Template:Did you know nominations/Unionoida

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 Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:24, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Unionoida

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... that Unionoida freshwater mussel shells were used to make buttons?

Comment: Article recently expanded in scope and detail, interesting information on freshwater pearls, button manufacturing industry, and conservation status.

Created/expanded by Shellnut (talk). Self nom at 04:27, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

5X expansion started on 16 February (will accept addition a day late due to trouble transferring to the nom page and Shellnut is new to DYK). Image is under GNU 1.2 license on Commons, which is acceptable. QPQ not needed. There is a problem with close-paraphrasing in two of the online sources picked up with duplication checker. Similarities are here and here in sources 14 and 15. These sentences will have to be rewritten in a way that has different phrasing from the source or direct quotes can be used (mostly concerned with prose and not lists of states and species). The references also include bare urls which is not permitted (can reformat easily with the cite toolbar). Froggerlaura (talk) 22:18, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for getting back to me so quickly. I will work on the paraphrasing to make it more distinct. However, what is a "bare URL" for us less knowledgeable people? Shellnut (talk) 04:39, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

A bare url is seeing the web address link on the page, such as this http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Did_you_know_nominations instead of it being hidden like this Did You Know?. Froggerlaura (talk) 04:52, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! I have hidden the bare URLs now. The other re-paraphrasing will take a longer block of time today or tomorrow. Shellnut (talk) 15:52, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Bare urls are gone, but the rewriting has not been tackled yet. I find this an impressive expansion, I shall remind Shellnut that it still needs attention. Moonraker (talk) 19:04, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

I have taken a stab at rewriting the sections on pearls and buttons to remove language which may, inadvertently, have used larger blocks of words in order from the source references. To the extent that lists of colors, states, and species are given these are factual and have been alphabetized to avoid copyright issues. I believe what remains is my own words used to paraphrase historical facts of great interest and importance. Freshwater pearls are considered a rare and natural gem, and are highly sought after for jewelry to this day. Pearl buttons are considered quaint today, but are beautiful and are collectibles. I believe that this article, as rewritten is of significant interest and IF publicized as a DYK article could draw many readers' attention. Let me know how my rewrite looks, and what more I can do to improve this article. P.S. - I am still looking for images of the buttons to upload. Shellnut (talk) 05:27, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

The only outstanding issue was that (as pointed out by Froggerlaura) some passages needed rewriting for copyright reasons, and Shellnut has now addressed that. Ready to go. Moonraker (talk) 15:33, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it seems that the close-paraphrasing concerns have not been addressed. Sections based on this source, for example, should be completely rewritten. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:57, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

I have made great efforts to reword / rewrite the section on freshwater pearls to AVOID closely paraphrasing the reference. The problem I am seeing is one of factual content versus exact wording. I reasonably believe that I have reworded what can be reworded, and when factual information is listed I have reorganized it into an alpabetical list rather than the manner in which the source article listed it. If there is a specific problem of paraphrasing would someone please enlighten me so I can reword it. I really DO want to fix up this article properly, but maybe I am just too close to it to see the error(s), if any. Please advise. Shellnut (talk) 22:23, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Here is an example of the concern (other close sentences can be found here):

Wiki page: “The mother of pearl (or nacre) industry and bead nucleus for the Japanese culture pearl industry have supported the North American freshwater mussel fishery since the 1950's. During the 1990's, the value of United States freshwater mussel shell exports to Japan started at more than $50 million annually, but by the year 2002 it had declined to about $35 million in exports annually.”

Source [1]: “The mother of pearl industry and bead nucleus for the Japanese culture pearl industry have supported the fishery since the 1950's. During the 1990's, the value of U.S. mussel shell exports to Japan started at more than $50 million annually but has declined to about $35 million annually.”

The current wording is too close to the source and the sentence structure is similar. Passage can be reworded as: "Exportation of freshwater mussels for the Japanese mother of pearl (or nacre) and bead nucleus industries has been a source of support for the North American freshwater mussel fisheries since the late 1950s. In the 1990s, the United States exported $50 million worth of freshwater mussel shells to Japan, but by 2002, the annual revenue of freshwater mussel exportation to Japan had dropped to $35 million." Froggerlaura (talk) 02:47, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Thank you Froggerlaura! I have reread, reworded and revised these two sections (on pearls and buttons) paying close attention to the linked printout. I believe that the vast majority of "hits" of more than four to six words have been reworded. I also tried to use shorter sentences, different adjectives, and added a few explanations. I hope this helped clean it up. Let me know how I did. Shellnut (talk) 21:21, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

The USGS "Pearls" source is okay now (still a few 2 word matches, but since it's a PD source anyway it is sufficiently paraphrased). I checked the Mussels source from the MS DNR and fixed a few issues. The sources I could access in the life cycle section appear to be adequately paraphrased. Should be good to go now. Froggerlaura (talk) 18:17, 11 March 2012 (UTC)