and characterized by the wind, cold, and darkness. The end of this period was celebrated as a victory of a solar deity over a snakelike chthonic deity or demon. Vlado 22:22, 24 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • As for references used all seem to be Serbian, they should be marked as such in the "References section" with the template {{sr icon}}. As this is the English Wik.ipedia.Pro, sources in English are preferred when available. Please read WP:RSUE. Is there any source in English you can get your hands on? JSTOR and Google Scholar might be useful to search for this kind of sources.
  • Finally when quoting material from sources in other languages, you should be aware of the relevant Wik.ipedia.Pro guidelines:
  • Where sources are directly quoted, published translations are generally preferred over editors performing their own translations directly.
  • Where editors use their own English translation of a non-English source as a quote in an article, there should be clear citation of the foreign-language original, so that readers can check what the original source said and the accuracy of the translation.
  • As far as I can tell, there's already a source for every translation, and for most, the original language version is there as well. The only two where it's not are the stories, which would be a bit long to include in the main text, and seems a bit like overkill to include that much in a footnote, too. So what're you actually looking for here? -Bbik★ 20:15, 18 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yep, full translations for stories too, for verification purposes. --Victor12 15:00, 19 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • These tales are referenced, and their source is on the Web, not in a book. Anyone who wants to check what the original source said and the accuracy of the translation, can do it instantly with a click. So, is there really a need for that? It could be easily done, but it looks a bit awkward to me. VladoTalk 19:21, 19 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough. --Victor12 04:53, 20 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Drop me a note in case of doubts and questions and also when you're done with these corrections. Good luck, --Victor12 01:40, 18 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just found an interesting source about ethymology: [1]. Nikola 20:03, 18 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Last time I just glimpsed at that, so I didn't see that is not a matter for the article, though interesting. VladoTalk 22:26, 23 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Update I think the article currently complies with GA criteria so I have passed it as such. Congratulations to everyone who worked on it! I hope you keep working on it with a FA nomination in mind. To achieve that goal I'd suggest some serious work on the article's prose, the League of Copyeditors might be of help for this. A second area for improvement is references, having sources in English will help you a lot at WP:FAC. Anyway, that's for later, for now enjoy the moment! --Victor12 16:58, 27 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Victor12. Cheers! Vlado 17:29, 27 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Baba

Baba does not mean wind, it means grandmother. 2A02:2455:CEA:D200:5508:FEAC:7066:AB11 (talk) 23:09, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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