Template:Did you know nominations/Paul Kpoffon

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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.

The result was: promoted by Allen3 talk 10:26, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

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Paul Kpoffon[edit]

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  • ... that the Dahomeyan post and telegraph workers leader Paul Kpoffon went on to become a government minister and ambassador?

Created by Soman (talk). Self-nominated at 12:54, 7 January 2016 (UTC).

General: Article is new enough and long enough

Policy compliance:

Hook eligibility:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: This article is well-written and neutral. It is thoroughly cited, but I have been able to verify only 2 of the 17 citations (refs #9 & #11 of the current version of the article as of 16:44, 7 January 2016‎ .
Citation #8 is viewable, but does not appear to support the cited fact (tho maybe I have misread it), and all of the other 14 sources are simply links to Google Books pages without an eBook. There is no requirement for sources to be online, but please could Soman explain how they consulted the sources? Was it this through Google Books snippet view?
The use of snippet-view, but it has been controversial because the snippets provided are so small that vital context is missing. I am not sure what the current consensus is on snippet sourcing, and the relevant policies are not specific. I will see advice at WP:VPP. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:59, 7 January 2016 (UTC) BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:59, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

  • All Google Book links in this article were seen with Snippet View. I've never heard of any policy not allowing snippet view books as sources. I deal a lot with snippet view, and never publish any facts from snippet view that I'm not sure is well represented. I always google around the snippet, creating multiple snippets to gather a wider understanding of the text and usually (as in this case) only extract simple facts. Regarding citation #8, there was an error, fixed now. As per BLP concerns, I found online that he had died in 2004 (http://benin-temoignages.hautetfort.com/archive/2013/03/06/paul-kpoffon.html ), but unfortunately, not WP:RS, so it couldn't be used in the article). --Soman (talk) 17:43, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
  • As noted, I opened a discussion at WP:Village pump (policy)#Google_Books_.22snippet_view.22_as_reliable_source.
    I don't doubt Soman's good faith in using the sources, but I am perplexed as to how a reviewer is expected to verify sources seen in this way. As Soman says, snippets can sometimes be useful if sufficient checks are made to ensure that the full context of each snippet is understood ... but much caution is needed, and it is very difficult to verify how caution much has been applied. In my own editing, I normally use snippet view only as a pointer to facts which I verify elsewhere; but in this case, the overwhelming majority of the sources are snippets.
    I am aware that there is a systemic bias issue -- sources of Africa are not so readily available online as those for the OECD countries -- and I would love to see more en.wp coverage of Africa. But in this case it feels like verifiability is severely compromised. We don't even have an reliable source that this article is clear of BLP concerns. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:06, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
  • 2 cents: 1) If snippet views are difficult to verify for the reviewer, how about off-line sources? AGF should be an option here as well. 2) What are the facts that are difficult to verify in this case? None of the sentences deal with any complex arguments, they are positions held at different junctures, and if snippet view is available all facts can be checked (using the family name 'Kpoffon'). --Soman (talk) 18:13, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Soman, I agree that all the points at stake here are simple statements about positions held at various times. We aren't talking of nuanced views or interpretations, so a smaller amount of info may be sufficient.
    As to the AGFing, if someone says that they have used an offline source, I assume that they had access to a sufficiently large chunk to allow them make a reasonable assessment of the context. However, if they were telling me that the offline copy consisted of a few post-it-note-sized cut-outs from book pages, I would have similar concerns to those I am expressing here. If there were one or two such references, I'd be happy to overlook the difficulties, but in this case nearly all of the refs are compromised. I don't even have links to any of the snippets to test a sample of them. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:47, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Good to go. My only outstanding concern was the use of snippet-view sources, and in this case' I am very happy to AGF.
    The article's creator (Soman) has kindly posted on my talk page a very detailed list[1] of the references sourced through Google Books snippet view. It was clearly a lot of work to prepare, and I am grateful to Soman for producing such a thorough and clear explanation.
    In each case, the passage in the article is very reasonable interpretation of the source text, so I am thoroughly persuaded that Soman has assessed these sources very carefully. I haven't seen the snippets myself, so I have to AGF ... but in this case the good faith is very readily apparent.
    As a general principle, I suggest that it would be a good idea for references using Google Snippets to disclose that fact in the citation, e.g. filling "via" field of {{cite book}} with something like via = Google Books snippet view. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:12, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
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