Template:Did you know nominations/Ivica Dačić

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: rejected by — Crisco 1492 (talk) 02:17, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
Close paraphrasing

Ivica Dačić

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... that Ivica Dačić (pictured), the new Prime Minister of Serbia, has pledged to not revive the nationalist policies of his former party leader and President Milošević, and proclaimed a pro-EU path?

Reviewed: Ivan Strez Balšić

Created/expanded by Zoupan (talk). Self nom at 19:15, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure this was adequately expanded. Daniel Case (talk) 06:23, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

The author has added about 7kb to the wikipage since Daniel Case's initial review at 06:23h (UTC) earlier today. --PFHLai (talk) 20:20, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

In any event, "I'm not sure" should never be grounds for an X. Maybe the ? or /, but not an X. As it is, DYKcheck says this is a 5x expansion to 11214 prose characters beginning August 6, four days before nomination, so it qualifies on those grounds. I'll let someone else check the hook and do the usual sourcing and close paraphrasing checks on the article itself. BlueMoonset (talk) 21:31, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

I was about to do the review, but then I realized that Daniel is using this review credit for his nom here. So I'll stop and let Daniel resume and take over. --PFHLai (talk) 22:13, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Alright then, if the expansion checks out, I don't see any other problems. Except the rather dull hook. I dislike hooks of the variety: "... that Politician X takes INSERT POSITION HERE? They're either basically campaign ads or unsurprising (all politicians take positions on all sorts of things) and should be avoided unless they're really surprising ("... that Politician Y believes the Nazi Party should admit Jews as members?" ... that sort of thing). So I'm glad the article has been expanded again as it provided material for a better hook:

ALT1: ... that although new Serbian prime minister Ivica Dačić (pictured), has been nicknamed "Little Sloba" after Slobodan Milošević, he has distanced himself from Milošević's nationalism? Daniel Case (talk) 16:59, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

The article has major problems. Aside from the extensive use of bare refs, which is not allowed under DYK guidelines (WP:DYKSG, D3: "References in the article must not be bare URLs"). More troubling, however, is the extensive and overly close paraphrasing. This source alone has many instances, which Duplication Detector oddly failed to pick up doing its straight URL comparison, despite my having found a six-word identical phrase, but did once the texts were copied into external files and compared that way. Two examples from the "Status of Kosovo" section:

Article: "EU has said that recognition of Kosovo is not a prerequisite for Serbia's accession, and it opposes any partition of Kosovo into separate Albanian and Serbian entities." Source: "While the EU has said that recognition of Kosovo is not a prerequisite for Serbia's accession, it opposes the division of the new state into separate Serbian and Albanian entities".
Article: "In 2006, upon becoming leader of the Party, Dačić said to a Serbian newspaper that he would have "no problem" taking up arms to fight for Kosovo as it was something he had done in the past." Source: "In 2006, after being named leader of the Socialist Party, Mr Dacic told a Serbian newspaper that he would have "no problem" with taking up arms to fight for Kosovo as it was something he had done in the past."

There were similar problems with other material from this source. BlueMoonset (talk) 21:32, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Hmm. I had fixed the hook language in the article for exactly this reason, and part of the reason I proposed a replacement hook was the derivative language of the original hook. I get the feeling the article creator was a non-native English speaker, so I can see why this might have happened, but we do still have to fix it. Daniel Case (talk) 15:00, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

I have taken care of bare urls and close paraphrasing.--Zoupan 20:09, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Some close paraphrasing still remains from that same source. Two more examples:

Article: "Serbia earned EU candidate status under Tadić's government, and Dačić has pledged his determination to begin accession talks, and has said"; Source: "Serbia earned EU candidate status and Mr Dacic has pledged his determination to begin accession talks. He also said recently:"
Article: "the nickname "Little Sloba" after his mentor, though he is not the only Socialist politicians with the nickname"; Source: "the nickname "Little Sloba" - although he is not the only Socialist politician to be labelled in this way". BlueMoonset (talk) 20:45, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

There have been edits towards rectifying the issues in the past week. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 09:06, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

The BBC source was not the only one with issues; random checks of 4 English-language sources found problems with all. Examples:

"Milošević's influential wife Mirjana Marković tried to curb Dačić's growing ambitions, and moved him to a small office in a Belgrade suburb in the mid-1990s" vs "Trying to curb Dacic's growing ambitions, Milosevic's influential wife Mirjana Markovic relegated him in the mid-1990s to a tiny office in a Belgrade suburb", or "assembled a team of young moderates to reform the party, while retaining some of the former figures to satisfy the elderly ex-communists" vs "assembled a team of young moderates to help overhaul the party, while retaining some of the old faces to appease the elderly ex-communist" from here
"the cabinet marks the first time Milošević's allies have returned to power" vs "the new cabinet will mark the first time that Milosevic's allies have fully returned to power" here
FN18 is dead and can't be checked
"the partition of Kosovo would be the only realistic solution" vs "partition of Kosovo is the only realistic solution" here. Nikkimaria (talk) 12:46, 12 September 2012 (UTC)