A fact from Amy Langville appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 1 March 2020 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that former college basketball star Amy Langville is an expert in ranking systems, and has applied her ranking expertise to basketball bracketology?
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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.
... that former college basketball star Amy Langville is an expert on ranking systems, and has applied her ranking expertise to basketball bracketology? Source: See the article for many reviews of her two academic books on ranking; for the specific application to bracketology see [1]
Article is new enough, long enough, and neutral. Earwig is down for me, but I'm happy to accept that in good faith, a read-through didn't bring up any obvious copyvio. I really like the hook, it's interesting, mentioned in the article and sourced. QPQ has been done. I think this is good to go. Achaea (talk) 15:19, 19 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Duh. That's the point. It's deliberately repetitive, to emphasize that she comes to the same topic in two unexpectedly-different ways. Also, you overlooked the third deliberate repetition, "expert"..."expert". If you really want to see what repetition can accomplish (and I am by no means suggesting that this hook rises to that level) go read some sestinas. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:54, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Adding re-review icon to request another opinion on the repetition (could be Achaea, could be another reviewer) and get this moving again, since I don't see any cause for changing the nomination and (as he has made multiple other edits including at DYK without responding here) Yoninah appears not to intend to clear his question-mark icon himself. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:50, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
How about "... which she has applied to ..."? Repetition is not always a bad thing, but in this case I agree that it is. Saying something over and over again can even be annoying. Just going on and on without adding new information is not useful. We shouldn't be redundant. If we can say something once, that often has more impact, and definitely takes less space. We should respect the reader enough not to hammer them with the same content. --GRuban (talk) 20:21, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
But that changes the meaning — the proposed version says she has applied her expertise; your version says she has applied ranking systems. Saying she has applied ranking systems to bracketology is like saying someone has applied arithmetic to addition: not meaningful because addition was already part of arithmetic. Also, it doesn't eliminate the repetition (basketball is still repeated), making the part of the repetition that remains feel more haphazard and clunky. We should either deliberately be repetitive (as in the proposed version) or go all the way and eliminate the repetition, not go for some middle-ground compromise. Since the whole point of the hook is the unexpected repetition of basketball in what would otherwise seem to be two unrelated points in the subject's life, I would prefer to keep the full repetition, but if you and Yoninah both don't like it maybe you can suggest something that is actually witty and hooky and not just "did you know that person X did Y and then she did Z". —David Eppstein (talk) 22:14, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
So the source actually says "With College of Charleston collaborator Amy Langville and student Erich Kreutzer, Chartier developed a mathematical model for predicting NCAA tournament victors." (And that's not only the only source for the hook, but actually the only mention of Langville in the source, which is worrisome, because we ideally want our sources to be about our subjects, not just mention them in passing, but let's let that go.) If we're worried about changing meaning, we should probably follow our source. How about "... that former college basketball star Amy Langville became a mathematician and developed a model for predicting NCAA tournament winners?" This also removes the word "bracketology", which needs to be linked if used because it is not common, but isn't strictly needed to convey the hook. Or we can reorder: "...that mathematician and former college basketball star Amy Langville developed..." --GRuban (talk) 22:33, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Again, can we please at least put a non-zero amount of effort into writing a hook that is actually hooky, and not just "That person X used to do Y and later did Z"? Your hook is about as bouncy as a lead basketball. Also, non-USA readers will have no idea that NCAA and basketball have any relation to each other, and as well as the deliberate repetition you also removed the alliteration of "basketball bracketology". As for your questioning the use of the word "bracketology": the source says she developed a model for predicting NCAA tournament winners. Bracketology means developing models for predicting NCAA tournament winners. We do not have to see a source that exactly says "she applied her expertise to basketball bracketology" to infer from what we already have that she applied her expertise to basketball bracketology. In fact, if we did have such a source, we would have to use different wording; requiring that our hooks use the exact words of a source would be requiring plagiarism. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:38, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
(Multiple edit conflict)He approaches the net ... it's a hook shot ... I do, actually, think it's hooky; not every basketball star becomes a mathematician, and certainly not every mathematician develops basketball models. He shoots... The repetition, on the other hand would be ... double dribbling. And the crowd goes wild! --GRuban (talk) 22:49, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Um, ok. Anyway, as for your "worrisome, because we ideally want our sources to be about our subjects": no. You're confusing two different things, notability (which needs in-depth coverage of some sort) with verifiability (which needs the source to be reliable and to verify what we claim). This particular source is too non-in-depth for notability, but that's not what we're using it for; we only need it for verifiability, and it's fine for that. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:52, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
All right, I see you prefer your original hook to my suggestions, and the reviewer did approve. I won't hog the ball any more, and will pass to the closing admin. --GRuban (talk) 22:57, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Article is new enough, long enough, and neutral. Earwig is down for me, but I'm happy to accept that in good faith, a read-through didn't bring up any obvious copyvio. I really like the hook, it's interesting, mentioned in the article and sourced. QPQ has been done. I think this is good to go. Achaea (talk) 15:19, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
The hook wording is rather repetitive ("basketball"..."basketball"..."ranking"..."ranking"). Yoninah (talk) 21:15, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
Adding re-review icon to request another opinion on the repetition (could be Achaea, could be another reviewer) and get this moving again, since I don't see any cause for changing the nomination and (as he has made multiple other edits including at DYK without responding here) Yoninah appears not to intend to clear his question-mark icon himself. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:50, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
