Sangbin1999

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If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:51, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Article template

Can you tell me what article you identified to act as a "template" for your work on Opon Ifá? I'm referring to the assignment for this week, which asked you to find an article that was of "Good" or "Featured" quality on a similar topic to your own. Thanks! Abukun (talk) 20:49, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Opon Ifá

Hello! Your submission of Opon Ifá at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! BlueMoonset (talk) 14:47, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

Time for the final push

I see you've dug up a lot of good information and added it in note form to your sandbox, so that's great. It's time to really start digging into this article and expanding it using that information. Also note that you were supposed to find some images this week via the tutorials. I'd suggest you dig around a bit to find some images if possible. I notice that the article already has some images, but you can probably find one or two more to illustrate specific sections you'll be adding. There should be freely usable color images, as well, so you could (and should) replace that black-and-white image currently leading the article off. Two weeks go go! Abukun (talk) 20:09, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Review of article

The article is looking very nice! I've gone through and given it a detailed read-through, so the following are some comments for how to get it over the finish line. Nothing really major here except for my desire to see more attention to how the boards are made. That will require a bit of digging through Google Scholar or Google Books, perhaps, but it's the last piece that's missing. Here we go:

Pay attention to your lead section. The lead section of the article should summarize every section of the body of the article. By the same token, the lead section should not include information that is not repeated somewhere in the body of the article. Your lead currently isn’t doing those two things, so pay particular attention to it as you revise your article.

I made several small copy edits to the article. For instance, it’s good to italicize foreign-language terms, but it becomes tiresome if you repeat the same word several times, so it’s usually sufficient to just italicize it on first use. Likewise, proper nouns, like the names of specific spirits, don’t need to be italicized.

I would suggest swapping out the cosmology and structure sections. I think you would be better served by describing what the tray looks like, how it is made, etc. first, then dive into the cosmology encoded in those aesthetics. Similarly, I think your cosmology section needs to more specifically integrate the visuals. This shouldn’t take much: You just say something like, “generally, opon Ifa incorporate the image of the orisa Esu at the crest of the tray. This position recognizes Esu’s role as the intermediary between Ifa and the babalawo…”

In the second and third paragraphs of cosmology, you relate a myth about Esu’s role in divination, which is fine. But with things like legends and myths, it’s usually best to introduce the material with a reference to where this particular variant of the story comes from. This is necessary because these legends can often have countless variations that vary form place to place. In this instance, you might say something like, “In a story recorded by anthropologist William Bascom based on research in Nigeria, Esu once tested 398 of the other deities. This was because Esu was confident…”

Your second paragraph of cosmology currently has no paragraph-final source citation. I also note that you’re currently citing your sandbox in places. Now that you’re working in the main namespace, be sure to update all citations to point to actual places your reader could go to find information (even if a published book).

As for the story itself, it currently seems like it belongs to the main Ifá article rather than this one. The story doesn’t really refer to the divination board itself. That said, if you can tie the story into the iconography or use of the board, it might belong here. But if not, you can probably just move the whole story to the main Ifá page and just refer to the relationship between the two gods as being the reason for Esu’s image being on the board. (I won’t count this against your grade, since you’re actually improving two articles in this scenario.)

Wikipedia has weird policies about measurements; you’re supposed to use metric for topics related to countries that use metric. Since Nigeria, Benin, Cuba, etc. all use metric measurements, I’d suggest you convert all inches to centimeters and include the inches in parentheses.

I think you need to go into more detail about why the peripheral markings are functional. You say that they are, and then you compare them to the points of a compass and say what they are called, but you never tell us how they are used.

Partly this problem could be fixed by restructuring the article. I’ve already noted that it would be best to start with the look of the board and aesthetics of the board. Then I’d give the use of the board. Only then would I dip into cosmology and variations. That order seems most logical to me, since your focus is on the board itself here.

Yoruba words don’t take S in the plural, so be sure to just use the same term for singular and plural. For instance, the plural of odu is odu, not odus.

“…as it is believed that snakes obtained their venomous potential from Ifá.” This might be another place to cite a specific story or storyteller. “…as, according to William Bascom’s interlocutors in Nigeria, snakes obtained their venomous…”

The images are great. I would suggest that you try to track down one more of an opon Ifa in use. It would really aid the reader to see an opon Ifa with powder and marks on it, or with a diviner using it. A video would be wonderful, as well, if you can track one down that uses a free license. For either one of these, you could search for Ifá rather than Opon Ifá, since you're trying to find the board in use rather than isolated.

“‘’oju opon, ese opon, ona oganran, and ona munu’’ come into play.” What are these? You don’t define them.

When you describe Opele (chain) divination, you don’t mention the powder and tapper. Are they still used? If so, maybe mention them briefly again. If they aren’t used, indicate that they are not part of these more casual consultations.

You never say what “opon” means in Yoruba. I did a Google Scholar search for “opon Ifa carver” to see if I could dig up any information about how they’re made, and the first source defines it as “to flatter.” This is probably essential information to include somewhere.

One thing that I think you need to be comprehensive is some discussion of how Opon Ifá are made. This doesn’t necessarily need to be its own section, but it belongs somewhere. Do the diviners make them themselves? Do they hire a carver to make them? Do they hire a separate painter if necessary? I have a book called The Yoruba Artist that may be helpful to you; it has two short chapters on Opon Ifá that may talk about the carving process. Feel free to swing by if you’d like to borrow it. Also check out this article for instance.

Over all, you’re nearly there! You’ll see that most of my feedback here is minor stuff or suggestions for reorganization. Make these fixes, dig up a bit on the carving process, and rewrite that lead to be a summary of the whole article. This is an impressive piece of work, so good job! Abukun (talk) 14:28, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Opon Ifá

Hello! Your submission of Opon Ifá at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Spokoyni (talk) 12:18, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

DYK for Opon Ifá

On 5 July 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Opon Ifá, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that the designs on opon Ifá divination trays praise and acknowledge the work of the babalawo? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Opon Ifá. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Opon Ifá), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

— Maile (talk) 00:01, 5 July 2019 (UTC)