Template:Did you know nominations/Lolly Wolly Doodle

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 Yoninah (talk) 20:42, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Lolly Wolly Doodle edit

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... that Lolly Wolly Doodle founder Brandi Temple claims the children's clothing company (girl's dress pictured), which sells most of its product on Facebook, is the largest doing business on that site?

ALT1:... that e-commerce experts believe that Lolly Wolly Doodle has figured out how to sell products (girl's dress pictured) on Facebook while most larger retailers have failed?
ALT2:... that, to help his wife Brandi grow her children's clothing company, Lolly Wolly Doodle, Will Temple learned how to monogram dresses (example pictured) and sew buttonholes?
Reviewed: Budd SPV-2000

Created by Daniel Case (talk). Self nominated at 19:00, 13 June 2014 (UTC).

Much of the article is based on a single (reliable) source, the Inc. article, and many whole paragraphs are based only on an unreliable primary source, the Tysinger-Temple. The original hook and ALT1 are phrased in a heavily promotional way. ALT2 is more acceptable, but is one of the primary-sourced parts of the article. The article itself is also very promotional sounding, as if written by an ad agency rather than by a neutral observer. This and the sourcing problems in the article lead me to vote no on this nomination. But it could be saved if the article were heavily cut back to a neutral fact-based presentation of the company and its clothing line, using only reliable sources, and avoiding going into story-telling mode about the struggles of the founders to find their way in the world. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:17, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

This review is so off base that I think someone else should take a look at it, ~~as I seriously question the extent to which you read it and the understanding of policy it fails to demonstrate~~.

"many whole paragraphs are based only on an unreliable primary source" Huh? I used the Inc. article 27 times; the company's own history just five, and only once is it the footnote for an entire graf.
~~More to the point, just which bodily orifice of yours did you pull that interpretation of WP:PRIMARY~~, under which they are all inherently unreliable, out of? " A primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge" That's what it says; I don't see how you get off trying to exclude any and all uses as "unreliable".
I would further point out that many of the details of the company's history described by its founder on the company's website are, in fact, corroborated by the accounts in the Inc. story other sources I used (the Bloomberg story and Swisher's column)
"The original hook and ALT1 are phrased in a heavily promotional way." Because they state a superlative/unique fact that is appropriately sourced in the article to (in ALT1's case) an article that says several outside experts agree with that assessment? Gee, in the near-decade or so I've been on Wikipeida, in the 550+ DYKs I've submitted and have had run on the Main Page, I never knew that there was some rule that no matter well sourced and/or neutrally phrased a positive fact about a for-profit business is in a DYK hook, no matter how compliant with policy the article and hook fact are otherwise, we can't run it if it might inadvertently promote the company. When did this become policy? Was there some discussion of this I wasn't aware of? Please enlighten me.
"ALT2 is more acceptable, but is one of the primary-sourced parts of the article." See above.
"The article itself is also very promotional sounding, as if written by an ad agency rather than by a neutral observer." Is that just a way of saying I used a lot of quotes inline (because, oh, I don't know, businesses tend to be started by people who have things to say about why they started them that might explain that better to readers than any dry MOS encyclopedic paraphrase might? OK, I guess, I suppose a career academic at a public university with no private-sector experience might find that difficult to understand ... but that's not everybody, is it? I mean, I notice that your article has no "Personal life" section; can we safely assume then that you don't have one (which I would find utterly unsurprising)?
I'm very sorry it's not a thrilling, edge-of-your-seat masterpiece like book embedding; next time I submit a DYK nomination about a business or anything else that you might be in danger of reviewing, I'll make sure it has plenty of charts, equations and graphs, which clearly you must find easier to deal with and relate to than actual other people.
I also have to wonder if this reaction has something to do with the fact that LWD is a business started by a woman that sells (primarily) girl's clothing primarily to other women on websites frequented by women. I guess saying it sounds "promotional" is really just a dog-whistle way of saying "too girly". This suspicion isn't helped by your final, sneering "the struggles of the founders to find their way in the world"—wow, exactly the kind of arrogant dismissive comment about someone who built themselves up that we should expect to read from someone buttering his bread off the public teat in some ivory tower, happily surrounding himself with the all the abstractions that have alwsys been his friends. And we wonder why we have a gender gap ...
To get back to the basic question here, unless you can adduce specific examples of POV language to back up this assertion, I must ask that you strike that suggestion of non-neutrality through.

Cleanup on aisle three, please. Daniel Case (talk) 02:52, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Wow, if you don't like the message attack the messenger, I see. Does that work often for you? —David Eppstein (talk) 04:05, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

~~Seriously flawed messengers often deliver seriously flawed messages~~. Amidst my speculations about why you're so inadequate to this task, there are some specific inadequacies you could have just addressed and ignored everything else. I take it, then, that you agree that someone else should review this besides you? Daniel Case (talk) 04:36, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Oh, I certainly agree with that if with little else about your rant. Asking for additional neutral opinions is always a good way of calming Wikipedia disputes. WP:CANVASSING, however, as I have heard rumors that you have been doing on the gendergap mailing list, is another case. So I think it would be best to get another review with someone experienced at DYK rather than a newbie. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:47, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

, except that I think the hook should be discussed even though it works. I am here because of the post on the Gender Gap list. WP:CANVASSING is troublesome. David Eppstein's criticism is all valid, but in my opinion, beyond the scope of what is checked by the criteria at Wikipedia:Did_you_know#Eligibility_criteria. Most of David's criticism is about NPOV. There is an addendum on criteria 4 to abide by NPOV, but a NPOV check is not necessarily part of a DYK review so from a DYK review perspective this article passes all criteria. I especially think that David's concern about the self-published brand narrative being cited warrants a response if content derived from that source is to be kept. Perhaps Daniel Case can explain, briefly and on the article's talk page, how this information complements what comes from non-primary sources and the extent to which it is promotional. All three of the proposed hooks seem very localized to me, and localization to a company seems promotional to me. I would prefer something like this if it could be backed by a source:

ALT3:... that most large retailers have little success in selling products on Facebook, but small specialty companies like Lolly Wolly Doodle sometimes succeed?

Thanks everyone for talking on DYK. Stay cool! Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:45, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

I have apologized at Eppstein's talk page and struck through my personal attacks. Daniel Case (talk) 17:28, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

, but I agree that the hook could be improved. I'm not sure there's a clear hook fact in the article for ALT3 as given, but rephrased (see below) it could work: Mary Mark Ockerbloom (talk) 01:51, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

ALT4:... that while most large retailers have little success in selling products on Facebook, small specialty clothing designer Lolly Wolly Doodle's business model has been studied to understand its success?

If we're going with something in this vein, I still don't see what's wrong with ALT1 when the sources I have cited pretty clearly back that up:

The Inc. article:
"Lolly," says Young, "has been able to do something that no big brand has been able to do, which is to convince people to actually buy on Facebook." ... Donn Davis, the co-founder of Revolution Growth and a member of Lolly's board since his firm's $20 million investment last year, [says] "Most of the time, those people's first reactions are like mine when I heard about the company. It's called what? It's where? It sells what? Then they see what the company is doing, and they say, 'Wait, everybody is talking about trying to figure this out, but you're already doing it.'"
Kara Swisher's column:
... the online retailer of personalized, monogrammed children's clothing has gotten a lot of it, mostly on Facebook, in what is one of the more successful efforts to take advantage of e-commerce on the social networking platform.
The Bloomberg News piece:
Brandi Temple, a 39-year-old mother of four, transformed a living-room hobby into a retailer that ships 30,000 kids' garments a month using online social tools that giant competitors haven't mastered.

All this supports the language of ALT1. It's not "has been studied." It's "experts believe they have succeeded." Why does everyone see this as having neutrality problems when it's exactly what the sources are saying? It's almost like it sounds too good to be true even if it is, so we have to find some way to water it down. Daniel Case (talk) 04:29, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

It looks like we're stalled out here. Someone with fresh eyes, please? Daniel Case (talk) 15:13, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Full review from scratch (because I can see much chat about neutrality, plenty of hooks, and little else). New enough (created 12 June, nom 13 June) and long enough. QPQ done. The hook image is free and is repeated in the article. The logo in the article is fair-use with the correct licence and appropriate rationale. Re original hook: I have struck the original hook because it sounds promotional and is referenced in the header to citation #2, i.e. the company's own website. That citation is OK for the article text. If it had been referenced to an authoritative third party, that would have been OK for a hook, but it isn't. Re ALTs 1-4: Character count for ALTs 1 and 2 is 169 and 171, so both are short enough. ALT1, ALT3 and ALT4 check out with online citation #3. ALT2 checks out with online citations #1 (third party) and #2 (company website). I am prepared to accept the company website for this one because it is not hype or promotion. I have read the above discussion on neutrality and I confirm that as of today the text is objective and neutral, and is fully cited throughout. Spot checks for possible copyvio and close paraphrasing found no unquoted/uncited examples, although there are many long, cited quotations from citation #1. I am satisfied that the the article reaches DYK standard, and that the remaining hooks, ALTs 1-4 are satisfactory. Good to go. --Storye book (talk) 17:04, 1 July 2014 (UTC)