Talk:Ilie Purcaru

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 AirshipJungleman29 talk 21:16, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

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Purcaru in 1983

• ... that as a contributor to Nicolae Ceaușescu's personality cult, Ilie Purcaru (pictured) claimed that young Ceaușescu had walked into the woods of Scornicești without fearing their wolves?

• Source: Nicolae Coande, "Băiatul căruia nu-i era frică de lup", in Cuvântul Libertății, April 2, 2003, p. 4: Scriitori și oamenii de cultură, nu mai vorbesc de gazetarii de la Scânteia sau România liberă, se întreceau în a-i demonstra că nu are de ce să se teamă că a fost descoperit... genial. În acel an de pomină, scriitorii care au vizitat Scorniceștiul pentru a mai afla ceea ce nu se știa din biografia celui plecat în Lume de pe aceste meleaguri obscure au reușit să afle lucruri excepționale. Grație flerului jurnalistic al lui Ilie Purcaru, combatant la Flacăra, dar și mitomaniei de care erau cuprinși de-a valma cei care îl cunoscuseră cândva, s-a putut afla că micuțului Ceaușescu nu îi era deloc frică de lup atunci când se ducea în pădure, dar și că îi plăcea să pună în scenă jocuri cu subiecte istorice unde camarazii săi îl alegeau invariabil de șef. ("Writers and men of culture, not to mention the journalists at Scînteia sau România Liberă, took turns demonstrating [to Ceaușescu] that he had nothing to fear at having been discovered as... a genius. In that infamous year, the writers who visited Scornicești, arriving there to dig up unknown details from the biography of he who had left that obscure realm to enter The World, managed to pick up some outstanding information. Thanks to the journalistic flair of Ilie Purcaru, that combative voice at Flacăra, but also to the mythomania that had swept across those who had known him [Ceaușescu] back in the day, the reader was informed as to little Ceaușescu's not being even a little afraid of wolves as he roamed about the woods, but also that he liked to stage games on historical subjects, where his comrades would invariably select him as the leader.")
  Note that parts of the quote are tongue-in-cheek; Cuvântul Libertății is a provincial newspaper in Craiova (where Purcaru himself was active for much of his life); Nicolae Coande is a poet and journalist based in that same city, whose graduate paper was on the "myths of Romanian communism", and who holds a masters' in philosophy (see his CV at the Romanian Writers' Union).

• ALT1: ... that according to a legend recorded in Romanian journalists' circles, Ilie Purcaru (pictured) covered the Vietnam War only because he was dying from cirrhosis, but returned "healthy as a horse"? Source: Constantin Poenaru, Publicistica: 2004–2016, pp. 36–37. Râmnicu Vâlcea: Editura INTOL PRESS, 2022. ISBN 978-606-8701-35-6: Despre Ilie Purcaru circula prin redacție vorba că, fiind bolnav grav de ciroză și convins, prin urmare, că nu o mai duce mult, s-ar fi oferit singur să plece corespondent în Vietnam, în perioada războiului cu americanii. Urmarea, anecdotică, este că, prin nu se știe ce minune, s-a întors sănătos tun, deși a avut de îndurat multe privațiuni acolo. ("As to Ilie Purcaru, the rumor in our editorial office was that, having fallen severely ill with cirrhosis, and therefore convinced that he would not last for long, he volunteered to be a correspondent in Vietnam, during the war with the Americans. The follow-up, according to this anecdotal account, is that, by who knows what miracle, he came back as healthy as a horse, regardless of how many hardships he had encountered there.")
• Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Carrie Swain
• Comment: This article could've been both a nomination as a creation (by Biruitorul) or an expansion (by me). There are plenty of other juicy facts in the article, such as Ion Iliescu's thoughts on having Purcaru slapped "once or twice" (I'm leaving this out because the Iliescu article is messy, and because the incident is a tad obscure), or his appearing on Romanian Television with two exactly opposite messages before and after the 1989 Revolution (again, pretty obscure context to fit in a hook).

5x expanded by Dahn (talk) and Biruitorul (talk).

Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 108 past nominations.

Post-promotion hook changes will be logged on the talk page; consider watching the nomination until the hook appears on the Main Page.

Dahn (talk) 10:35, 3 May 2024 (UTC).

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: - Offline/paywalled citation accepted in good faith Interesting:

Image: Image is freely licensed, used in the article, and clear at 100px.
Freely licensed: Used in article: Clear at 100px:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Approve ALT0 only. It's interesting enough, and I'd prefer facts to legends. Offline Romanian source accepted AGF. BorgQueen (talk) 18:24, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Style

Regarding this edit: having two links next to each other in that way does not allow a reader to readily see that there are multiple links present, impacting usability. As for image sizes, you can change the default setting in your preferences if you find them too small; setting a specific size in this way will actually make the images smaller for users who need a larger size. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:32, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

A comma between the links does not "impact usability", let alone that this is not a case made (it couldn't be!) for any other such instance of links appearing close together in the article, but only and only for that instance in the infobox. What does interfere with usage is a user looking for a link and then not be able to find it, because it was removed by other users with a pet peeve. This seems to be rationalization of the Americocentric notion that "Winnipeg, Alberta" needs only one link -- without any attention paid to the rest of this world, who is not instantly familiar with "Alberta", and even less so with "Kingdom of Romania" or "Sassanid Empire", which get caught in this crossfire. This "norm", ignored in many an article that have made it to FA status, is imposed on us with no careful consideration and apparently no room for even getting editors involved to consider the paradoxes theyre generating. As for the images: setting the size to 250--300 in anyones display does not make them too small or too large, but removing the size makes them too small in mine, and I would wager many others, display. Another case of something being stealthly imposed on the rest of the community. Also: I would respectfully ask that you consider the depressing nature of this interaction -- one user creating content that raises articles from stub to B-class or more, finding sources and images and editing the text into a coherent whole, then other editors acting like what can only be described as a quality-control stage in a factory process, and citing an abstract, bureaucratic, hardly coherent rulebook on the others. Dahn (talk) 03:50, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

The same case can of course be made for other instances of sea of blue linking which should also be addressed.

Setting a fixed pixel size absolutely makes the images too small for some users. If you find the default image size to be too small for you, you can either change your preferences or scale the images so as not to override others' settings; see MOS:IMGSIZE for how to do the latter.

Having your content edited is a rather fundamental part of how Wikipedia works - quality control is a benefit of this model. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:57, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

I do not mind the content being edited, I mind the assumption that I cannot have a say in how it is edited, and the joyless, bureaucratic aspect of such interactions, in which other users act as if they are quality control. As for the size: lets have those users weigh in; for now, I am a user telling you that theyre too small in my display.

The "sea of blue" thing may make sense in some very hard to locate contexts, but certainly not in tjis article. Or, if not, please state your case: what links on Romanian writers should we remove just so that the pet peeve "some users" may have is addressed? Which ones are household names in, say, Canada or New Zealand? Dahn (talk) 04:04, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

I am not disputing that you feel the images are too small in your display. I have presented two ways by which you can address this without negatively impacting other users, as the current approach does.

I do not follow your second point - the problem does not change based on the article in which it appears. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:11, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

I repeat that I am yet to find a case of these other users existing.

The problem is not a problem: we do not randomly delink useful links, which are a basic feature of this project, and a way in which any reader is instantly helped, because some users may be annoyed (again: a pet peeve, nothing more) by having two bluelinks side by side, with a comma between them. The rule makes some sense (and does not conflict with other rules) only when there is literally a bluewall of text, with no punctuation marks and no clear indication of where one link ends and another one begins. If you do not agree, and if you continue to claim this article is an example of overlinking, please clarify: what should be delinked? What links are of no help to the user? Dahn (talk) 04:22, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Other users exist. Our goal is to make our articles accessible for them. Is there a particular reason why changing your preferences and/or scaling the images will fail to address your problem with finding the default images too small? Nikkimaria (talk) 04:32, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes, the reason is that they mess up my format in other ways. And I am yet to find a uset complaining about those settings, which used to be pretty much default a couple of years ago. In any case: did you note that I let most images without a size specification, per your edit?

I gather from the above that this article is not in fact an example of overlinking. Which is good progress. May we also agree that removing a link on Kingdom of Romania makes no sense? Dahn (talk) 04:38, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

What other ways, specifically? I have yet to encounter a user for whom neither approach is workable.

No. The more specific place link provides the geographic context needed for that location; the historical context is more relevant elsewhere. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:42, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

They make other images too big and mess up the text. I would wager many users are not even aware that this is something imposed on them, that they can change -- what with the bureaucratic nature of how these narrower and narrower corsets are being imposed on their display in places they are not even aware of.

"The more specific place link provides the geographic context needed for that location; the historical context is more relevant elsewhere" -- not only does this morph into an apparent claim that all historical locations should be removed from the infobox (which is, well, strange), but let me ask you this: is this your personal preference/agenda, or some tangible and transparent norm I am expected to follow? It seems like youre substituting one for the other. Dahn (talk) 04:49, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

How does scaling a particular image in accordance with IMGSIZE, which was one of the options mentioned above, impact other images? How does its impact on text differ from a fixed pixel size?

As per MOS:GEOLINK it's the more specific place that is linked rather than the broader one in this use-case. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:54, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Well I am scaling the image using the specified size, which is a near-identical option, which does not seem to impact anyone negatively. If the suggestion is that I edit settings for each article in part... well, no,that is not practical, what is practical is setting the size on the ones I edit.

It seems I am getting a bit of moving the goalposts here (and some circular reasoning). You said earlier that the historical place is irrelevant -- normally, that would mean making historical figures be referred to as born in contemporary units, with no reference to the unit they were actually born in. This would be not only absurd ("Trajan was born in Spain"), but I do believe is explicitly against the MoS, which favors historical units, where applicable. So then, the question I am posing, and which keeps getting muffled up, is: if we mention the historical unit, why would we not link to it? Do we prioritize a pet peeve citing a misreading of the "sea of blue" concept, or do we service the reader who would need to locate the referenced unit? Dahn (talk) 05:07, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Well I am scaling the image using the specified size, which is a near-identical option, which does not seem to impact anyone negatively. This is not correct. By setting a fixed pixel size, the image actually appears smaller for those who have set a larger default image size. Conversely, scaling the image properly - for example, setting |upright=1.2 - would increase the image's size by 120% for all users relative to their set default. And in terms of "practical", this requires no more effort than setting a pixel size, so this improvement would have no negative impact on you.

As to historical places: I have not proposed introducing an anachronism. Rather I referenced the contextual relevance consideration of MOS:LINK as a reason to omit the broader link to improve the article's usability. If you are interested there is additional research at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Linking#cite_note-4 regarding competing links. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:44, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Fine. I adjusted this to the "upright" script. The question by this point is why did you remove any size specification yourself, instead of switching it to upright, and defended that position for hour upon hour -- but it is a moot point by now, hopefully.

Regarding the historical province/country etc.: WADR, that makes no sense at all, and I am challenging the absurdities of that very statement in MOS:LINK, to the measure where it supports your approach. It is a rationalized pet peeve by a clique of users who, for reasons that I cannot fathom myself, use wikipedia (a project which relies on internal links), but hate "too many" internal links, even in contexts where the internal links make (common) sense. The "rule" is universally ignored (as it should) -- there are plenty of FAs which ignore it, as I believe I have already mentioned; and it is frankly ridiculous to state that the reader should not have a link on Hispania Baetica in Trajan's infobox (why the heck do we even have internal links then?). The one argument about "usability" makes even less sense: the links being side by side (especially when neatly separated by an unlinked comma) impairs absolutely no one' usability; even if they would "not realize that there's a link there" (?), this would not impact their usability unless they wanted to click on that link and couldn't. Assuming they want to click on the link: how is removing the link altogether supposed to help them? Seriously, it's like saying that we should remove any form of audio aids for pronunciation "because our users may be deaf", and then proclaiming that this actually improves usability. Dahn (talk) 02:05, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

And no, I am not interested in "additional research" about how the clique introduced a creeping rule. The time I can spend on this sort of things is, and will have to be, limited. It is on those who defend this position to contemplate how little sense it makes, not on me to discover the many bureaucratic aspects supposedly backing their view. Dahn (talk) 02:09, 23 May 2024 (UTC)