Template:Did you know nominations/Sinan Reis

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 Miyagawa (talk) 21:13, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Sinan Reis

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... that Sinan Reis, a Sephardi Jewish pirate and Barbary corsair whose family was forced from Spain, helped Ottoman admiral Hayreddin Barbarossa defeat the Spanish at the 1538 Battle of Preveza (pictured)?

Created/expanded by Aslbsl (talk). Self nom at 13:09, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Date, Size, hook all verified. —TSRL (talk) 09:15, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

I did a spot check for closeness of wording and found that the paragraph that starts "In 1544 Sinan was at Suez on the Red Sea, where he was constructing a fleet to aid an Indian ruler expel the Portuguese" is closely paraphrased from page 69 of this book. The wording of that paragraph is actually rather awkward, so a thorough-going restructuring would both improve the article and eliminate the WP:close paraphrasing concern. --Orlady (talk) 18:28, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments. I tried reworking the passage. Please revisit the article and let me know what you think. Thanks! Aslbsl (talk) 03:21, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. In reviewing your rewrite, I looked more closely at the entire article and sources, and I have some additional questions.

The concern with the above passage is in how it is structured. It closely follows the unusual structure of the passage in the book, which is written in the style of fiction, starting with Sinan Reis receiving good news, then moving backward in time to explain what the good news was all about. The book also includes some details whose encyclopedic relevance to the article about Sinan Reis isn't clear. Telling the story with the same unusual structure and including the same details as the source is considered close paraphrasing; parallel wording such as "landed men at Piombino, sacked the town, and blew up the fort" (article) and "landed his men, sacked the town of Piombino, and blew up the fort" (source) doesn't help. In trying to figure out how to fix it, I realize that I'm not quite sure what the encyclopedic significance of the passage is. I guess the significant information is that Barbarossa spent 5 years trying to retrieve Sinan's son after the son was kidnapped, and the rescue didn't succeed until after Barbarossa sacked Piombino.

In looking at the sources, I was puzzled by the assertion that this Sinan is not the same as Sinan Pasha (Ottoman admiral). Is there a source, other than Wikipedia, that distinguishes the different Sinans? One reason I ask about this is that the Edward Kritzler book has a lot more content about the exploits of "Sinan" than appears in this article, including exploits as late as 1553 (7 years after the stated death of Sinan Reis, and the same year that the Ottoman admiral is supposed to have died). That leads me to wonder about how the two Sinans are being distinguished from each other. If this is the same "Sinan" who (according to Kritzler) took Tunis on behalf of Suleiman on August 20, 1534, shouldn't that be mentioned in the article? (Or is that the other Sinan?) Similarly, the dates are confusing: if Sinan Reis wasn't named "the great Jew" until 1528, I wonder how it was determined that the block quote in the "Life" section from 1521 ("As to Coron, it was reported at Rome a few days ago that Andrea Doria was informed that the famous Jewish pirate...") is actually about the same "famous Jewish pirate".

Back to the subject of close paraphrasing, I'm afraid it't not limited to the paragraph noted above. In another example, the article wording "who mistakenly believed that Sinan was sent by Suleiman the Magnificent to aid the King of Calicut" is very similar to wording on page 279 of the Kritzler book. Also, it's not clear that the detail about the mistaken belief is content that belongs in the article. --Orlady (talk) 05:31, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Hello and thank you for your time. Regarding the two Sinans, it seems that the book's author made the error of confusing two personalities with the same name, in the same profession, and interacting with the same people, and created a composite character. Because of that, I didn't include the exploits that elsewhere are attributed to the more famous personality, the admiral, in this article.

As for the paraphrasing issue, it is true that the passages are similar, but I'm at a loss as to how to present the information otherwise. When dealing with such history, there is only so much source material available. Especially after the confusion above, cutting out what we do have would be unfortunate. Do you see a different way of rewriting it?

With the moniker it is true that I might be imprecise, but what I wrote is based on the referenced source material. The name may precede the Portuguese source, but I didn't want to synthesize the two positions into something not supported by the sources. I rewrote it slightly to improve this aspect.

Thank you again for your help, Aslbsl (talk) 17:23, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for explaining. I thought it likely that Kritzler was confused. When there is so much potential for confusion between two contemporaries with similar names that an apparently reliable source has confounded them, a disambiguation hatnote (which is intended only to help Wikipedia readers find their way within Wikipedia) is not sufficient documentation of the problem. The article should discuss the fact that the two people are sometimes confounded with one another and discuss what reliable sources have said regarding the confusion and the distinction between the two people. I have looked for sources that might discuss this, but without success.
Additionally, I note that several of the sources cited in the article do not qualify as reliable sources -- they appear to be self-published websites about pirates and/or Jewish heroes. Do you have reliable sources that have helped you document Sinan Reis' life? --Orlady (talk) 03:49, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

While one of the references may include self-published information, the others include an article by professor Steven Plaut and a history text by Israel Abrahams. And the Kritzler book still has value - detailed references to primary and secondary sources are provided for this Sinan. While what you say about the disambiguation may be true, no one discusses it - including it would constitute an original synthesis. Thanks, Aslbsl (talk) 12:10, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

@ Aslbsl, at a first look through, a lot of the sources look questionable as blog type sources, but are useful in confirming the outline without access to the books: could you check that books or similarly reliable sources are cited for all content, with any questionable sources being used as a supplement rather than as the sole source.
You've rephrased the "news from Barbarossa" section a bit, and split the paragraph so that the first part now lacks a citation. Each paragraph should have a citation to a reliable source, using the ref name= system, but it may make more sense to reorganise it a bit more and combine the paragraphs. Instead of starting with "news from Barbarossa", start with an approximate date of the boy being kidnapped, then tell the story in sequence. Similarly, His moniker "the Great Jew," belongs earlier in the sequence of the section, so move that paragraph up. On a MOS:LQ issue, the comma should be outside the quote marks following logical (and UK) punctuation and "moniker" is rather slangy, thus his nickname "the Great Jew", would be preferable.
The opening of the section goes straight from the flight from Spain to the 1538 Battle of Preveza, better to use the first paragraph to explain that many Jews expelled from Spain became corsairs or pirates or whatever the best description is. Then have a paragraph about him joining Barbarossa and working out of ports including Santorini. In date sequence, paragraphs about his nickname and the English state papers would then follow, after which the 1538 Battle of Preveza and c. 1539–1544 episode with his boy getting kidnapped would each have a paragraph, followed finally by the paragraph on his death. You may be able to expand some of the paragraphs a little using that sequence. dave souza, talk 16:49, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

@Dave souza, thank you for your great help. I think I made all of the changes that you recommended except for "moniker"; isn't that a more formal word than "nickname"?

Re: the references, I linked the authors of two of them in the footnotes, a professor and a scholar, to make it clearer that those are reliable sources. Perhaps I didn't notate correctly, but the Kritzler book isn't only used as a source per se, but it is also used for its own references to primary and secondary sources.

Thanks again, Aslbsl (talk) 16:23, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

The structure looks much better. As a minor aside, you'll note that moniker redirects to nickname: in British usage moniker is less formal, but other regions may differ. . dave souza, talk 16:57, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

  good to go. . . dave souza, talk 16:57, 22 February 2012 (UTC)