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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 22:13, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

In The Shadow Of The Sword (book)

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Created/expanded by Darkness Shines (talk). Self nom at 19:30, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

  • The article is new enough and long enough. The references, however, are missing publishers and access dates. Till 13:31, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
The publishers are there? At least I see them, The Telegraph New Statesman The Guardian and the rest. I do not know what you mean by access dates? Darkness Shines (talk) 13:41, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
They are not publishers, they are works, which are two different things. For example, the publisher for The Guardian (work) would be Guardian Media Group, and so on for the others. So for that reference it should be |work=The Guardian and |publisher=[[Guardian Media Group]]. Access date is the date that the source was retrieved. So you need to go through each reference and add the field |accessdate=... Till 15:01, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
The requirement for DYK is that citations should not be bare refs (that is, URL only). See WP:DYKSG, rule D3. These are not bare refs, so there are no grounds under that requirement to withhold approval of this nomination, even though it would be good to eventually improve the reference formats. (Note: dates of the form "5 May 2011" should not have a comma anywhere in them.) Are there any other problems with this nomination? If not, then it should be approved forthwith. BlueMoonset (talk) 05:56, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Reviewer needed to check for other problems. Note: the hook isn't interesting -- "received mixed reviews" describes most books -- and an ALT hook should probably be requested, if not devised outright. BlueMoonset (talk) 22:25, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Article is neutral and referenced adequately. No infringements found. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:21, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
  • The article needs a new hook supplied by the nominator; the original one, "received mixed reviews", is not interesting, and DYK hooks are supposed to be. I have struck the original hook as inadequate. BlueMoonset (talk) 02:51, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
  • This doesn't really reflect the overall reaction, just a single negative quote, which runs up against the "neutral" requirement for hooks. How about something that alludes to the widely divergent (if not polarized) commentary? Including both "irresponsible and unreliable" and something like "a work of impressive sensitivity and scholarship" is more hooklike (and also more neutral). Trying that combination as ALT2:
  • ALT2 ... that In the Shadow of the Sword by Tom Holland has been described as "irresponsible and unreliable" and also as "a work of impressive sensitivity and scholarship"? —BlueMoonset (talk) 18:20, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
    • These still tell me nothing about the content of the book. I can't tell from this whether it is a fantasy novel, a history, an autobiography, or perhaps a travel guide to Volgograd. The quoted phrases are just vague "this is a negative review" and "this is a positive review" markers. I think the hook needs to be more specific. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:05, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
  • David, there is no requirement that a book hook tells you anything about what kind of book it is. None. The hook criteria are interesting, neutral, and cited in the article. I've seen ones that riff off something to do with the author, even though it's a book hook. If you'd like to suggest a different hook, you're welcome to do so—I have nothing invested in ALT2, and was simply hoping to get this nomination moving again. This is, unfortunately, the second time there's been a review requesting something not required in the DYK rules, which seems to me to be unfair to the nominator. BlueMoonset (talk) 00:47, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Essentially, I was viewing my critique as a variation of exactly the same thing you said in your critique of the first hook: it isn't interesting, because "received mixed reviews" describes most books, and the expanded hook is only a more verbose way of saying that it received mixed reviews — that's the only information I can glean from reading it. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:09, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Well, what you wrote didn't communicate that to me: what I took from it was that you wanted it to have different and specific subject matter—the content of the book—rather than that the specific (and very different) views were insufficiently interesting. I'll admit that I found the quite opposed views of the book intriguing, but I've been off the mark on hooks before. BlueMoonset (talk) 03:04, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
  • ALT3 ... that while researching In the Shadow of the Sword, Tom Holland found that the oldest biography of Mohammed was written two hundred years after he had died? Darkness Shines (talk) 08:02, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
    • Hook ALT3 confirmed in article, referenced, confirmed, and interesting enough. Combined wiht my previous check this is good to go with alt3. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:38, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Minor copyedit of ALT3: deleting "the" before the book title, and adding a comma immediately after it. BlueMoonset (talk) 14:39, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
    • I agree, this is a much better hook. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:59, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
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