Talk:Depukhu

Did you know nomination

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 Cwmhiraeth (talk) 07:08, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

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• ... that in the Newar festival of Depukhu, young men compete for hours, for the possession of the carcass of a virgin she-goat which is first sacrificed by drowning in the Deopokhari pond in Khokana, Nepal? Source:The Kathmandu Post, Reuters and Nagarik News (in Nepali)

• Reviewed: QPQ exempt (only two previous DYK credits, will try to review one later but can't promise success)

Created by Usedtobecool (talk). Self-nominated at 18:42, 6 November 2019 (UTC).

• Drive by comment: doesn't "she-goat" sound weird in this hook.~~ CAPTAIN MEDUSA^talk 01:31, 8 November 2019 (UTC)
• CAPTAIN MEDUSA, perhaps, but AFAIK, that would be the limitation of the English language, alternatives are doe and nanny, neither of which can be used without the -goat suffix, and the word for baby goat is gender-neutral too. Usedtobecool ^TALK ✨ 18:05, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Also a drive-by comment, but the hook might need to be copyedited as it's a bit hard to understand right now. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 00:45, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

• Reviewing: article is new and long enough; inline citations are used; No copyright infringement detected. The hook scrapes in at 199 characters excluding the "that" and "?". So any changes have to not add to it. Checking out the veracity of the hook, the facts are in the article, references confirm most, but not that it takes "hours" or that the goat is a "virgin". So I am going to propose a slightly reduced hook as alt1 below. No image and QPQ not required. putting on the rereview red symbol so someone else will look at the alt1 hook. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 04:22, 30 November 2019 (UTC)
• alt1 ... that in the Newar festival of Depukhu, young men compete for a young female goat which is first sacrificed by drowning in the Deopokhari pond in Khokana, Nepal?

• (Usedtobecool) In my defence, the third source mentions "virgin" in the title. I had learnt that is goes on for hours while researching for the article but don't intend to go looking for sources that say exactly that. The alt hook is fine by me, except I wish the carcass part could be added to it. I know sacrifice covers the death but think it's easy to read over on casual viewing.
• alt2 ... that in the Newar festival of Depukhu, young men compete for the carcass of a young female goat which is first sacrificed by drowning in the Deopokhari pond in Khokana, Nepal?

Can't find the word that quite gives the accurate sense of what the tug-of-war is actually for. Every word I can think of could give the misimpression that men beat each other up. Anyway,

• alt3 ... that in the Newar festival of Depukhu, young men fight over the carcass of a young female goat which is first sacrificed by drowning in the Deopokhari pond in Khokana, Nepal?

Whichever of alt1, alt2 and alt3 the promoter agrees more with, is fine by me. Thank you Graeme Bartlett for reviewing. Usedtobecool ^TALK ✨ 05:30, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

• OK for alt2 and alt3 they are short enough, article contains this and has it referenced and confirmed. Good to go with alt2 or alt3. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 06:21, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Basically, a copyedit request

@Valereee and Anne Delong:, as your self-proclaimed mentee, I humbly request you to quickly go over the content and fix the "English" and "NPOV" issues. I will, of course, try to learn from the examples, but additional advice in edit summaries or here, would also be highly appreciated. I want to take this to DYK but am too much of a coward to do so without having a familiar friendly eyes go over it first. I am mainly worried about the prose, I believe I can fix the technical issues myself and will continue to do so. I've never worked on something with potential for this much controversy before, and also have an emotional/philosophical bias on this subject, so please... -- Usedtobecool ^TALK ✨ 20:13, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Usedtobecool, I made a few minor changes. The controversy seems to be well documented in the sources. However, reading the text made me wonder - is this ritual the entire festival? Usually festivals last more than an hour. If there are other activities at the festival (eating, dancing, music, songs, storytelling, selling of crafts or souvenirs, etc.), these should be mentioned to avoid overweighting the controversial aspect.—Anne Delong (talk) 13:25, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Hiya Anne Delong, thank you very much for taking a look! It's actually a Jatra which doesn't precisely translate to "festival" but all sources seem to use this word nonetheless, for lack of a better word. Closer analogy would be a carnival but not by a lot. It is indeed just a religious gathering of a people to take part in a public ritual followed by a religious procession from which people just go back to their own homes. I am sure there are a few other elements to it. For example, caption for one image used in the Nepali article says a Lakhe dance is also publicly performed as part of the event. Some non-reliable sources also say that the winners of the carcass go on to perform street plays throughout the next year. I am sure that people would eat sweets, and prepare and share elaborate meals (Newars are specially known for their cuisine). Traditionally, a sacrificed animal is later shared and consumed by all participants of the community, I guess that might happen too. But what's in the article is all that there is in the RSes available online (almost an exhaustive search). And, all the rest of the details are peripheral and probably not even really encyclopedic (as it happens in all festive occassions and is even covered by common sense). I am worried about the language I've used to describe the things but I don't think there is a legitimate case to be made for undue weight. What's in the article is indeed the most important, most defining feature of the festival that gives the festival its name.

P.S. would you please take a look at the DYK hook above? I know it would probably be considered too negative for a BLP, I don't know if it is also unacceptable when it's a group of people. Or perhaps, I just think it's negative because of my personal bias? Thanks! Usedtobecool ^TALK ✨ 16:11, 7 November 2019 (UTC)