Talk:Bassa Vah alphabet

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Comment

"In the 1900s, a Bassa by the name of Dr Flo Darvin Lewis discovered that former slaves of Bassa origin living in Brazil and the West Indies were still using the Bassa alphabet. Dr Lewis had not encountered the alphabet before and, after learning it himself, he decided to try to revive the alphabet in Liberia." from Omniglot webpage:

So which version is the real one?

--95.178.40.39 (talk) 19:25, 27 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Lewis discovered it, and he invented it. Needs some work! — kwami (talk) 09:06, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Rediscovered" and "revived", with cite. – _•Raven ^.talk 20:05, 11 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 13 April 2023

The request to rename this article to Bassa Vah alphabet has been carried out.

If the page title has consensus, be sure to close this discussion using {{subst:RM top|'''page moved'''.}} and {{subst:RM bottom}} and remove the {{Requested move/dated|…}} tag, or replace it with the {{subst:Requested move/end|…}} tag.

Bassa Vah script → Bassa Vah alphabet – See: • Clair, Kate; Busic-Snyder, Cynthia (2012-06-20). "Key Concepts". A Typographic Workbook: A Primer to History, Techniques, and Artistry. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley. p. 347. ISBN 9781118399880. alphabet: a set of visual characters or letters in an order fixed by custom. The individual characters represent the sounds of a spoken language. ... In addition to English, there are... Bassa (Vah),....
• "alphabet". Merriam-Webster [online]. 1.a. a set of letters or other characters with which one or more languages are written especially if arranged in a customary order
• WP:NCWS#Alphabets: "'Alphabet' is used for language-specific adaptations of a segmental script, usually with a defined sorting order and sometimes with not all of the letters, or with additional letters:" [followed by list of examples].
• Note that Bassa Vah is "language-specific" to the Bassa language. – _•Raven ^.talk 01:47, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose I count 7 separate move requests for the same redundant reason. Raven should respect the ongoing discussion on changing the wording of WP:NCWS, which may address this exact question. This article should be moved, or not, depending on the outcome of that discussion; an independent move here might need to be reverted if that discussion doesn't go Raven's way. Also, the fact that Raven continues to repeat the same misleading claims about NCWS indicates that they still fail to understand what it says, despite it being explained to them multiple times. — kwami (talk) 09:14, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
(1) "I count 7 separate move requests..." - on 7 separate article talkpages, each concerning that article alone. This is recommended procedure after a move is reverted, so you should have posted these requests (in the other direction) after your move was reverted – not reverted the reversion: it's supposed to be BRD, not BRRD.
(2) "This article should be moved, or not, depending on the outcome of that discussion; an independent move here might need to be reverted if that discussion doesn't go Raven's way." – ❌FALSE. This request cites the current text of WP:NCWS#Alphabets as it stands, so it is unaffected if that RFC fails. It is also compatible with the RFC's proposal(s), so it is unaffected if that RFC succeeds. In other words, it doesn't "depend[] on the outcome of that discussion" at all.
(3) "... the same misleading claims about NCWS...." – ❌FALSE. Clicking that link to WP:NCWS#Alphabets will confirm that my quote above was verbatim, word-for-word, accurate. – _•Raven ^.talk 23:24, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

No other comments besides the original mover (kwami)'s, so far. As I understand it, in the absence of consensus, the stable status quo ante (in this case "Bassa Vah alphabet") is resumed. – .Raven ^.talk 05:22, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Per Wikipedia:Requested moves/Closing instructions#Determining consensus, "If objections have been raised, then the discussion should be evaluated just like any other discussion on Wikipedia: lack of consensus among participants along with no clear indication from policy and conventions normally means that no change happens (though like AfD, this is not a vote and the quality of an argument is more important than whether it comes from a minority or a majority). However, sometimes a requested move is filed in response to a recent move from a long existing name that cannot be undone without administrative help. Therefore, if no consensus has been reached, the closer should move the article back to the most recent stable title. If no recent title has been stable, then the article should be moved to the title used by the first major contributor after the article ceased to be a stub." [underline added; two further explanatory paragraphs not quoted] The underlined situation appears to be the case here.

As noted at the RfC at NCWS, "Since [the page move requests mentioned] cite and quote the current text of WP:NCWS#Alphabets, they are unaffected if this RFC fails. Since they are also compatible with this RFC's proposal(s), they are unaffected if this RFC succeeds. In other words, they are unaffected by this RFC either way." [italics as in orginal] The RFC affects only alphabets for specific uses which are not language-specific (e.g. ISO basic Latin alphabet, International Phonetic Alphabet), and clarification of multi-language general alphabets (arguably N'Ko, though that is specific to Manding languages, and preceding discussion had said "language specific" could mean to "one or more languages").

Vah, however, is a single-language [Bassa] alphabet – unambiguously covered by the current definition: "'Alphabet' is used for language-specific adaptations of a segmental script, usually with a defined sorting order and sometimes with not all of the letters, or with additional letters". – .Raven ^.talk 04:46, 22 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]