Talk:I Am God (novel)

A fact from I Am God (novel) appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 12 March 2021 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the God in the novel I Am God was described by a reviewer as "half heteronormative deity, half embarrassing uncle"?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2021/March. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/I Am God (novel).

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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 Valereee (talk) 21:33, 7 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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~~... that I Am God?~~ Source: ...it's the title of the book

Reviewed: Did you know nominations/Brian Sicknick

Created by Vaticidalprophet (talk). Self-nominated at 16:31, 2 February 2021 (UTC).[reply]

New, long enough, nominated in time. Appears neutral. Generally sufficient online citations to reliable sources but see nitpicks.

Earwig found no major copyright problems; the one phrase it highlighted ("God falling in love with a mortal woman") is such a stock phrase that I don't think it's a problem. On source spotchecks you might want to look into rephrasing slightly further away from the NYT wording eg "for reasons he does not understand." (article) vs "For reasons He can’t understand" (NYT) in the context of other similar phrasing. "Intricate" is also a quotation, and should be quoted or rephrased.

Hook is concise and amusing; I like it for the quirky slot (it doesn't really fit elsewhere, but DYK is often short of the quirky ones so I don't think that matters). It isn't formally inline cited at the end of the sentence where it first appears. Is there an easy way of doing that just to tick the box?

Need to give original publication date (at least the year) in text with source (currently only in categories). You also need a source for the translator and date of translation into English, the genres, and indeed all the info in the lead and infobox that isn't in the body. Probably easiest to just start a brief publication history section to attach the refs to.

All the online sources would normally have access dates though it's unclear how necessary they are for reviews in newspapers.

Do you read Italian or are you going with some form of online translation? The word "spirited" probably needs quoting and giving the original word that it translates.

Not essential for DYK, but it would be good to expand the lead. It certainly should give the Italian title/date of publication, but a comment on reception would also be useful. In the body, you could also comment on the quality of the translation; eg there's a useful comment in R. P. Finch's review. Also the author is apparently a soil scientist and has written 7 novels of which this is the first to appear in English, which would be interesting background in the absence of an article about him.

Strictly QPQ could do with directly addressing all the DYK boxes eg length, copyvio/close paraphrasing, but more importantly there's no comment on the image suitability/licensing.

Sorry for the long review, I seem incapable of doing them short these days. Bottom line, with a few tweaks this will make a great quirky hook that will hopefully get lots of hits. Espresso Addict (talk) 05:32, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for checking it out, @Espresso Addict! No worries about the long review. In no particular order:

Still getting the hang of QPQ (I haven't even technically run enough hooks to require it, but I've been submitting quite a lot lately so I'm doing it out of courtesy), so there's some growing pains. I'll definitely keep the image matters in mind; I checked it afterwards out of personal curiosity and it looked fine, but I totally blanked on it being an aspect of QPQ.

Italian is via translation, yes (I know tiny amounts but nothing useful); I modified the wording of that section a little to avoid direct quoting in a way that risks getting disputed by an actual speaker.

I noticed while expanding the lede (hope it looks better now, and that the references are sufficient -- take that as a comment on the other parts about referencing) that Giacomo Sartori and Frederika Randall are both redlinks. I suspect one or both may pass GNG/NAUTHOR, so I'll be looking into solving that the classic way, so to speak. Access dates are added. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 05:59, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The "hook" is not acceptable. A real hook must present an actual fact. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 01:06, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Vaticidalprophet: Great new article on Randall; sad to read she is deceased. I think my only remaining nitpick that's necessary for DYK is the date of publication in English needs an inline source. However I see that Mandarax has nixed the suggested hook -- personally I disagree and I know DYK has run hooks of this form in the past, but unless you want to take it up on the DYK talk page, I'm afraid you will have to come up with something different. The quotation from NYT looks nicely hooky to me. Espresso Addict (talk) 13:06, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Article on Sartori written too, as it is. Spent quite a while seriously thinking about this, and still not very happy with my options. I'd like to go to bat for the original hook; I don't want to cause a whole incident, though, and I suspect a whole incident may be caused if I do. Thoughts? Vaticidalprophet (talk) 17:07, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Vaticidalprophet: If you write a polite note on the DYK talk page soliciting editors' views on it as a quirky hook then I don't think it will cause an incident, though people seem pretty tetchy these days (lockdown fatigue?). Cheers, Espresso Addict (talk) 17:22, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Mandarax: The hook that ran from this 2011 DYK nom didn't have any fact contained within it (simply an enlarged question mark). Granted, it ran on April Fools' Day. —Bloom6132 (talk) 01:38, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that was a one-time April Fools' Day exception, and I was fine with it. There have been a few other examples, but just because something wrong was done in the past is not a reason to do the same wrong thing again. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 02:17, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Vaticidalprophet:, I like the humor of your original hook, but I can see how it may fall in a gray area. I do like the concept of an 'in-universe' kind of hook for the novel, maybe something along the lines of one of the following would work? /Tpdwkouaa (talk) 02:31, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- ALT1: ... that God keeps a diary? [1]
- ALT2: ... that God fell in love with an atheist? [2]

I quite like ALT2, and I'll take it if there are no objections, but in-universe style hooks get objections too. All apologies for blowing up your notifications lately, @Espresso Addict, but -- ? Vaticidalprophet (talk) 08:22, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I did warn you this might happen Vaticidalprophet. I will just say be careful if you do want to go down that route as Maundy Thursday coincides with AFD this year so you might get some comment about it. But as I said in the talk page comment, I am only making an observation and I will not stand in the way of this. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 11:47, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If in-universe hooks are absolutely prohibited, rather than only acceptable in exceptional cases as I had thought, then neither of these is any more acceptable than the original hook, sadly. Otherwise Alt1 (diary) is ok except that the article uses the word "journal"; and Alt2 (falling in love) is ok except that the falling in love wording is in the lead without an explicit source; the body uses "infatuation". If an out-of-universe one is needed then you would need at minimum to rephrase it along the lines of:

ALT3: "... that in I Am God, a novel by Giacomo Sartori, God falls in love with an atheist?" but even this, imo, really falls into the only in-universe pot, as the main fact is just plot summary.

@Mandarax: For clarity, are you opposed to this even on April Fools' Day? Espresso Addict (talk) 17:14, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Besides a few specific exceptions, all of the "normal" rules apply to AFD hooks. ALTs 1 and 2 are also unacceptable, as in-universe hooks are, indeed, prohibited. Now, as far as I'm concerned, ALT3 is okay, but I believe the consensus in past WT:DYK discussions has generally been that even hooks like that are not allowed. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 21:21, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think we'd better take this to DYK:Talk for a wider consensus. Espresso Addict (talk) 22:23, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect we should, yes. At the moment, I'm a little acutely sleep-deprived and need to prioritize that health matter over starting a thread myself, but I'd be happy if you could or if you'd rather I wait some hours. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 22:39, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Either Alt1 or Alt2 are fine. --evrik ^(talk) 01:22, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Evrik: It should be noted that ALT1 and ALT2 are pure in-universe hooks and as such would not be allowed per the rules requiring hooks to have a connection to the real world. @Vaticidalprophet: The article is currently lacking sections on the novel's themes and development; are there enough sources or coverage for them to be written? If you can write sections on those, there could potentially be more hook ideas that would better fit the rules. @Espresso Addict: As for allowing in-universe hooks in exceptional circumstances, I did propose a similar idea a couple of years ago, although consensus ended up being strongly against it, and from experience no IAR exemption has ever recently been permitted for in-universe hooks, even for April Fools. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 11:03, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Narutolovehinata5: Hooks have to relate to the real world? Where do the guidlines say that? --evrik ^(talk) 01:01, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Evrik: WP:DYKSG#C6. Previous discussions have also rejected hooks based on plots and plot points. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 02:55, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Both diaries and atheists exist in the real world. In any case, I don't think slavish adherence to this guideline is really necessary. --evrik ^(talk) 03:09, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There appears to be a consensus against any of the current proposals, so a new hook direction is probably needed here. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 10:05, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, I was coming back to write this. I do note that some essentially in-universe hooks go through without complaint, witness today's Gwerz Santes Enori. Espresso Addict (talk) 05:59, 23 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's apparently a song so its hook relating to the real world is more arguable. Had I seen that hook earlier I would have probably started a discussion on it to be on the safe side, though I think song lyrics-related hooks have been allowed multiple times in the past. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 10:59, 23 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Trying a new approach. How about:

ALT4 ... that the God in the novel I Am God was described by a reviewer as "half heteronormative deity, half embarrassing uncle"?

ALT4a ... that the God in the novel I Am God was described by a reviewer as "half embarrassing uncle"?

The "half embarrassing uncle" quote caught my eye when taking a new look at the article, although I don't know if it's appropriate as a hook. If needed, it could be mentioned that the description was by a reviewer, but for hookiness purposes it could also be left out. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 15:42, 25 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

On second thought, I just added the "by a reviewer" part to allay any concerns that the hooks sounded in-universe. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 23:36, 25 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Taking a look at this nomination, I think ALT4 and ALT4a are both suitable and interesting, though ALT4a looks like the better of the two. Both hooks are supported by the source and are in the article. Otherwise, the rest of the review is per Espresso Addict. Epicgenius (talk) 17:43, 7 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]