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The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was promoted by Hey man im josh via FACBot (talk) 00:25, 20 August 2024 (UTC) [1].[reply]

List of Swiss Nobel laureates

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List of Swiss Nobel laureates (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Broc (talk) 08:19, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I recently created this list, with the aim to fulfill the featured list criteria from the start. I believe it does meet all of them, hence my nomination. Switzerland has been closely linked to the Nobel prize since the start, and a large number of laureates were Swiss. Broc (talk) 08:19, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comment from nominator

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I did significantly expand the last lead paragraph, which at the time of nomination only included Switzerland is among the countries with the highest number of Nobel laureates, both in total and per capita. I wanted to add some context with explanations that have been published in Swiss media, as well as a remark on the general Nobel controversies (Western bias is a pretty obvious one). This should provide better context and more WP:NPOV, avoiding the mildly celebratory tone that country-based lists end up having. Broc (talk) 12:58, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Drive-by comments from Staraction

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  • Images need alt text.
  • Use upright scaling instead of defining the size of an image. See WP:PIC#Thumbnail sizes.
    • Note to future reviewers: have not looked into copyright status of images yet. Not a full image review.
  • "The latest Swiss laureates are Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, who received the Nobel for Physics in 2019." --> "The latest Swiss laureates are Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2019."

Excited to see this list nominated! Staraction (talk | contribs) 15:22, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, @Staraction! I added alt text to all images and changed the sentence as you suggested. Upright scaling can only be used with thumbnails, which might not be the best option in a table. What would you recommend? Broc (talk) 14:39, 30 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Added upright scaling using "frameless" option. Broc (talk) 16:06, 30 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Accessibility review (MOS:DTAB)

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  • Tables need captions, which allow screen reader software to jump straight to named tables without having to read out all of the text before it each time. Visual captions can be added by putting |+ caption_text as the first line of the table code; if that caption would duplicate a nearby section header, you can make it screen-reader-only by putting |+ {{sronly|caption_text}} instead.
  • Tables need column scopes for all column header cells, which in combination with row scopes lets screen reader software accurately determine and read out the headers for each cell of a data table. Column scopes can be added by adding !scope=col to each header cell, e.g. ! Year becomes !scope=col | Year.
  • Tables need row scopes on the "primary" column for each row. In the case of this table, I think the primary column is the "Laureate" column which contains their name.
  • Please see MOS:DTAB for example table code if this isn't clear. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 09:07, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Done thanks for the inputs, @MPGuy2824 Broc (talk) 14:36, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

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MPGuy2824
  • List of Indian Nobel laureates seems to be only other nation-based nobel laureates list. It has a section of nominees who didn't win the award. You could consider adding them here too.
  • The last paragraph of the lead section is just a single sentence. See if you can merge it with one of the paragraphs above it.
  • Run IABot on the list.
  • The Telegraph reference is generating a CS1 error. Please fix.
  • That's all that I got. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 07:09, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @MPGuy2824 I adapted the lead section as suggested, ran IABot, and fixed the CS1 error.
    Regarding the list of nominees, I have a few concerns:
    1. A list of Swiss Nobel laureates certainly fulfills WP:NLIST, given the amount of sources publishing on the topic ([2][3][4][5] just to link a few). However, I could not find a published list of Swiss Nobel nominees.
    2. List of Indian Nobel laureates nicely distinguishes between Indian nationals at birth, individuals of Indian origin, people with acquired citizenship, but does so only for the list of laureates and not for the nominees. I am then left to wonder what the selection criterion for the nominees section was.
    3. The lack of a published list of Swiss Nobel nominees, combined with the relatively arbitrary definition of what "Swiss" means (in the case of laureates, "held Swiss citizenship at the time of the award" seems a commonly accepted criterion, but I do not know what would be a viable one for nominees), would make the creation of a list of nominees rather close to WP:OR, in my opinion.
    Broc (talk) 10:20, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    You can wikilink a few more terms/names like "Inter-Parliamentary Union", "Olympian Spring", "Fridtjof Nansen" and "Geneva Convention", but I'll support in advance of those changes. If interest and time permit, please comment at my FL nom. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 11:02, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Drive by comments

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  • @Broc, I feel like splitting would be better to avoid confusion. Also, there might be some discrepancy regarding Theiler's citizenship. According to this report by SERI (p. 16), Max Theiler is listed as a Swiss citizen. Maybe he could be placed in the naturalized citizen section with Pauli and Steinberger. Nitro Absynthe (talk) 09:29, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Nitro Absynthe uhm that's a tricky one. The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland mentions that Theiler was Swiss citizen by birth (place of origin: Hasle), which makes sense as his parents were Swiss. On the other hand, he certainly received a honorary citizenship, again from Hasle, in 1952, which would not make sense if he already was a citizen. However, according to the list you shared, he was Swiss when he received the prize. I think it might be best to add him in the main list with a footnote. Broc (talk) 12:10, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

comment

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Source review

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I see this as still awaiting a source review in the list, so will give it a shot.

  • List entries: Main

Verifying these match Das sind alle Schweizer Nobelpreisträger with the exceptions of Pauli (exclusion explained in lede) and Hermann Staudinger (explained in footnote).

  • Table row entries: References

I spot-checked a few and they all appear to be to the Nobel website, verifying the row data. Did not check every single one but I imagine this is the least controversial part of the article.

  • List entries: Later citizenship

Pauli is fine per above. Steinberger, though... the source just says "ab 2000 von Genf" and his Wikipedia article doesn't say anything about him acquiring Swiss citizenship late in life. The NZZ.ch "Das sind alle Schweizer Nobelpreisträger" list above doesn't include him, and it was clearly created after 2000. Is there a source verifying this alleged Swiss citizenship more directly? For Koffi Annan, I'm of the opinion that honorary citizenship isn't enough to qualify for what this article is talking about. It's fine to discuss him in a footnote but I don't think this deserves a full table row, especially since the above NZZ.ch source also doesn't include him but does include other later-Swiss citizens like Pauli. Like, it would be weird to call Winston Churchill an American Nobel laureate because of his honorary American citizenship, right?

  • Verified now, thanks. (Also, for clarity, I wasn't questioning the reliability of the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, but rather the question of whether it was even indicating Swiss citizenship at all, given that the mention was brief and oblique.)
  • Additionally, four laureates acquired Swiss citizenship after the award:

Who's the fourth laureate? (Although it should be maybe two or three anyway per above if Annan is reduced to footnote status.)

  • Ten organizations headquartered in Switzerland have received the Nobel Prize for Peace. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has been awarded twice, and the International Committee of the Red Cross three times. Four of these organizations were also founded in Switzerland, and they all have their headquarters in Geneva, a city hosting more than 40 international organizations and 750 non-governmental organizations.[7]

I can't find this in either https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/facts/nobel-prize-facts/ or the 2018 archived version. It all looks pretty non-controversial but perhaps needs a better source? Certainly should be easy to get a source on Geneva hosting a ton of UN & other global orgs.

  • Geneva facts look good. However the main concern was the "ten organizations headquartered in Switzerland" bit, which is really the same question as sourcing the orgs list. See below for ideas on that.
  • List entries: Organizations

While it's not the end of the world if we do a tad bit of synthesis here... is there a source that explicitly lists this out?

  • I couldn't find a complete list, no. There is one at the bottom here [6] and here, but neither are comprehensive. I'm not sure how I could add these to the list, do you have a suggestion? Broc (talk) 12:10, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I think this is where we write a fancy, long reference that explains where this is coming from when it's not from a source directly. You can include the other two links to prove that the topic of Swiss organizations winning Nobels isn't synthesis even if the lists aren't mirrored exactly. Something like:
    <ref>Ten organizations are based on the comprehensive list of Organization Winners at: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lists/nobel-prize-awarded-organizations/ (format this nicely as a cite). Non-comprehensive lists discussing the matter can be found at: (your two links here).</ref>
    Note that you can format long references drawing on multiple sources a little more nicely with Template:Multiref2 or Template:Unbulleted list citebundle if you'd like. Can be handy to ensure the citations for webpages are on new lines. Normally I'd stick the reference in the title of the table, but since you're using a style that doesn't have titles for tables, having it in the lede section on the "Ten Swiss organizations" line is fine too.
  • Switzerland is among the countries with the highest number of Nobel laureates, both in total and per capita

The "per capita" article has been deleted, FWIW. (Swiss Info Source does check out, for all it's something of a statistical artifact.)

  • Several factors have been suggested as possible explanation, including large public funding for research,[10]

[7] and [8] verify the raw amount of funding (although it's not clear it's even "public" funding - GTranslate offers "The private sector not only finances 65 percent of research and development here" for one line), but don't seem to connect it to the Nobel Prize or awards in general at all. The real reference here is https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/nach-physik-auszeichnung-deshalb-bringt-die-schweiz-so-viele-nobelpreistraeger-hervor - I'd reformulate the SNF links to be "see alsos" in the reference primarily cited to the SRF article, and then reuse that reference for both large public funding for research and good universities.

Nitpick: None of the sources seem to use the word "Switzerland" or "Swiss" (don't have access to the full Telegraph article so can't be sure there). Obviously Switzerland is a Western country, but it could be argued that the relevance of this isn't fully established. Not demanding this be removed, just it'd be nice if there was a source connecting the dots more directly. (I do get the above comment that this is to avoid being overly celebratory / chest-puffy.)

  • Unfortunately, I could not find such source. However, omitting such important aspect (a widely recognized bias of Nobel prizes in favor of Western countries) only because it does not specifically mention Switzerland would not be according to WP:NPOV and give a rather promotional tone to the article. I do believe the current statement gives a fuller picture. Broc (talk) 12:10, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    If you gave it a look, it's fine. I agree it's a positive addition to the article, just a nice-to-have rather than a requirement on tying this to Swiss laureates.
  • According to Nobel laureate Werner Arber, the large number of awards to Swiss nationals is "likely a statistical anomaly".

True, and in the cited source, but the source ALSO includes Richard Ernst saying that it's not a coincidence and he's confident Switzerland will remain on top in the future. Both Arber and Ernst are Nobel laureates, but there's really little reason to think that either would be THAT much more informed about Nobel-politics than, say, a historian of science like Roland Müller mentioned in passing in the article. (Plenty of Nobel laureates out there with weird opinions on things, cough, cough, James Watson.) While keeping the snappy Arber quote is fine, do you have any other sources saying it's a statistical anomaly so it's not resting solely on him? (Or, alternatively, include the nationalist "it's because the Swiss are just so awesome!" by contrast first, since it's coming from an equivalently weighted source, even if we both think it's "wrong".)

Other comments unrelated to sources:

  • Peace and Economic Sciences[nb 1],[1]

Shouldn't the footnote go after the punctuation as well? Also, this is a case where the Oxford comma is mandatory IMO even in an article that doesn't use that style, because there's an earlier entry on the list titled "Physiology or Medicine". This makes it appear that "Peace and Economic Sciences" is possibly a Nobel category as well, so a comma to set apart each list entry is required IMO.

This has nothing to do with the sources, but I will plant my flag to plead that birth & death dates don't matter in this context. I know a lot of lists do include this information, and it is indeed in the Nobel webpage blurbs, but it's irrelevant and those other lists shouldn't include it either. "Age at time of Nobel award" perhaps but otherwise it's not relevant to this list. Not a blocking comment, it's up to you, but I'd personally either omit entirely, or just have a single column with both birth & death dates, sortable by birth dates. (Nobody should want to sort by death dates anyway? What would that even mean?) Totally optional, just dropping off my two cents.

Nice work overall. SnowFire (talk) 21:08, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Noting that it's best to reply after a person's comment and to ping them @Broc, that way @SnowFire can voice their support or point out things that still need to be addressed. Hey man im josh (talk) 19:49, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Hey man im josh I'm not done addressing all point yet, will do that as soon as I have a moment :) Broc (talk) 06:27, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@SnowFire I think I addressed all points, see individual comments right below yours. Please let me know your thoughts.
As for birth and death dates: I removed the option to sort by death date (not very meaningful indeed). Age at the time of award might also be a valuable addition as the age of the laureates is often a point of discussion regarding Nobel prizes. I might add that at a later point, but would not want to remove the information in the current table, as the format is the same the Nobel Prize website uses in its blurbs. Broc (talk) 12:44, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's fine, like I said I know that others opinions differs with mine on this, so I wanted to bring it up as a thought, but if you think it's relevant enough, go for it.
Just crafting a fancy citation for the ten orgs issue remaining - think we're very close! (I'd be happy to give it a shot if you'd like too.) SnowFire (talk) 00:57, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@SnowFire I added the reference as you suggested in [nb 4], updated the entry from the IPB and removed the ICBL (I had initially added the entry from the German Wikipedia list, but I can't find evidence they were based in Geneva at the time of the award). Double-checking the list was worth it. Broc (talk) 11:59, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Agree the new footnote should do nicely, and more closely drawing the line from the sources definitely helps. SnowFire (talk) 17:17, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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