Template:Did you know nominations/Dunum (Ireland)

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: rejected by Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:22, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
I think things are unfortunately going round in circles. The article is still barely over the 1500 character limit, none of the alts seem to have reached acceptance, and I can't think of a suitable one myself. I think it would be better, all things considered to improve the article than continuing to debate the letter of the DYK criteria here. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:22, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Dunum (Ireland)

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• ... that the use of some placenames in ancient Ireland can be attributed to Belgic tribes, neighbours of European Celts?

• Reviewed: Nile Delta toad

Created by RTG (talk). Self nominated at 14:46, 11 October 2014 (UTC).

• Comment There is about 1,400 characters in the main text, but there are about 180 in the text for the image... I'm not sure if that qualifies... ~ R.T.G 14:57, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

• Sorry, but per Wikipedia:Did you know/Supplementary guidelines#Supplementary article length rules (point 2), the "ignoring infoboxes, categories, references, lists, and tables etc." caveat at Wikipedia:Did you know#Eligibility criteria includes image captions, so I'm afraid it is too short. G S Palmer (talk • contribs) 15:20, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

@G S Palmer: I have edited it and am now getting 1541 if you are interested in reviewing it. ~ R.T.G 22:29, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

• RTG, I'm getting 1501 prose characters according to DYKcheck, but there's some unnecessary repetition between the first and second paragraph material regarding Rath-Keltar/Keltair and Downpatrick. Something similar occurs in the third and fourth paragraphs. More important, the "can be attributed to Belgic tribes" in the hook is not backed up in the article, which only says "may indicated a Belgic origin". This is far less certain, and the 1841 source for this statement (which for DYK needs to be placed no later than the end of the sentence where the hook fact appears) presents this as a theory by one "Mr. Chalmers" from over 173 years ago. I don't think this is usable with that source, but could be if a modern source with that attribution is found and cited. Finally, I'm very puzzled by the use in the three Vallencey references of the "f" in words like "Irifh"; this is clearly a long "s", not an "f", and for typefaces that don't offer that archaic and space-saving character, the regular (short) "s" is the clear and proper substitute: Irish, fortress, situated, etc. BlueMoonset (talk) 03:26, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

• @BlueMoonset: I am going to have to disagree with you all the way down the line here.

• Even when I remove all note numbers and line breaks in the text I get 1504 (edit:1519). (unless I go so far as to count without spaces where the line breaks where, as in full stops.With no spaces.Between them.And the words of.The next sentences).

• I used a word twice to give two different facts, both sourced. That's throughout the whole text, once and twice only, yet you have decided it to be repetitive wording, yet it gives two different facts about that word from two different sources, so the fact that you noticed may be as significant than that I used the word twice (I spelled it two different ways too, which you didn't notice, but that's what the sources did so I am just following those).

• Tertiary sourcing is one of the pillars of WP, and you say it is questionable because it was written in the 19th century, while all I can see is that the article opens with content sourced from the dark ages discussing content written and lost in the 2nd Century, 1800 years ago, and yet you accept that first, and so does the rest of the encyclopaedia because none of Ptolemys original geography remains and all of it is taken on faith. Jamieson goes on to quote other scholars, and he literally says in the next paragraph on the same subject, in reference to a source supportive of Chalmers, "Without disputing the propriety of this position," and that is just an example of his approach to the book, that his work throughout the book is from a skeptical position. That verifies use of "can be attributed to Belgic" and "may be a Belgic" as the same meaning doesn't it? Well let's exaggerate each phrase, "can possibly be attributed to" and "may possibly be a"... (those two phrases mean the same thing) and it is what it said in the book and accepting Ptolemy strengthens the veracity of Jamieson as Ptolemy only survives re-written. But in fact, in the best most concise English, the word "possibly" should be dropped because the other text already gives that clause. The source is explicit about Belgic and backed up by various other material related to the Cauci and Chauci (spelled those differently too?)

• The matter of the long s is irrelevant to this discussion, and a long s can be had by typing in "long s" to Wikipedia, and copying to character that you find. However, if I did not note them all down as effs, which is what they more closely resemble, I would have to pour letter for letter over the entire source again. (and they are all long esses now anyway, moot)

• So I find you are trying to be rigorous in this review, which is fine, but that as a bucket, it doesn't hold water. ~ R.T.G 11:48, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

I realise I have gone into some length in my response there, but maybe all that needed to be said was to read further into the source where Jamieson has maybe a page devoted to evidence of Dunum being Belgic so far as to say directly that he doesn't even believe it was Celtic (which is a significant statement), and to point out that things like the date of publishing, the fact that he is giving his statements as review of other works, and the use of the s are not really qualifiers here, are they?@BlueMoonset: It is bolstered in the article with the sources further down the page telling of the relationship to the Chauci and Cauci. They were Belgic. They are linked from the article. If you still think it can't be true, read fully into both the sources in the article, and the ones in the supporting articles and those you can find on searches. That's what I did. It's totally verifiable and I have deliberately kept it concise. It definitely should have an article as it is significantly recurrent in Irish place names of all kinds. ~ R.T.G 13:54, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

You're certainly welcome to disagree with me down the line; disagreement is healthy in Wikipedia when it gets us to better articles. My thoughts (at similar length, alas):

• DYKcheck is the gold standard for DYK, having been designed to count what is considered prose characters by the DYK rules. Footnote numbers are naturally not considered prose, but spacing within paragraphs certainly is. Paragraph breaks are not considered prose characters, however, which could account for your numbers of 1504 (later 1519), and DYKcheck's 1501 (later 1516), if you were adding one for each of the three paragraph breaks.
• Your adjustment of the beginning of the second paragraph took care of the first repetition I was referring to. As you can see from my new edit, I thought it was better to combine like matters in the same paragraph rather than leave them in separate paragraphs by sources.
• I felt the Jamieson source, while fine in and of itself, was questionable support for the Belgic assertion based on the snippet you quoted; Jamieson seemed to be casting doubt on Chalmers in general, and that Belgae were Celts, which seemingly left a Belgic hypothesis on thin ground. (I've now found a readable copy online and added the link to the reference. What Jamieson is, of course, objecting to is the Chalmers assignment of Celtic origins to English placenames for what Jamieson believes is actually Belgic with no Celtic component at all.) I thought confirmation from a modern scholar seemed an ideal solution, especially since you were hanging the hook off it. When a tertiary source (Jamieson) casts considerable doubt on the accuracy of a secondary source (Chalmers), it's hard to take that older source as adequate support for a hook. More germane is that they're mostly talking about British naming, not Irish, which makes it less useful for this article about Dunum in Ireland. The one thing that seems to be clear is that the Cauci were very possibly Belgic; as you note, Jamieson seems to accept this without question. However, even accepting the Belgic, the hook's statement about "neighbours of the European Celts" isn't even in the article and must be to be included (though it could easily be dropped from the hook), and "some placenames" is very weak, if not inadequate—"Dunum" as the Cauci's chief town is the only clear Belgic example in Ireland in the article.
• As you noted, the long-s discussion is moot (MOS:QUOTE#Typographic conformity); they're all now regular "s". BlueMoonset (talk) 03:19, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

• I've read all of that and looked at your edits, and it seems appreciable to me, including what you say about the hook, so it is for me to suggest:
• ALT1: ... that Latinised Irish placename Dunum (pictured), was given to the chief town of a Belgic tribe in Ireland?
• ALT2: ... that the name of Dunum (pictured), from early first millenium Irelands Downpatrick and Rathdrum, was the name of the chief town of the Cauci, a Belgic tribe?
• ALT3: ... that Downpatrick and Rathdrum in Ireland were recorded as Dunum (pictured) by Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD?
• ALT4: ... that Dunum (pictured) is commonly used in placenames of Ireland, Britain, and Europe?

• For what it is worth, I am leaning towards alt3. There is disagreement in Ireland about where Saint Patrick is buried, is it Downpatrick or Croagh Patrick. To say that Dunum was a major town in the north at Downpatrick, at odds with a major town in the south, competing with it by name, two thousand years ago, that would generate clicks here... but it might not generate them in other English speaking countries so much as Belgic tribes in Ireland or Irish language relationship to Europe

• You are correct about more modern sources being preferable, but most, where there is more than a passing reference to Dunum, are referencing the same stuff, even copying it verbatim, while none of them (I've found) are distinctly authorative, though I do believe that should, can and will develop when someone can identify some authorative modern educational material. (it's out there, but there is a haystack of it without much distinction) ~ R.T.G 11:10, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

• Full review needed—I think I've done a bit too much editing on the article at this point to continue, and there are a slew of new hooks to be considered. (I've struck the original hook for the reasons given above.) BlueMoonset (talk) 18:44, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

This is an easy review. The length of my response is just an indication of how interesting I found this subject when I researched and wrote the article. Sorry 'bout that, ~ R.T.G 23:33, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

• This article is new enough and long enough. For various reasons, I cannot approve any of the proposed hooks as they are not fully made out by the article and its sources. Can I suggest ALT5: Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:55, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

• ALT5 ... that the name Dunum, meaning a fortification or hill, is used in placenames in Ireland, Britain and continental Europe?

• Cwmhiraeth, I find it very interesting that you say the article is long enough, when DYKcheck gives 1458 prose characters, and further notes that the article is classified as a stub, another issue. What did you use to check, if it wasn't DYKcheck? I'm disappointed that the review skips over important DYK criteria such as close paraphrasing and neutrality. BlueMoonset (talk) 18:10, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

I did not do a full review because I spent a long time considering and rejecting the proposed hooks and it was obvious another reviewer would be needed. So of course I did not mention the things I would mention in a full review. I didn't check the article's length because I though it looked as if it was long enough, but obviously I was wrong. 42B is not going to be too difficult to add. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 18:26, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Added later: I have added a little further information to the article and it is now long enough. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 18:57, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

• Full review still needed. (Cwmhiraeth, thanks for added the extra text and the new hook.) BlueMoonset (talk) 19:43, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

References

• COMMENT: To quote the DYK eligibility rules: "In practice, articles longer than 1,500 characters may still be rejected as too short, at the discretion of the selecting reviewers." So why all the hassle about those last few characters?Georgejdorner (talk) 18:02, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

• George, this is off topic and not helping get the review done. Since you ask, however, the article was under 1500 prose characters and therefore not eligible regardless of "discretion"; the new material has put it over the minimum with 1612 prose characters, so it needs a reviewer to determine whether it meets all the DYK standards. BlueMoonset (talk) 15:30, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

• My comment is off-topic after all the above discussion about article length? You have got to be kidding. My above quote goes to the heart of the dispute on length.Georgejdorner (talk) 18:04, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

• If it were still relevant, I suppose it would address the dispute, but you're commenting in December about a matter that was discussed back in October and basically settled then. It is no longer apropos, since the article is no longer too short nor (since I edited it) padded. So yes: past and not helping the review to progress any, which to my mind is off-topic. You're free to disagree, of course. BlueMoonset (talk) 22:04, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

• The rule justifies editorial refusal of texts slightly larger than 1,500 characters—such as this article. And it's not relevant?Georgejdorner (talk) 18:03, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

• Full review still needed. BlueMoonset (talk) 15:30, 6 December 2014 (UTC)