Template:Did you know nominations/Daniel S. Schanck Observatory
- The following discussion 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 Allen3 talk 02:41, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
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Daniel S. Schanck Observatory
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- ... that the Daniel S. Schanck Observatory, Rutgers University's first astronomical observatory, was designed after the Tower of the Winds in Athens' ancient agora?
- Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Hulda Stumpf
- Comment: source is footnote 3, Robbins, Allen B. History of Physics and Astronomy at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1771-2000. (Baltimore: Gateway Press, 2001), 42–43.
Created by ColonelHenry (talk). Self nominated at 01:37, 5 October 2013 (UTC).
New (Oct. 4), long enough, within policy, no copyvio found via tool, QPQ done (though the tool shows you're under five DYKs so you could have skipped it). The "first" part of the hook doesn't have an immediate ref in article (see 3b), but the second part does. A tiny verification problem—that source says that it appears to copy and not that it copies. I'm not sure if this is doubt on the author's part, but I'd modify the text and hook to match the source, either that the towers appear similar or that X thinks they're copies. Also did you want to add a photo to the hook? Please ping me if I don't respond. 
czar ♔ 23:49, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
- @Czar: regarding your points:
- (1) Semantics: I considered "copies" and "designed after" to be rather synonymous in this context, either of which the Robbins source vaguely supports--but in the interest of interchangeability, I brought the article into conformity with two additional sources that emphasizes that it was designed after more definitively and explicitly (fn. 4 and 5).
- (2) "First" observatory: As for the fact that it's the first observatory...if a college starts a scientific program in 1862, and a professor suggests and the school builds an astronomy observatory in 1865, by implication, it's the first. But just to firmly establish it, I added "passim" because when you read all of Robbins book and McCormick's book, it takes you through the entire course of Rutgers history and a sketch of the college's development, and when they build the Schanck Observatory, it is fourth building on campus--after its first Old Queens (for classroom instruction, faculty housing, etc.), it's second a house built for the president, the third a building for its two literary societies, when the fourth building is an astronomy observatory, it's the first astronomical observatory--especially when the previous three buildings erected are described as decisively not being an astronomical observatory. And reading through the Robbins source, he establishes it wasn't Rutgers' last observatory. Further, "If something is obvious to anyone who reads and understands the sources that are supposed to support it, then it's not SYNTH." (WP:SYNTHNOT). Making that observation/statement is entirely permissible on Wikipedia, and entirely supportable by the sources listed herewith--and here in particular by note a (added to address this), and footnotes 1 and 3.
- (3) Photo: When I made the DYK nomination, I had not yet added a photo to the article. There is a photo now. If the individual who promotes chooses to File:Daniel S Schanck Observatory Rutgers Univ New Brunswick NJ c 1901.jpg is the image, and it is appropriately tagged. --ColonelHenry (talk)
