Template:Did you know nominations/Ora Nichols

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 Valereee (talk) 18:14, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

Ora Nichols

(

)

... that Ora Nichols was the first woman to run a radio sound effects unit?
Source: "Nichols was the first, and only, woman to run a radio sound effects department during the Golden Age. Nichols and her husband Arthur Nichols are credited with bringing the concept of sound effects to radio." [1]

"Ora Nichols was one of the first sound effects artists and the first female in the industry. Ora, and her husband, Arthur... were the first staff sound effects personnel in the fledgling radio industry. Ora Nichols directed the CBS Sound Effects Department for several years..." [2]

Reviewed: Katri-Helena Eskelinen

Created by Tryptofish (talk). Self-nominated at 17:51, 30 April 2021 (UTC).

An interesting read. New enough, long enough, neutral, with inline citations to good sources. Earwig throws up no problems, and spot checks on those refs I could see showed no close paraphrasing. Hook is fine and cited to online source. QPQ done. This one is ready to go. MeegsC (talk) 17:46, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, much appreciated! --Tryptofish (talk) 20:39, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Tryptofish, we're getting some pushback at DYK regarding "the first X to do Y" hooks. Can we perhaps come up with some other hooks based on things she did? Here are a few I came up with:

ALT1:... that Ora Nichols helped to create American radio's first sound effects department?
ALT2:... that Ora Nichols invented ways to make the sounds of lawnmowers, alien space craft, decapitations and more for live radio broadcasts?
ALT3:... that Ora Nichols went from performing on a vaudeville stage to running American radio's first sound effects department?

MeegsC (talk) 15:43, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

Thank you very, very much MeegsC for watching out for this issue, for letting me know, and for taking the time to create three alternatives. I've gone to the discussion in question, and given my own view about it in this comment: [3]. Obviously, I see this as something that should not be an absolute rule, and I see it as something that would be an invalid objection with respect to the page nominated here. That said, this isn't a hill that I would want to die on; there are other fights much more worth having than this one.

The discussion looks to me like there is not a firm consensus that would prevent ALT0 from being acceptable, and it remains my first choice. But I can certainly compromise, and I would be willing to accept any number of alternatives. I'll also note some things about ALTs 1–3: Two of them, 1 and 3, still depend upon characterizing something as "first", and two of them, 2 and 3, tend toward being long, which is something that editors in the discussion also pointed too as something that would not make for an improvement. So I won't say "no" to anything here, but I think my second choice would be to shorten ALT1 to make:

ALT4:... that Ora Nichols helped create the first radio sound effects unit?

--Tryptofish (talk) 18:55, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

Another ALT, probably better than ALT4:

ALT5:... that Ora Nichols pioneered the use of radio sound effects?

Actually, I think that's just as good as ALT0. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:15, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

Tryptofish - that's great! All of the hooks are well under the 200 character limit (the longest is only 133), so no problems there. And the promoter now has lots of choices, in case they decide against that first option. Again noting this is good to go, just so that doesn't get lost in the wall of text!

MeegsC (talk) 19:25, 8 May 2021 (UTC)