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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Hopelesswiki (talk | contribs) at 20:49, 4 January 2020 (→NoteTag). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Former featured articleNoam Chomsky is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed.
Good articleNoam Chomsky 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.
Main Page trophyThis article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on December 13, 2004.
On this day... Article milestones
DateProcessResult
September 9, 2004Featured article candidatePromoted
January 16, 2006Featured article reviewDemoted
October 27, 2007Featured article candidateNot promoted
August 27, 2019Good article nomineeListed
On this day... A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on December 7, 2019.
Current status: Former featured article, current good article

List of honorary degrees

This restored list strikes me as overkill. If the full listing was necessary (or more than trivia), a secondary source would provide it. The reference sources I've seen only include partial lists—the most notable examples. I'll note that we also call out some honorary degrees in the Vietnam War section already. Would it not be sufficient to only list the honorary degrees that have been cited by a secondary source? I don't think we can make any claim to completeness anyway. czar 18:50, 15 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Disclosure: I'm somewhat biased in favor of keeping it in part because I am the one who spent hours tracking down the references for every single degree on the list. I'm not adamantly opposed to removing it (and I agree that it's unlikely that the list is 100% complete), but at the same time I don't think it's inconceivable that e.g. a school student doing a presentation on Chomsky -- or even a future biographer -- would use the list to mention that Chomsky has received more than 40 honorary degrees. Vrrajkum (talk) 23:31, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'd lean towards removing this. Perhaps it could be splintered off into a separate 'list' article? Midnightblueowl (talk) 10:49, 9 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
 Done. I agree, and have created a new list article at List of honorary degrees awarded to Noam Chomsky, in the form of a table. The table has columns for the year awarded and "Notes" for any relevant information, for example the reason for the award, but I have not yet entered anything in these columns. If anyone wishes to add these details, or further awards, their help will be much appreciated. --NSH001 (talk) 19:16, 9 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This list may bemuse you. -- Hoary (talk) 13:11, 14 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • fwiw, I still think this split list is overkill if we lack secondary sources to describe the group of honorary degrees. I.e., if we can only support this list from primary sources, we should pare it down to the most notable honorary degrees and just include them in the main article proportionate to their coverage. It's the same for his public speeches—we only cover the ones that are most notable, since the full set is so many. czar 19:21, 19 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Czar: What do you think about a completely separate awards/honors page, à la Taylor Swift? Vrrajkum (talk) 23:25, 24 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Vrrajkum, potentially! List of awards and nominations received by Taylor Swift is a summary style split from Taylor Swift#Awards and achievements, since the full list is all noteworthy info that cites secondary sources but would be undue weight to shove into the main article. We should ask the same question here. What academic honors has Chomsky received that (1) have received secondary sources but (2) would be overkill for this article? Similarly, we would need more sources that cover Chomsky's honors/accolades as their own topic (WP:LISTN). There's a way to do this while including many of the honorary degrees listed, but right now that list needs way more secondary source coverage to justify itself, even if just regional newspapers covering the college's slate of honorary degrees. czar 03:40, 25 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Chomsky new book

Could Chomsky's new book about language theory from 2016 be added to the table of his books at the end of the article. He did not stop writing on this topic in the 1990s. Title: Why Only Us: Language and Evolution. Book by Noam Chomsky and Robert C. Berwick. CodexJustin (talk) 19:07, 19 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@CodexJustin, the section links all Chomsky books with their own articles (independently notable books). If Why Only Us has enough sourcing to warrant its own page, feel free to create and link it. czar 19:12, 19 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Meant to state that it is currently not listed in the Selected bibliography section in Linguistics which ends with a 1990s entry. Its completely up to you if you think it should be listed in that Linguistics column or not. Nice to see the page count for this article starting to increase in the last week. CodexJustin (talk) 19:16, 19 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Kibbutz Hazorea

According to This article in Haaretz it was several months, not 6 weeks? ("Chomsky, a Jewish professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had spent several months at Kibbutz Hazore'a during the 1950s and had considered a longer stay in Israel." - quote) Schissel | Sound the Note! 15:01, 24 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Here's Barsky:

In 1953, while Noam was still a member of Harvard's Society of Fellows, he and Carol decided to spend some time in Israel, a country in which both, for a long time, had thought of settling. In the end, however, they simply went and lived on a kibbutz [Ha-Zorea] for about six weeks.
— Barsky, p. 82

And Sperlich doesn't specify the length. For new sources, Linfield doesn't specify length. Fischbach says it was the summer of 1953. I'm inclined to think it was more on the order of weeks than months, but I also think the specificity is irrelevant, based on the sources so I'll remove the length of their stay from the article. czar 20:27, 24 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

According to this page, "Junior Fellows are required to reside in Cambridge" during the academic year, which would make it unlikely that Chomsky stayed in Israel for several months. I also think that Barsky is a more reliable source than Haaretz in this particular instance. With that said, I also agree that the length of their stay isn't all that important. Vrrajkum (talk) 20:21, 4 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It's also reasonable to believe that the author of the Haaretz article simply paraphrased "six weeks" (which is between 1-2 months) as "several months" when she was composing the article; this would be a forgivable simplification. Vrrajkum (talk) 20:29, 4 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"Lesser evil" voting

For decades, Chomsky has advocated "lesser-evil" voting for Democratic candidates,[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] which has been criticized by some journalists.[8][9][10][11]

References

  1. ^ Video on YouTube
  2. ^ Video on YouTube
  3. ^ Video on YouTube
  4. ^ Chomsky, Noam (15 June 2016). "An Eight Point Brief for LEV (Lesser Evil Voting)". Chomsky.info.
  5. ^ Saul, Heather (25 November 2016). "Noam Chomsky tells those who refused to vote for Hillary Clinton to stop Donald Trump: You made a big mistake". .independent.co.uk.
  6. ^ MCCASKILL, Nolan (25 January 2016). "Chomsky: I'd 'absolutely' vote for Hillary Clinton". politico.com.
  7. ^ Reed, Brad (8 August 2016). "Noam Chomsky explains the value of holding your nose and voting for Hillary". rawstory.com.
  8. ^ Gallanis, George (12 October 2016). "Chomsky in Chicago: The thin gruel of lesser-evil politics". wsws.org/.
  9. ^ St Clair, Jeffrey (29 June 2016). "Noam Chomsky, John Halle and a Confederacy of Lampreys: a Note on Lesser Evil Voting". counterpunch.org.
  10. ^ Smith, B Sidney (7 October 2016). "Eight Times Wrong: the Logic of Lesser Evil Voting". counterpunch.org.
  11. ^ SMOLSKI, Andrew (29 June 2016). "To My Less-Evilism Haters: A Rejoinder to Halle and Chomsky". counterpunch.org.

Taking this recent edit here for discussion. First, this doesn't belong in the lede because the lede is meant to summarize the article, meaning that the most important parts from the article graduate to the lede on their merits. If this is something he has advocated for decades is true and sourceable, then I have no objection to adding it to the body/prose. That said, the primary sources above are overkill. One/two good sources would suffice if they adequately make the same point. And criticized by some journalists feels evasive—if his position was actually opposed by journalists to the point where that opposition became noteworthy, again, a secondary source would say so. Citing a bunch of cursory Counterpunch op-ed mentions doesn't do that. Let's come to consensus here on the best sources/evidence before restoring the text, please. czar 01:59, 13 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, at this point. I say we just remove the whole thing from any part of the article. Spoonydude84 (talk) 03:19, 13 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Czar, I agree with eveything you say above. --NSH001 (talk) 10:47, 13 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I don't. It sounds like political censorship. When someone advocates something for decades, it defintely lead worthy material. 213.226.177.25 (talk) 19:57, 13 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
If this is a definitive aspect of Chomsky's reputation, you should have no problem finding a secondary source that describes it as such. I'll add that we've already had discussions above about the length of this article. We're beyond adding detail on the strength of primary sources alone. If it's definitive Chomsky, it should be said by a reputable source, not left to inference. czar 01:36, 14 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

MIT as affiliated source

re: [1] @Vrrajkum, MIT is not a reputable source here for the claim that Chomsky is "widely known as the father of modern linguistics" since MIT is affiliated with the subject. If this claim is worth mentioning or indeed widely known, there should be plenty of sufficient secondary sources. (WP:EXCEPTIONAL) czar 02:47, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, I'm getting many more hits for Saussure as the "father of modern linguistics" [2][3][4][5] (And this one really has an axe to grind.) I recommend that the quote be removed until this can be resolved. czar 02:54, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

NoteTag

@Hopelesswiki: Regarding this edit, I'm unsure if using NoteTag is more appropriate from a rigorous standpoint (it may be), but to me it seems to create visual clutter in the lede. The previous format of [a][b][c] seems to me aesthetically superior than [note1][note2][note3]; thoughts? Vrrajkum (talk) 20:18, 4 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

[a][b][c] can mean anything, including [ref a], sometimes confused with other stuff like [IPA]/chem/math notation (at least aesthetically) and always confused with texts in Latin alphabet. But Note tags shows intuitively Note purposes and also correspond to the title of "Notes" section. Natually please let Note tags for Notes while ref tags for References. Further, [note 999] vs. [zzz], which seems clearer/reader-friendly? Thank you :) Hopelesswiki (talk) 20:26, 4 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
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