Talk:Z (joke line)

A fact from Z (joke line) appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 4 December 2021 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Zzzzzz was the busiest residential telephone number in the United States in the 1970s?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2021/December. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Z (joke line).

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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 Vaticidalprophet (talk) 06:39, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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... that Zzzzzz was the busiest residential telephone number in the United States in the 1970s? Source: "THE WORLD'S most frequently dialed residential telephone number is a Los Angeles line that connects with an answering machine on the floor of Bob Bilkiss' closet, next to his shoes" (3).
- ALT1: ... that Zzzzzz found their announcer on a "live" show? Source: 'Z was now going on "live" for about an hour at a time twice a week. "We'd get so many callers offering to help us that we decided to get a P.O. Box so they could drop us a card with suggestions," said Bilkiss. "One day this guy John Shannon called and said he'd like to help. We liked his voice and we liked his ideas. He had had a lot of experience in production work' (5).

Reviewed: Ryan Grubb
Comment: Promoters please make this the last hook of the set, it only makes sense ;)

Created by DigitalIceAge (talk). Self-nominated at 06:17, 16 November 2021 (UTC).[reply]

Article is long enough and new enough, no copyvio or plagiarism concerns, cited using reliable sources, intriguing hook. Do you still need to do your QPQ? For the article itself, I might suggest breaking up the longer paragraphs and adding subheadings - but pending QPQ confirmation, this DYK is ready to go. Topshelver (talk) 20:15, 16 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the review, Topshelver! I took your advice to task and restructured the article some, expanded it a bit too. QPQ now done. DigitalIceAge (talk) 01:01, 17 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nice work, DigitalIceAge! QPQ confirmed. This DYK is good to go. Topshelver (talk) 01:12, 17 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ending

It'd be good to provide a more conclusive ending. If it was still operational in 1982, then probably it lasted to Bilkiss's death in 1989 since he'd only be ~40 then, and his family shut it down posthumously? And also some source on the reason for such an early death - most readers are going to infer from such an early death, with no cause mentioned, by someone who had no particular reason to die so young, that he committed suicide or had some other shameful death (like a drug overdose), so if it was actually a car accident or a very unfortunate cancer, that would be well worth noting. --Gwern (contribs) 16:29 29 September 2023 (GMT)

@Gwern: I found a tweet from one of the Z guys suggesting that he died from a massive heart attack, but short of a reliable source we can't conclusively say what happened. As for Z's demise, I'd have to imagine the rise of 1-900 joke lines in the 1980s proved too competitive. DigitalIceAge (talk) 16:49, 29 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]