Template:Did you know nominations/Ninth Siege of Gibraltar

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 Allen3 talk 21:58, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Ninth Siege of Gibraltar edit

  • ... that the Ninth Siege of Gibraltar lasted more than a year and ended after the defending soldiers ran out of supplies and a number of them began defecting to the opposing side?
  • Reviewed: Barad, Syria
  • Comment: Hooks for history topics are hard to think up, especially for this one. If anyone has a better hook suggestion, please let me know.

Created/expanded by Silver seren (talk). Self nom at 04:22, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

  • Length (circa 3900 characters) and date of creation (19 October) OK. No evidence of copyright violation. Each paragraph has at least one inline citation with 5 separate sources used in all. No evidence of conflict of interest or promotional concerns. Hook length (177 characters) and citation OK, but rather boring. Propose more interesting and concise hook (163 chracters) for which an inline cite already exists:
ALT1:... that by the end of the Ninth Siege of Gibraltar the defending soldiers had resorted to eating leather from their garments and plants growing on the garrison walls?
Good to go for ALT 1. Voceditenore (talk) 11:19, 23 October 2012 (UTC) And good to go for the original hook as well. Voceditenore (talk) 04:49, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
That's a much better hook, I should have thought of that one. :) SilverserenC 17:43, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Yes, but it's inappropriate for Voceditenore to propose a hook and then approve it when it contains new facts. That approval needs to come from another reviewer altogether. And yes, as a hook about Gibraltar, this article will need a second reviewer. Under the circumstances, I would imagine that new reviewer's approval of ALT1, assuming it's okay, would be sufficient, rather than there needing to be another ALT1 reviewer. BlueMoonset (talk) 03:39, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
My apologies. I've seen other reviewers simultaneously propose and approve alternative hooks before and assumed this was common practice. Anyhow as I stated before, the original hook was fine, if a little boring, and the new hook was part of the sentences referenced for the original one. If you need someone to approve the Alt hook separately, that's fine by me, although it strikes me as a bit of overkill. :) Voceditenore (talk) 04:49, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
It's a common mistake, unfortunately, so I'm not surprised you've seen it and thought it was common practice, when it's actually considered a conflict of interest. (I've made like errors in the past.) Thanks for responding so quickly; glad to have you as a reviewer. The reason to have an independent reviewer is to double check that the sources are indeed inline cited and do confirm the new article facts used, and because unfortunately not all such propose-and-approve hooks have ultimately checked out. This is why reviewers shouldn't approve their own hooks, and people who promote nominations aren't supposed to do ones where they've proposed the hook or nominated or authored the article. At least one of the rules documents notes that there's always someone else around who can approve what you've just done if it's correct. In this case, I think it'll be enough if the second full review—mandated for all Gibraltar hooks—specifically approves that hook. BlueMoonset (talk) 05:20, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Review 2: Looks fine to me and I agree that ALT1 is preferable. I've fixed a few typos and grammatical glitches but otherwise I think we're good to go with this one. Prioryman (talk) 22:37, 2 November 2012 (UTC)