Template:Did you know nominations/St John the Baptist Church, Rochdale

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 Jolly Ω Janner 04:57, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

St John the Baptist Church, Rochdale edit

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St John the Baptist Church, Rochdale

... that St John the Baptist Church in Rochdale was designed by a dead architect?

Reviewed: Ishibashi Kazunori

Created by Pjposullivan (talk). Self-nominated at 02:52, 12 February 2016 (UTC).

Drive-by comment, not a review: Was the architect already dead at the time of his designing of the church? --PFHLai (talk) 22:00, 13 February 2016 (UTC)
I'm offering ALT2 as a possible hook, Pjposullivan (talk) 06:48, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
ALT1 ... that St John the Baptist Church in Rochdale was designed by a dead architect?

ALT2 ... that construction on St John the Baptist Church started eight years after the architect who designed it had died?

New article on the 11th. Long enough (over 2500 characters readable prose). The article is HEAVILY reliant on a single source, and to me, the paraphrasing is too close -- the facts are presented in the same order, often with similar sentence structures that have been altered with the substitution of a verb or the separation of a single sentence into two (and vice versa). (Examples: "In about 1998 the presbytery was demolished and the lower part of the east transept was converted to provide residential accommodation." in the source becomes "In 1998, the presbytery was demolished and part of the east transept was turned into residential accommodation."; "Hill was killed in action in 1917, and his practice was acquired in 1918 by Henry Thomas Sandy, who was joined in 1920 by Ernest Bower Norris." in the source becomes "In 1917, after making the designs for the church, Hill was killed in action in World War One. In 1918, his architectural firm was bought by Henry Thomas Sandy. In 1920, Sandy was joined by Ernest Bower Norris." As a teacher, I'd consider that too close for a student submitting this as an assignment.) I'm open to being convinced that this (barely) meets paraphrasing standards if folks think I'm way off base -- I've only reviewed a few DYKs in the past and don't know if we have some kind of guideline to follow. Alternatively I hope the submitter will revise the article sufficiently to avoid it reading at times like a thesaurus-ed version of the website that's the almost sole source for the article right now. The article's text is otherwise fine: neutral, informative, and sufficiently dense with citations (even if it's almost always the same source). The hooks are tough to choose between--obviously ALT1 is punchier and more intriguing, but it's arguably misleading, as PFHLai implies. I think, on balance, I'd stick with ALT1, though: ALT2 isn't as gripping, and personally I think most readers will understand right away from ALT1 that it must be the case that the architect dies before construction begins (and the article will clarify if they don't). Image is CreativeCommons, in the article, and looks nice at small size, in my opinion. Jwrosenzweig (talk) 07:22, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you Jwrosenzweig, but doesn't WP:Limited come in here? Each of the sentences are statements of fact (Hill was killed in action and Sandy did join Norris' firm) , and I find it difficult to say something different and not in the same order, because both the article and source work chronologically. I am taking your recommendations on board and will work on the article to increase the amount of sources, so that it becomes less reliant on the one. But, the one is English Heritage, which is authoritative in this field and provides the basis for numerous other sources (such as Historic England and British Listed Buildings). I'll work on it today, please tell what you think of it afterwards, because I do want the article, and my editing, to become better. Pjposullivan (talk) 16:56, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Pjp, thanks for your reply, and the work you put in! I think you do have a point about WP:Limited for a number of the sentences, but there were a few that I thought bent that rule too far: and you've addressed them with some really good edits that keep the information clear but avoid borrowing some of the structure and phrasing you'd used from English Heritage in an earlier draft. I think this is clearly in good shape now, and your point about the authoritative nature of the source you're relying on is a good defense. I like it -- and I continue to like ALT1, so that's my recommendation. Thanks! Jwrosenzweig (talk) 18:57, 29 February 2016 (UTC)