Talk:Polygyny

Cleanup

This article is in need of a significant amount of cleanup. There are significant problems with: Layout, Flow, Grammar/Spelling, Point of View, and unreferenced assertions.

Layout: Certain sections should be merged so that information is not extensively repeated. One example might be the "Advantages/Disadvantages" section. Certain sections should be merged because there is not enough information to warrent a subsection. The layout needs to be adjusted to reflect the fact that this is a single article and not a collection of smaller articles.

Flow Grammar and Spelling: Much of this article has extremely poor flow. That means that many sentinces dont work well togeather either because of content, grammar or other problems. Sections with poor flow need to be rewritten to improve flow.

Grammar and Spelling outside of the flow problems exist. There are dozens of corrections which need to be made. Look out for subject and verb agreement and tense failure.

Those editing for whom English is a second language please be as carful as you can with your grammar. Your contributions are extremely welcome as you provide a more diverse perspective. Native English speakers will correct problems as they are seen, but if you can get editing help before adding editing, fewer corrections will be necessary. Feel free to post edits in this discussion page for help with wording and grammar.

POV: Before editing please make sure you are aware of policies on Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. If some of your edits have been removed, look at the comments left by the other editors and consider that it may have been because of an POV failure.

Unreferenced assertions: Before editing please make sure you are aware of policies on Wikipedia:Verifiability. If some of your edits have been removed, look at the comments left by the other editors and consider that it may have been because of an assertion which is not verifiable.

Andy 23:17, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Etymology of polygyny

I changed the etymology to reflect the Ancient Greek from which this is derived, though I believe it is a relatively recent neologism. I Googled it in Greek and nothing came up, although πολυγαμία returned 446 hits! --Jpbrenna 04:32, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

It depends upon your definition of new. OED lists its first reference as 1780. Nereocystis 17:09, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Sociobiology

I'd like sources for the statement that humans "are expected to" live one male and three females, based only on the relatively low sexual dimorphism of humans. This part does not seem to keep a neutral POV. And saying that "However, the prevalence of polygamy in human societies combined with the biological evidence suggests that it may be the most prevalent primitive form." is to stretch it quite a bit. As far as I know, polygamy is practiced only by a minority of the members of any given society. It might even be more of a status symbol. To be sure, chimps and proto humans might well have been polygynous, but is this applicable to Homo sapiens? Shandolad 07:53, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree, this section needs some drastic improvement. Some of the biological information is very questionable. For example, sexual dimorphism is NOT a result of polygamy.

Also, many citations are needed :

• for the statement that polygamy is the most widespread mating system (90% of birds are monogamous for example)
• for the link between delayed maturity in males and polygamy
• for the information about hormones (mating systems can be explained as much by ecological constraints that endocrine systems, if not more)
• and indeed for the information relevant to human beings. We must be careful to differentiate human and animal behaviour here, they belong to different fields of study.

Besides, this article is about polygyny, the article about polygamy is here. This mention of polygamy is very confusing.

Maybe a complete rewrite of the section should be considered. --IronChris | (talk) 00:48, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

References please

This article needs more references. Many things are said, but few are accompained by scientific or verifiable references. I'm adding a verify template. Shandolad 08:00, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Polygyny vs. polygamy

when I read this article, I'm very confused. It uses the words "polygyny" and "polygamy" interchangeably! They are not the same thing, in fact there is an article on polygamy. Information on polygyny should be here, and information on polygamy should be in the appropriate article. There shouldn't be much (if any) overlap. IronChris | (talk) 16:50, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm completely confused as well. At no point am I given a distinction between the two terms, and the article itself seems to interchange the two. Dr Garry 10:57, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

delete

I wrote what I know, observed & read about the situation in greater China region. You can expand the content for other regions in the world. But please do not delete my sentences or paragraphs like what someone did. Thanks a lot. Xaaan5 15:02, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

If you are referring to edits made by me User:Catskul please refer to the clean up section I just added to the top of this page. Your contributions are much appreciated, but please watch that the edits you make are NPOV and not advocacy. If you have any questions please feel free to post them here or in my user discussion page.

Andy 23:20, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Polygyny

In the section titled human polygyny appears this line.

However, it was not accepted in ancient Greece or Rome, and was banned in in mainstream Christianity in 1890 as a result of laws passed concerning Mormon polygyny.

I am not sure what the author was trying to accomplish here but it greatly misrepresents the facts. Mainstream Christianity has forbidden polygyny since before 1890. Most Christians question how much Mormonism can be considered as a part of Christianity. Mormon law does not hold any weight in catholic, presbyterian, baptist, pentecostal, ad nauseum groups. There is alot of focus on Mormonism that seems to equate it with Christianity. The section needs to be rewritten to clearly distinguish mainstream Christianity and mormonism.

142.165.190.251 03:51, 7 May 2006 (UTC) Rick

Polygamy in the New Testament?

I changed "Christian Old Testament" to "Biblical Old Testament". (Flash---Early Hebrews were not Christian) I want to delete New Testaent mention altogether; does NT say anything about monogamy/polygamy? Anybody know? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.104.144.198 (talk • contribs) .

Original Research

This article looks like a single country original research project; no sources, lots of opinions very POV - major need of rework.Bridesmill 01:30, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Affairs

To what extent can this article focus on extra-marital & covert affairs etc? IMHO, this may apply under the socbio definition (eek), but not under the anthro definition....Bridesmill 04:19, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Modern polygamy

Unless citations are found for the stuff about chinese and filipino marriages, I thing they should be removed. AAlso, this whole article is a freakin mess. I'd be willing to do some re-writing, but if I do what is the likelyhood that the original authors will revert the changes?? --72.225.219.80 04:30, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

At this stage, the contributors who have been adding the 'unusual' stuff are all anonymous and do not seem to be interested in engaging in discussion. No revert wars have taken place where yuncited material was removed after unanswered requests for citation/verification; but because these users remain anonymous and not interested in discussing, I could see the potential for this page eventually being protected from anonymous edits. Getting an account may thus not be a bad idea I look forward to this article improving as well, and would be willing to assist in working toward this.Bridesmill 12:06, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Proposal

In order to keep this reasonably sane, can we adhere to anthro view of 'wives' except in sociobiology section where we can adress view which includes all 'partners'?Bridesmill 00:54, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

(McDonis) I suggest that this entire article be re-written. It seems the author or authors are not limiting themselves to the subject but are wanting to discuss other areas of multiple marriage. Also some of the view points are definately not neutral towards the subject. I would be willing to re-write the article, however I thought I would suggest this here before I go and re-write the whole thing.