Template:Did you know nominations/Battle of the Basque Roads

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) 06:31, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Battle of the Basque Roads, Court-martial of James, Lord Gambier

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... that although the British commander was accused of incompetence following the Battle of the Basque Roads he was controversially acquitted at the Court-martial of James, Lord Gambier? Source: "When he learned that Gambier was to be given the thanks of parliament [Cpchrane] announced his intention of opposing it—as an MP rather than a naval officer—on the grounds of the admiral's culpable delay and inactivity. Faced with public criticism from a relatively junior officer, Gambier felt he must demand a court martial to judge his own handling of the action . . . Cochrane's vendetta was regarded with distaste by the Admiralty [and] by the court martial which honourably acquitted Gambier" [1]
- ALT1:... that when Lord Cochrane accused his superior Lord Gambier of incompetence at the Battle of Basque Roads, the matter led to an acrimonious court-martial? Source: "When he learned that Gambier was to be given the thanks of parliament [Cochrane] announced his intention of opposing it . . . on the grounds of the admiral's culpable delay and inactivity. Faced with public criticism from a relatively junior officer, Gambier felt he must demand a court martial to judge his own handling of the action" [2]

Reviewed: Fire of Kraków & Carlos Cuevas

Created/expanded by Jackyd101 (talk). Self-nominated at 21:12, 31 August 2017 (UTC).

Looks like a substantial, and good, rewrite. For DYK, however, you need to expand the article 5 times, whereas you have expanded it by about 3.5 (~13,179 characters to ~44,068). Have you considered nominating the article as a GA? Although you could also attempt to add some 20,000 characters to the article to make the 5x expansion, GA would probably be your best path to achieving a DYK.

As another (non-DYK related) suggestion, how about sfn footnotes? See Herbert Maryon and Nigel Williams as examples, where the references link to the bibliography. --Usernameunique (talk) 17:33, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

GA is running a huge backlog right now and to be honest it feels a little reductive to base this solely on character count. What you have here is in reality a completely rewritten article, exponentially improved from the previous one. Nevertheless, if its easier then lets just de-bold the Battle and have the court-martial stand as the DYK. - Jackyd101 (for some reason the sig button is missing from my toolbar)

Jackyd101 The second article is fine (new, in time, long enough, sourced, no apparent copyvios, QPQ done). Other than the characters, the first one is fine too (rewritten on 28 August, sourced, no apparent copyvios), although it will need its own QPQ if it goes through.

Asking Cwmhiraeth for an opinion on the first article. As I see it, the question is whether to bold link (rather than regular link) an article that has been substantially rewritten and improved, although has been expanded 3.5x instead of 5x. I think the argument in favor of bolding it gains support by the fact that is already in line to be shown on the main page, as part of the court martial hook. --Usernameunique (talk) 23:52, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

According to the page size tool I use (which is not the oner officially used by DYK), the article was 9078 B on 16 July before the expansion and is 42 KB now. The lengthy quotations in the original version do not count towards the character count. This means that it is very close to the necessary five-fold expansion. @BlueMoonset: is a better person to ask about this nomination. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 05:33, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

I get the same numbers as Cwmhiraeth using DYKcheck: 9078 prose characters prior to expansion, and 42514 currently, or a 4.68x expansion; a 5x expansion would be 45390 prose characters, or another 2876 prose characters. Would that be feasible, Jackyd101? The DYK rules have been written to effectively deny any exception for rewritten articles, with the exception that pre-expansion close paraphrasing or copyvio should not be included in the prior total; on the other hand, the larger the article prior to expansion, the increasing difficulty of a 5x expansion; in this case, 33436 characters were added to a 9078 character article when 5x would require an additional 36312. BlueMoonset (talk) 06:16, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Thank you all for checking on this - I don't think I can reasonably add that much text to the article, and I understand the rules are in place for a reason. I think on balance that I'll withdraw the first article and stick with the court martial instead. The hooks can stay the same with the battle debolded. Many thanks again - Jackyd101 (still no sig? why?)

Considering the above, I'm actually inclined to approve both. Jackyd101, you still need a second QPQ though. The first article is much closer to a 5x expansion than I thought (counted the block quotations in the first draft), and at 4.68x is only 6% short. In addition, the article is already set to run on the main page, so its inclusion (in bold) won't sacrifice the inclusion of another article—if anything it will let another article run, for if it is ever taken through GA it will have already had a DYK. --Usernameunique (talk) 23:28, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for this, I think its a good solution. Just to note, I can't QPQ another article right now as there do't seem to be any currently waiting to be reviewed. I'll keep an eye out for one coming up. - Jackyd101

Jackyd101 Here are a bunch that need to be reviewed:

I thought these were out of date and so had missed their chance. Is that not how it works? Any way, I did Template:Did you know nominations/Carlos Cuevas. Can you tell me why my signature button disappears on DYK pages? Its fine everywhere else. - Jackyd101

Nope, just older nominations. It would be a shame to reject them for lack of a timely review. Not sure about the signature button, I always sign manually by typing "- - ~ ~ ~ ~" (without the quotation marks or spaces). --Usernameunique (talk) 22:11, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

Many thanks, much appreciated.--Jackyd101 (talk) 22:39, 3 September 2017 (UTC)