Template:Did you know nominations/Tom Cox (highwayman)

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 Yoninah (talk) 20:17, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

Tom Cox (highwayman)[edit]

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Tyburn gallows, 1680.

... that the highwayman Tom Cox kicked the priest and hangman out of the cart taking him to be hanged at Tyburn (pictured)?
Alt1 ... that when asked if he wished to say a prayer before he was hanged at Tyburn (pictured), the highwayman Tom Cox kicked the priest and hangman out of the cart taking him to the gallows?

Reviewed: JB-3 Tiamat

5x expanded 20/21st Nov by Philafrenzy (talk) and Edwardx (talk). Nominated by Philafrenzy (talk) at 10:56, 21 November 2017 (UTC).

Technically, this is a (more than) 5x expansion (or it was so on November 21, rather than 20), to some 3,000 characters. Earwig's give about 14% similarity with one source, which is fine. Hook and ALT (both are the same fact) are within policy, interesting, and verified by the source. Waiting on QPQ. Dahn (talk) 09:14, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

Comment: Earwig is effectively useless here, since it can't check in the Google books sources, and that 13.8% only refers to the book's blurb/description within Google books, not the actual text of the book. In this case, a manual check of the referenced book pages is in order to see whether there is copyvio/close paraphrasing, and the review isn't complete without such a check. (Note that a 14% score is not of itself "fine"; copyvios have been found below 10%, so the Earwig number and "unlikely" score are not definitive.) BlueMoonset (talk) 23:59, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, I was not aware of that. That said, I verified again and the sources are quite clearly different in tone, with the text having been seriously rephrased, toned down, modernized, for the article; everything in there was basically rewritten and, though this apparently was left out by the author of the article, uses two sources rather than one for most of what it says (the second source is only quoted here and there). I would take some issue with the fact that it fails to give page by page references, but the page range it gives is very small. Overall, I see no issue of either sourcing or close paraphrasing; some of the writing was inexplicably lazy, but I don't think that would disqualify it from DYK. Dahn (talk) 08:29, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

The second source was derivative of the first. I should be interested to know which wording you found "inexplicably lazy"? Philafrenzy (talk) 10:30, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

It's not the wording, the wording is just fine as far as I can ascertain. The problem is that you gave page ranges, all in one note, instead of page-by-page, in several notes, and that you only cited the "derivative" source for random things, when you could have easily cited it as well, for all that it verifies. That looks lazy to me, and it takes some liberties with DYK rules, as these require inline citations, and wikipedia's guide defines such as: "A full citation fully identifies a reliable source and, where applicable, the place in that source (such as a page number) where the information in question can be found". But I won't hold it against the article, as stated; the only issue to address, IMO, is the QPQ: you haven't yet reviewed an article. Dahn (talk) 10:51, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

There was no point citing a derivative source side by side with the main source. It is only used where it seems to add something new which is the correct practice. The page range is short and to have given particular pages for each reference would have greatly complicated the referencing. Your accusations of laziness are gratuitous and offensive. Please strike them. A lot of careful work went into the article. You added that comment after your original reply and it seems to me that you added it in pique at being called back to do more work on the review. Philafrenzy (talk) 11:10, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

Or maybe you could take the time to note that I'm not accusing you of anything, that I have gladly looked over the sources again, that the only thing I find issue with is that you haven't yet done the QPQ, and that using page ranges (yes, short ones: I had already said the same myself; had they been longer ones, I would quite certainly not given you as positive a review) is in any case lazier than the alternative, and that I am cutting you more slack than another reviewer who might simply take issue with the fact that you failed to produce exact page numbers, which would have been the orthodox way. I don't feel I should strike anything out, but if you take issue with lazy, I can use "neglectful"or "slackened". Regards, Dahn (talk) 17:26, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

"It is only used where it seems to add something new which is the correct practice" -- I don't think there's anything correct or incorrect about that practice, it is just your personal preference. Personally, I find it whimsical, because to do so is to tell readers that you have made a judgment call regarding sources, and that they should accept it. But either way. Dahn (talk) 17:33, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the review and suggestions, Dahn. Philafrenzy, one way to cite specific pages with adding too much clutter is by using {{sfn}} footnotes. It means you need two sections (one for the short footnotes, one for a bibliography), but helps with precision, and leaves you with a bibliography. See Shorwell helmet#References for an example, where different pages of the same article are cited repeatedly. It's an interesting article, and I enjoyed reading it. Looks like it just needs the QPQ to be set. --Usernameunique (talk) 06:17, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

QPQ done. Philafrenzy (talk) 23:10, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Approving now that QPQ is done. --Usernameunique (talk) 04:49, 22 December 2017 (UTC)