Template:Did you know nominations/Acer whitebirdense

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 Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:05, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Acer whitebirdense

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... that leaves of the fossil maple Acer whitebirdense had been identified as viburnum, sycamore, and blackberry?

Source: "Brown (1937b) correctly interpreted the Whitebird leaves and fruits of Acer as representing Eriocarpa; Chaney and Axelrod (1959), in contrast, decided that some of the Whitebird leaves represented Rubra. Further, Ashlee's (1934) Viburnum whitebirdensis has been totally ignored by all subsequent workers. Only one species of Acer is present in the collections from Whitebird, and this species is the same as Ashlee's (1934) "Viburnum". (Also the synonyms list on pg.91)" (Wolfe & Tanai, 1987)

Reviewed: Geological deformation of Iceland

Created by Kevmin (talk). Self-nominated at 21:39, 1 December 2016 (UTC).

Hey, Kevmin! New enough. Very easily long enough. I think the hook could benefit from being rephrased a bit, though, and linked to the articles on the other plants. Something like ALT 1: "... that the fossil leaves of the maple species Acer whitebirdense had earlier been misidentified as belonging to viburnum, sycamore, or blackberry?" and could you edit the relevant passage of the article to reference the common names of the plants so the hook is better supported in the article? Abyssal (talk) 15:34, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

@Abyssal: Generally with DKY noms, its best to keep extra links to a minimum, as too many blue links make it hard to tell where the target article is. I typically avoid vernacular names since they are highly subjective. Sycamores in the UK are Acer while sycamores in the US are Platanus, Rubus is anything blackberry/raspberry/salmonberry/thimbleberry etc. --Kev min § 15:58, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

@Kevmin:I think the usage of scientific or common names should be consistent between the hook and the article, so if you want to avoid common names in the article, you should avoid them in the hook as well, so perhaps we should go with something like: ALT 2: "... that the fossil leaves of the maple species Acer whitebirdense had earlier been misattributed to the genera Viburnum, Platanus, and Rubus?" Abyssal (talk) 16:16, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I would be more comfortable with that option then with adding inaccuracy through vernacular names.--Kev min § 13:53, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Full review needed now that hook has been set; the original review only covered newness and length, omitting many of the DYK criteria. BlueMoonset (talk) 20:46, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Looks good. I feel that the hook may be overly technical for a general audience but would be of interest to a reader interested in the broad topic anyway, probably good enough for DYK. I notice that the initializing of Acer to A. is not consistent in the article, that should be an easy fix and shouldn't affect the article's DYK eligibility anyway. I will change the hook cited to "yes" if I can get the full document to download. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:41, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Ivanvector, is your opinion on the hook referring to the original one or the ALT2 given in the text? And do you prefer one over the other, or think that either might be unacceptable? Thanks for doing the review. BlueMoonset (talk) 16:30, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

My opinion refers to ALT2, I thought that was the hook that was decided on and that would be my preference. It's just my thought that scientific names are often not very accessible to casual, everyday readers and they might not be interested in a hook with four of them in it, however it is the right way to present the information. Wikilinking the genera might be a good way to overcome this, and I think wouldn't draw attention away from the hooked article. Also, I did verify the citation, the 50MB PDF took me two hours to download. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 16:47, 22 January 2017 (UTC)