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.
ALT2: ... that many women writers have contributed to the development of Syrian literature? Source: Firat, Alexa (2017). Syria. In: Waïl S. Hassan (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of Arab Novelistic Traditions (online edition) Oxford Academic, Oxford, pp. 439–454, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199349791.013.29
Comments:@Munfarid1: I'm reviewing this. But I think ALT1 should be avoided, as it's about a particular work, not the Syrian literature as a whole. BorgQueen (talk) 09:45, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for your interest and this comment. I have just deleted the earlier ALT1 and renumbered the others Munfarid1 (talk) 13:58, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
Comments:ALT0 isn't accurate. In the source article, Samar Haddad says (translated into English): There's a trend towards making PDFs of books available as free downloads on websites. We publishers are directly affected because it's a lost opportunity to sell a book, but there's not much we can do about it. I once chatted with a young man who has a Facebook page, with a funny name in Arabic [Abu Abdo the Mule], that distributes free PDFs of books. (...) I know people who have stopped reading free copies after we've explained to them that they're harming us and the authors too. But such understanding people are rare. The thing that hurts the most about the subject is that people easily save money to buy stupid things, but not books. She says nothing about the low number of books getting published because of that. BorgQueen (talk) 19:07, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
Comments: I've reworded ALT1. The Al Jazeera news article supports the war and torture part; while it mentions the threat of imprisonment the poets are facing, it doesn't explicitly say imprisonment is a source of inspiration. In addition, the source talks about contemporary Syrian poetry, which is only one aspect of the national literature, so I added "partly". BorgQueen (talk) 19:27, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
Comments: I've struck ALT2 as there's nothing unusual about many women contributing to literature. Perhaps you could argue that Syria is an extremely male-dominated society and that makes it unusual and interesting, but our readers won't get that cultural context from the hook. BorgQueen (talk) 20:08, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
Comments: I've reworded ALT3 as well. The rationale behind Mohja Kahf's declaration of Syrian literature not existing is rather complicated actually, involving several linguistic, historical and geopolitical factors. I don't think what is written in the 2013 news article can be used to prove that Mohja Kahf completely revoked the previous statement. BorgQueen (talk) 20:26, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
@Munfarid1: Are you OK with the changes? If so, I'll go ahead with the rest of the review. BorgQueen (talk) 20:31, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
@BorgQueen: Sure, I am OK. Thanks for reading these hooks so carefully. As you known, sometimes it is hard to find a good hook supported by the exact wording of a source. So ALT1 seems best to me. Munfarid1 (talk) 22:13, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
Approve ALT1 and ALT3 only. BorgQueen (talk) 22:42, 14 August 2024 (UTC)