A fact from Nisn Pups appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 28 May 2023 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that when journalist and trade unionist Nisn Pups was released from jail, the Communist Party of Lithuania instructed him to change his name?
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Lithuania, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Lithuania on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.LithuaniaWikipedia:WikiProject LithuaniaTemplate:WikiProject LithuaniaLithuania articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles
The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.
... that when journalist and trade unionist Nisn Pups was released from jail, the Communist Party of Lithuania instructed him to change his name? Source: Evrei i evreĭskiĭ narod: Jews and the Jewish people. Collected materials from the Soviet daily and periodical press. Sbornik materialov iz sovetskoĭ ezhednevnoĭ ĭ [sic periodicheskoĭ pechati, Vol. 87-88]. Contemporary Jewish Library, 1978. p. 30
I object to the drive-by commentary. I see no weakness in the sourcing, in fact there is in-depth coverage in multiple sources. As per notability - he was chairman of a trade union, a member of the soviet (i.e. city government), edited a number of publications, and was awarded official recognition from the Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian SSR (re: "The person has received a well-known and significant award or honor," from WP:ANYBIO). He is named in his obituary as 'the veteran of Soviet Yiddish journalism'. I'd add that notably a rare survivor of the Great Purge among ex-Bundists. --Soman (talk) 20:28, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"Nisonas Pupsas, tapo garsiu Lietuvos komunistų lyderiu, buvo nepaprastai geras oratorius." ('Nisonas Pups, who became a famous leader of Lithuanian communists, was an extremely good orator') [1] --Soman (talk) 21:43, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Mention in passing twice. the ref does not contribute to wp notability criteria. Lokys dar Vienas (talk) 00:03, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And I object the personal attacks. I monitor Lithuania new article feed. Usualy I make a couple or more fixes. Here I did the same: I created the redirect Meyer Ziv, tried to add something more material, but I was surprized to find close to nothing despite figuring out Lithuanian and Russian spellings. Hence I marked it for notability. I have no prejudice (I myself like to create articles on obscure topics and a couple of them landed in dustbin), and if your article survives, I will expand it with minor detail I managed to find. Here is an alternative hook "...thait he was suggested to change surname because Pups is a really funny word in Russian: wikt:пупс is an augmentative from пупсик: ..) Su Dievu. Lokys dar Vienas (talk) 00:34, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Diploma of honoor to 65 anniversry is hardly a "significant honor". Lokys dar Vienas (talk)
There were plenty of jokes in the soviet union about these diploma, which were second only to the award with Lenin's Opera Omnia Like this one:
A factory trade union meeting announcing awards for hard labour: "The third award goes to Stakhanovite foreman Anton Petukhov - he is awarded with a free vacation at resort house in Sochi <applauds>. The runner-up of Socialist competition Glafira Pupkina is awarded with roll of crepe de chine, so that she and her five daughters may make them new dresses to go to Bolshoi Theatre for free. <claps, envious remarks> The overeall winner , chairman of factory trade union Elvira Sidorovna Plotikina is awarded with the prestigious transferrable awardLenin's Collected Works in 54 volumes! <ovations are roaring, shouts: "Rightly so!", "The bitch verily deserves this!" "She worked her ass off for this!", ...>
"Rare survivor off Bund" - way not rare, not to say that his arrest was nothing to do with Great Purge (Guess where Kaunas was in 1921-1923) - I suggest you not to hyperbolize, here and in other places. "member of city government administration" is hardly a feat.... And so on. I am not going to put it to AfD, but I strongly oppose littering DYK with trivial boring factoids. Lokys dar Vienas (talk) 00:50, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. not Nisn, but Nisan ("Nisonas" is a Lithuanization of "Nisan" according to Lithuanian word formation). Lokys dar Vienas (talk) 00:59, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
P.P.S. Being of Adrian Monk-type OCD sufferer, I did some fact checking, and found that the article has incorrect details. I fixed a couple of them, but I suspect more work is required. Lokys dar Vienas (talk) 02:13, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't spot much factual corrections, apart from possibly the profession of his father. Here the Sovyet Heymland ref says "ניסן פופס איז געבוירן אין א קליין ליטוויש שטעטעלע אין א מישפּאָכע פון א וואלד־אָנגעשטעלטן" which I interpreted as referring to the profession of his family. Another ref Alperovičius (1984) names the father by name (which matches the patronymic 'Нохимович'), and says we ran a colonial goods store. Maybe the source contradict each other, maybe mishpokhe should be understood more broadly. The notion whether Nevarėnai (present-day pop. 552) is a town or a village is doesn't feel like an issue of factual accuracy to me. The ref calls it "קליין ליטוויש שטעטעלע" ('small Lithuanian town'), but Shtetl is already dimunitive so klayn shtetl would be a small small town so I used the translation 'village'. So today it has formal classification as 'town' rather than 'village', but not sure that applied in 1892 (when it was a volost).
As for the name, the spelling in English 'Nisn Pups' is the one used in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry Volume 25 and in an English-language snippet in Soṿeṭish heymland in 1977. The official LKP party history uses 'Pupsas Nisonas ( nuo 1921 Zivas Mejeris ; 1892-1978 )', which in its Russian version is rendered as 'Пупсас Нисонас ( с 1921 Зивас Мейерис ; 1892—1978 )' which is a pretty direct transliteration of Lithuanianized name. But in Russian his name is also given as 'Зив ( Пупсас ) Меер' in 'За активное участие в обще ственной ЖИЗНИ связи восьмидесятипятилетием со дня рождения персональный uen . сионер Зив ( Пупсас ) Меер Но химович награжден Почетной грамотой Президиума Верховного Совета Литовской ССР' --Soman (talk) 18:59, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
So the ref for the sentence "Pups was arrested shortly after becoming a member of the Communist Party" says the following: "אין אוגוסט 1921 טרעט ער אַרײַן אין דער ליטווישע קאָמוניסטישע פּאַרטיי. אינגיכן ווערט ער ארעסטירט. נאָכן ארויסגיין אף דער פרײַ בײַט ער , לויט דער רעקאָמענדאַציע פון דער פארטיי־אָרגאניזאציע , זײַן נאָמען אף מייער זיוו און קליבט זיך אריבער קײַן דײַטשלאנד.". Now it does not say precisely under what accusation he was arrested, where he was detained nor the name of the arresting police officer. But it is evident from context that he was arrested in Lithuania, in the climate of repression against the Communist Party (which was an underground organization). There is no reason whatsover to link this factoid to the factoid at the page on Pups at https://bessmertnybarak.ru/books/person/1802222/ . The Bessmertny Barak page only states that there is a file on Pups in the KGB Moscow archives. We can understand from context that the file would have emerged after his arrival in Moscow in 1923 (most likely linked to Great Purge 1937-1938).
Now to complicate things further, Pups was a candidate in the 1922 Lithuanian parliamentary election, holding the third slot on list nr. 1 in the second constituency. But I can't find a WP:RS to add this factoid in article. This gives little indication of exact moment that Pups was arrested, apart from that it would have been after August 1921 and before going into exile in Germany (which itself would have predated moving to Moscow in 1923). He could have been a candidate whilst in detention, this was a common feature of the communist movement at the time to present jailed candidates. But it is much less likely that he would have been fielded as candidate after having gone into exile. -- Soman (talk) 18:12, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I have already self-removed the tag. And I am discontinue work on this article, satisfying my worry about notability. Lokys dar Vienas (talk) 19:45, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In TDYK you wrote: The ref calls it "קליין ליטוויש שטעטעלע" ('small Lithuanian town'), but Shtetl is already dimunitive so klayn shtetl would be a small small town so I used the translation 'village'. So today it has formal classification as 'town' rather than 'village', but not sure that applied in 1892 (when it was a volost). Today its population is ~552, so it is formally a miestelis (translated in wikipedia as town) in Lithuania today . In 1886 it was 444[1] Still, shtetl, even shtetele, was still an urban settlement because its intention was not agricultural. Maybe it makes sense to word it as "small Lithuanian shtetl of Nevarėnai" to avoid nitpicking. Lokys dar Vienas (talk)
I'm perfectly fine with 'small Lithuanian town' for the article. --Soman (talk) 22:00, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Soman: 
Good article. Onegreatjoke (talk) 17:36, 20 April 2023 (UTC)