Talk:Bureau of State Services

A fact from Bureau of State Services appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 11 October 2020 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the Bureau of State Services was broken up to become the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and parts of two other agencies?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2020/October. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Bureau of State Services.

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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 Yoninah (talk) 20:46, 3 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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... that the U.S. Public Health Service's Bureau of State Services was broken up to become the Environmental Protection Agency, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and parts of FDA and HRSA? Source: [1] [2]
ALT1: ... that the U.S. Public Health Service's Bureau of State Services was broken up to become the Environmental Protection Agency, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and parts of two other agencies?

Reviewed: WZHR

Created by John P. Sadowski (NIOSH) (talk). Self-nominated at 02:19, 17 September 2020 (UTC).[reply]

John P. Sadowski (NIOSH) The article is long enough and new enough with no copyright violations. The hook information is directly cited and I prefer the original hook. There are only two issues - A QPQ is needed and the 36th reference has an error message with its formatting. SL93 (talk) 18:24, 18 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@SL93: QPQ provided, reference error corrected. John P. Sadowski (NIOSH) (talk) 08:20, 19 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. This is ready. SL93 (talk) 17:09, 19 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There is an awful lot of blue-linking in these hooks. Is this the hookiest thing you can say about the subject? It sounds like it would have limited interest outside the U.S. Yoninah (talk) 19:11, 24 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Yoninah: Unfortunately, it seems to just not be that interesting of an agency on the whole. Here are a few ALTs, but I'm not sure if they're any better. John P. Sadowski (NIOSH) (talk) 22:44, 24 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

ALT2: ... that the activities of the U.S. Public Health Service's Bureau of State Services included public health surveillance, workforce development, hospital construction, and environmental health research?
ALT3: ... that the U.S. Public Health Service's Bureau of State Services had significant activities in Atlanta and Cincinnati arising from malaria and stream pollution activities in those cities?
ALT4: ... that Lewis Ryers Thompson led both the National Institutes of Health and the Bureau of State Services?

New hooks require review. John P. Sadowski (NIOSH) (talk) 01:47, 1 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@John P. Sadowski (NIOSH): I read through the whole article and you're right, there's almost nothing to say. Most of the article is very bureaucratic as opposed to descriptive. ALT3 comes closest to mentioning an eye-popping word like malaria, but the rest of the hook is uninteresting. Can you focus on one descriptive function and build a hook around it? Yoninah (talk) 19:58, 1 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Yoninah: Having spent some time doing a moderate amount of extra web searching, I think this is the best we're going to get without doing a real deep dive into finding new sources. During this period the real action was with the individual divisions, with the bureau being a thin administrative layer over a lot of disparate functions. I'd prefer a hook that spoke to the diversity of the bureau's functions, rather than focusing on one at the expense of the others, if neither type of hook would be a real zinger. John P. Sadowski (NIOSH) (talk) 21:35, 1 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

OK. So I'll restore the tick for ALT0, while reducing the blue linking as follows:
ALT0a: ... that the U.S. Public Health Service's Bureau of State Services was broken up to become the Environmental Protection Agency, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and parts of the FDA and HRSA? Yoninah (talk) 21:59, 1 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

On second thought, we'll go with ALT1 and leave the blue linking for the recognizable agency names. Sorry for the hassle. Yoninah (talk) 20:46, 3 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]