Template:Did you know nominations/El Palo Alto
- 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 97198 (talk) 03:04, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
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El Palo Alto
- ... that the city of Palo Alto, California is named after a big tree? Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/26/us/palo-alto-redwood.html
ALT1: ... that a 110-foot (34 m) coast redwood, El Palo Alto, has its own shower?Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/26/us/palo-alto-redwood.html ("George Hood, a city arborist at the time, concocted a plumbing system that sent water up the trunk that bathed El Palo Alto in fog-like mist.") https://www.cityofpaloalto.org/Departments/Community-Services/Open-Space-Parks/Neighborhood-Parks/El-Palo-Alto-Park supplies the height.- Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/1997 Bojnurd earthquake
- Comment: "Big tree" seems informal, but it was called that back in the day, so I think it's okay for a DYK hook.
Improved to Good Article status by Ovinus (talk). Self-nominated at 08:47, 31 December 2022 (UTC).
Article was promoted to GA status on time. Earwig did not find any close paraphrasing. QPQ has been done. I prefer ALT1, however the article doesn't exactly say the word "shower" anywhere in the article so the wording is somewhat misleading, so ALT1 or the article will need revision. I'm also wondering if a change to ALT1 could be made to reference that it's the tree that's on Stanford's seal. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 09:12, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
- I'm not sure how to reword it without losing interest, and "shower" is too informal for the article itself. "Has its own watering system" is a little boring. Here's another possible one. Ovinus (talk) 16:55, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
- ALT2: ... that El Palo Alto, a coast redwood which appears on the Stanford University seal and gives Palo Alto, California its name, was nearly cut down for lumber? Source: Smith, Emory E. (January 1, 1900). "The Famous Palo Alto Tree". Palo Alto Live Oak. p. C1. OCLC 32047575. "Several times the lumber men were about to cut down the Palos Colorados, the lone redwood trees from which the famous Palo Alto ranch has derived its name, but one thing and another hindered. The trees, however, would surely have been cut to save hauling had not the argonaut fleet arrived from New England early in the 1850 with lumber brought around the Horn."
- Can we possibly reword to avoid the doubly tautological "the El" and "Palo tree"? ALT1 has the same issue. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:55, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
- Done. Ovinus (talk) 00:16, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
- @Bruxton: Apologies for reverting your promotion, but I hadn't completed the review and chimed in on ALT1/ALT2 yet. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 00:56, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
- @Narutolovehinata5: I see it was in the unapproved section - I like ALT0. I checked it out in the references and while not explicit it is evident. Please ping me when you tick this green. Bruxton (talk) 00:59, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
- @Bruxton: Apologies for reverting your promotion, but I hadn't completed the review and chimed in on ALT1/ALT2 yet. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 00:56, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
- Done. Ovinus (talk) 00:16, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
- Can we possibly reword to avoid the doubly tautological "the El" and "Palo tree"? ALT1 has the same issue. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:55, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
- ALT2: ... that El Palo Alto, a coast redwood which appears on the Stanford University seal and gives Palo Alto, California its name, was nearly cut down for lumber? Source: Smith, Emory E. (January 1, 1900). "The Famous Palo Alto Tree". Palo Alto Live Oak. p. C1. OCLC 32047575. "Several times the lumber men were about to cut down the Palos Colorados, the lone redwood trees from which the famous Palo Alto ranch has derived its name, but one thing and another hindered. The trees, however, would surely have been cut to save hauling had not the argonaut fleet arrived from New England early in the 1850 with lumber brought around the Horn."
- I'm not sure how to reword it without losing interest, and "shower" is too informal for the article itself. "Has its own watering system" is a little boring. Here's another possible one. Ovinus (talk) 16:55, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
- @David Eppstein: I'm a bit confused: how are "the El" and "Palo tree" supposed to be tautological? I know that "El" is Spanish for "The" but it may not be immediately evident anyway to non-Spanish speakers so I don't really see how that's problematic. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 01:16, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
- "Tautological" in the sense of "repeating words that have the same meaning in different languages", exactly like all the many examples in the link I provided, List of tautological place names. You know, like "the La Brea Tar pits" literally means "the the tar pits tar pits", or "Torpenhow Hill" means "hill hill hill hill". Here we have "the El Palo Alto tree" (a phrase that can be found on many web pages) literally meaning something close to "the the tall tree tree". It's not exactly an error but it catches at the attention and could lead to complaints later. Why do it when it's easy to avoid by rewording? —David Eppstein (talk) 01:21, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
Going to approve ALT0 or ALT2 (though I have a slight preference for ALT2); ALT1 is struck due to aforementioned issues. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 01:16, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
