Talk:Joseph Opala

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Tone and structure

Have edited the article to make it conform to biographies (in structure) and to make it more encyclopedic in tone. Noted where cites are needed for claims of distinction. In part the article had read as a paean to Opala; his achievements are many, but the article needs to be more factual in tone. More work to be done.Parkwells (talk) 13:43, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Continuing to work to tone this down to have it sound less like a journalism feature piece. It would be useful if it reflected more of the other scholarship on this topic, especially contributions from linguistics, and sources other than the scholar himself.Parkwells (talk) 14:37, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

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Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.courant.com/news/local/northeast/hc-bunce_opala.artapr03%2C0%2C1009903.story
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External links modified

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Wiki articles need citations

Wiki articles need citations. All material on WP need citations from Reliable Sources (RS). In other words, second and/or third party inline sources are essential to maintain WP standards. It is unfortunate that so much of the content in the section labelled Two-Way Connection, is devoid of verifiable sources. Readers have no sources for additional information.

Overall, the page reads like an essay of a Wikipedian's personal thoughts and wishes. For example the claim "Some free

Gullah people, known as "Black Loyalists," migrated to Sierra Leone after American Independence" is problematic since the inline source provided (after several sentences) does not verify the first part of this assertion. There is a vast array of literature on the Nova Scotian Settlers

but never, to my knowledge, have they been linked to 'some free Gullah people among the Black Loyalists'. The arbitrary connection between the two groups (Gullah and Nova Scotian Settlers) is unsourced and therefore challenged. Second and/or third party inline sources are required for verification.

The previous problematic claim ultimately leads to the conclusion "So, both Sierra Leone's indigenous peoples and the Krios can claim family ties to the Gullahs." Since previous editors has already linked the Gullahs to Nova Scotian Settlers via Black Loyalism, (without sources), this statement implies by extrapolation, that the 'indigenous people' are also somehow directly linked to the

WP:NPOV

. In other words second and/or third party inline sources are needed to show that the Nova Scotian Settlers were specifically descended from or connected to Mende, Limba, Temne etc.

Apart from

Sierra Leone Creoles are descended from Black Nova Scotians, Jamaican Maroons and Liberated Africans - (mainly Akan, Yoruba and Igbo people

) - not Gullah.

I suggest that the sentence "So, both Sierra Leone's indigenous peoples and the Krios can claim family ties to the Gullahs." be removed. Additionally, if no sources are found, the connection between Gullahs and the Nova Scotian Settlers showed also be removed. Inamo11 (talk) 20:03, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]