Template:Did you know nominations/Miracles of Gautama Buddha

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) 06:16, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Miracles of Gautama Buddha edit

  • ... that the Buddha called the greatest miracle the "miracle of instruction" because it turned one towards virtue? Source: pg 118 [1]

Moved to mainspace by Wikiman5676 (talk). Self-nominated at 07:04, 22 May 2019 (UTC).

  • 5x expansion confirmed. (Well. Close enough. Needed 1680 words and has 1640 words or so, who cares, nice work.) . QPQ looks good as well. Some citation spotchecks - hmm, there are a few weak sources here. "All About Miracles: Understanding the Meaning of Supernatural" doesn't seem like a particularly reliable source ("Johnny Rogers" religion buddhism turns up crap on Google, so he's a no-name), but it's just used once, so not a big deal. ""The Life of the Buddha: The Birth of the Prince" from BuddhaNet is also weak. I also don't see how Buddha knowing Anathapindika's name counts as a miracle - the references back up that this is a story and happened and that Anathapindika was astonished and figured it must be an enlightened one, but I don't see this called out as a miracle exactly. That said, this is DYK not GAC, so it's fine.
Anyway, I like the original hook suggestion, it's interesting and thoughtful and surprising that this is considered a miracle. (ALT1 is a bit of a laundry list.) The only problem that it's not entirely clear what kind of article the reader is getting: that this is specifically about Gautama Buddha's miracles, not Buddha's view of miracles in general (what you might think from the hook, which only links the word "miracle"). I'm not sure how to hint at this without also suggesting that Buddha was only talking about his own personal miracles rather than miracles-in-general, though. Here's a shot:
ALT2: ... that among the miracles of Gautama Buddha, he considered the greatest the "miracle of instruction" because it turned people towards virtue?
ALT3: ... that among the miracles of Gautama Buddha, he considered the greatest the "miracle of instruction" because it would not be taken for a mere magic trick?
@Wikiman5676: any thoughts on the above? SnowFire (talk) 20:05, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the input, @SnowFire:. Per [3] I was actually under the impression that articles worked on exclusively in draft and then moved to the mainpage counted as new articles so long as they were significantly different from how it was before, but after looking at the rule again i might've been mistaken. Either way, since the count is so close to 5x anyways i will just expand it a bit more to cover all the bases. It is implied in the story that the Buddha knew Anathapindika's real name through some supernatural means since there's no way for him to have known otherwise, I included it as an example of a telepathy power he exhibited. I do really like your proposed ALT3 hook, given the nature of the article i think its probably the best way to word it. I'll swap out the sources you mentioned for more reliable ones and expand the article slightly in a bit. Wikiman5676 (talk) 03:31, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
@SnowFire: I've removed the source "All About Miracles: Understanding the Meaning of Supernatural" and replaced the text with a summary of what is provided in the text in the following sentences. I have also replaced the Buddhanet citations with new references to scholarly religion books. PS I'd like to point out that I meant to say in the paragraph above that I liked both ALT2 and ALT3, not just ALT3. So both of those ALTs are good for me. Wikiman5676 (talk) 05:27, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Yeah, moving from draftspace to regular space is fine. I just meant based on the wordcount from March 2019, it looked liked the criteria was technically 1680 words, but for "larger" stubs, roughly 5x is fine rather than strictly 5x. Your expansions look good, especially the better translations from the poetry ("attain enlightenment" is much clearer than the awkward "succeed in becoming a Buddha").
  • ALT3 is approved; ALT2 approved as backup if ALT3 is too long or some such. Nice work! SnowFire (talk) 22:35, 15 June 2019 (UTC)