Talk:Beep line

A fact from Beep line appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 2 May 2023 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that American teenagers of the 1960s and 1970s used to chat and arrange dates over the sound of the busy signal?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2023/May. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Beep line.

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Telecommunications Mid‑importance

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Did you know nomination

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 BorgQueen (talk) 18:12, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Article history

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... that from the 1950s to the 1980s, beep lines in the U.S. telephone network allowed people to improvise conference calls over busy signals? Source: "Electronic Gags End 'Moondialing' Craze". Idaho Daily Statesmen: 24. March 17, 1961 – via Newspapers.com. And Kovalchik, Kara (April 8, 2015). "10 Aspects of Old Telephones That Might Confuse Young People". Mental Floss. Minute Media. Archived from the original on April 11, 2015.
- Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Sleep in the NBA

Created by DigitalIceAge (talk). Self-nominated at 21:11, 18 April 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Beep line; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.[reply]

Nice article! New enough (submitted on day it was created/moved into mainspace); long enough (4360 characters); well sourced with inline citations; extremely low Earwig score and no apparent copyvio; neutral and balanced. The one source I'm not sure about is LOD/H Technical Journal as I'm unfamiliar with Wikipedia guidelines on "hacker" websites. (Maybe Legion of Doom specifically is ok if used with care?) QPQ is pending. ALT0 checks out – I wonder if it's worth adding "U.S." before telephone network in this case? Any ideas for ALT hooks? How about one with teenagers in it? (In the end, maybe ALT0/0a will be best...but thought it's worth exploring other options as it's such a great story.) Cielquiparle (talk) 04:02, 19 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks very much for the review and kind words! I decided to remove the LOD source as I only really used it to explain the circumstances where callers might be charged for these conversations despite busy tones not supposed to invoke supervision billing. Added "U.S." to the lede and hook. Here's a couple other hooks:
  - ALT1: ... that American teenagers of the 1960s and 1970s used to chat and arrange dates over the sound of the busy signal? [1] [2]
  - ALT2: ... that teenagers in the U.S. used to host conference calls over the busy signal?
- DigitalIceAge (talk) 17:04, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Approving ALT0, ALT1, and ALT2. Cielquiparle (talk) 20:23, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]