Template:Did you know nominations/Ragged Ass Road (street)

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 Allen3 ^talk 12:20, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Ragged Ass Road (street) edit

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Looking north along Ragged Ass Road from Brock Drive

Ragged Ass Road official sign

... that although Ragged Ass Road has had that name since 1970, the city of Yellowknife did not put it on official street signs (pictured) until very recently?

ALT1:... that in Kathy Reichs' novel Bones Are Forever, Temperance Brennan describes the architectural style of Yellowknife's Ragged Ass Road (pictured) as "northern hodgepodge"?
Reviewed: North Branch Shamokin Creek
Comment: I thought after I uploaded the pics in the infobox that I'd just touch this one up a bit. Instead I wound up expanding it enough to make this nomination possible.

5x expanded by Daniel Case (talk). Self-nominated at 16:32, 20 September 2015 (UTC).

The article has been expanded 5X and seems reasonably compliant with policy. I'm less happy with the hooks. Their sourcing seems ok but they are a bit dull and I reckon we can do better. I'll be suggesting another ALT but can't approve that myself. There's no QPQ but I'm not sure how many DYKs the nominator has done. And there might be an issue with the picture of the road sign – as it is text in a particular visual form, which is sold commercially as a souvenir, there might be some intellectual property rights to consider. To be safe, we should use a picture which shows the street more than just the sign. Andrew D. (talk) 13:57, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

There is a QPQ ... see "reviewed" above. As for the street sign, that's the one the city placed. Even if it were, text in a common font that doesn't make a complete sentence (I think) is ineligible for copyright, in both the US and Canada (We wouldn't have this Commons category otherwise. Daniel Case (talk) 04:37, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out the QPQ - I have trouble registering the word "reviewed" as meaning the same thing. I take your point about the copyright issue and would be happy to pass on this aspect myself. That just leaves the hook to be decided. Andrew D. (talk) 07:10, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

ALT2a:... that Ragged Ass Road (pictured) was formerly known as Privy Road because it had many outhouses?
ALT2b:... that Yellowknife's Ragged Ass Road (pictured) was formerly known as Privy Road because it had many outhouses?

Added the city it's in to the hook ... always a good idea to tell people where these places are. Daniel Case (talk) 04:38, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

I've taken it out again. My thinking is that hooks should be brief so that the reader can easily grasp them and should be mysterious so that the reader is intrigued and clicks through to the article. Andrew D. (talk) 07:06, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Fine, but I also think that not at least giving a clue where something like this is constitutes systemic bias. Daniel Case (talk) 17:35, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

We need a third opinion, in any case, to choose between the hooks. I'm not understanding your point about bias. We're providing a clue by giving them a link to click. The more we tell them in the hook, the less likely they are to click through on the link. Anyway, let's see what the next reviewer says. Andrew D. (talk) 18:05, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

My point is that we are assuming everyone who reads DYK lives in North America, an assumption some people resent because it's not true. I've written a lot of NRHP articles about historic places, and always, always, in the hook, I have included at least the city and state (I don't think it will make much of a difference as far as the mystery goes, because a) most Canadians know Yellowknife is one of their country's territorial capitals but might not be sure of which one (especially since Nunavut was sawed off the NT 16 years ago), b) most Americans might know Yellowknife is somewhere in Canada but not much more than that and c) outside of North America, the name "Yellowknife" won't ring any bells. Just my (ahem) case. Daniel Case (talk) 02:39, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Here's the third opinion. C2: Don't assume everyone worldwide knows what country or sport you're talking about DYK Supplementary guidelines. The practice at DYK is that if the nominator doesn't like the wording of a suggested ALT, then the ALT is struck, and the nomination moves on. — Maile (talk) 20:51, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. So I have put "Yellowknife" back in. Really, while the original is my personal preference (if used with the street sign picture, it will get clicks), due to its direct focus on the road's unusual name, I usually defer to whoever puts it in the set. And now I have no problem with ALT2, if that's what we want to go with. Daniel Case (talk) 05:27, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

If Daniel prefers his original hook, that's fine and understandable. As we still don't have agreement on any hook, I have created two versions of ALT2 (2a and 2b) so readers may see the difference which is in dispute. Note that I make no assumption about the reader's knowledge - the reader is obviously not expected to know where a particular street is. The point of the shorter version is that it is short per the recommendation at WP:DYK, "When you write the hook, please make it "hooky", that is, short, punchy, catchy, and likely to draw the readers in to wanting to read the article. Shorter hooks are preferred to longer ones, as long as they don't misstate the article content." Andrew D. (talk) 06:38, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

I just noticed another DYK with the hook "that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police believe Atsumi Yoshikubo intended to disappear when she was last seen on Yellowknife's Ingraham Trail a year ago today, but won't be specific about why?" That's too long IMO but the significant factor is that it mentions Yellowknife too and Daniel seems to be creating a series of DYKs about this place. If they all mention the name of the town in the hook, then we may get complaints that this is boosterism like Gibraltarpedia. It would be better to vary the format of the hooks to avoid this impression. Andrew D. (talk) 14:39, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Whatever. You try to write that Yoshikubo hook with fewer characters and impart the information accurately.

I really don't see how, given supplmental DYK rule C2 quoted above, there's any reason to argue over this. I've written series of articles which I took to DYK in the past all of which were based on visits to a particular place, and said so in the hooks. About seven and a half years ago, I had one such batch based on photos of National Register-listed buildings in Poughkeepsie, which I uploaded and then developed into articles based on their nomination forms for the Register. After a spate of these had run relatively close to each other, someone complained on WT:DYK. The consensus there speaks for itself—basically, this is going to happen in the normal course of things, so no big deal. Editors, as noted, often work on groups of related article subjects and bring them to DYK when they find interesting facts out about them while doing the research, like Jakec has been doing with all these streams in Northeastern Pennsylvania, which I presume are (as with Poughkeepsie in my case) around where he lives.

So it is with me here. I visited Yellowknife briefly last summer. I spent one night—or, more accurately for Yellowknife at that time of year, one four-hour period of civil twilight—at the Explorer Hotel, where Yoshikubo stayed as well, with my father (I may yet write a short article on the hotel, too). We were on our way to a white-water rafting trip in the Arctic, which will ultimately lead to some more new articles and expansion of existing ones (primarily but not exclusively related to Inuvik), the same as I have been doing with things I saw and, in many cases, photographed while walking around town.

To address directly the issue that caused the Gibraltar problem, I do not have any relationship with any person or business in Yellowknife that has influenced my editing or decisions to nominate the articles I have developed for DYK. I simply thought our coverage of Yellowknife could bear improvement, and that I could contribute.

I would also add that putting the place associated with something like a building, street, landform etc. in the hook is also helpful to the editors who put sets together in ensuring that they assemble truly diverse sets of hooks which reflects Wikipedia's global readership. There have been too many instances for me to easily recall and link to where people on T:MP have complained (and rightly so) about a preponderance of U.S. and/or U.K.-related hooks in DYK. Those complaints are, I think, more likely to occur when people only realize where the article subject is located after clicking. Daniel Case (talk) 17:51, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

The hooks themselves are definitely sufficiently hooky (I think that we could say anything with "Ragged Ass Road" in it and people would click on it). I would lean to ALT2; it's better-supported by citations than ALT0 and more interesting than ALT1. Alternatively, we could go with ALT3: ... that Ragged Ass Road is said to be one of the most famous streets in Canada?, though that would require a duplicate citation. Also, this is a minor issue, but it seems to be just short of 5X. --Jakob (talk) aka Jakec 18:36, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

How much short? Depending on the answer, we can either agree to waive it just this once or find something to add (although I'd be hard-pressed to do so). I don't like ALT3 as it's basically stating the obvious: of course it's famous, that's why we have an article about it. Daniel Case (talk) 21:19, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

@Daniel Case: According to DYKCheck, it's about 300 characters short. As I said, I'm fine with ALT2. --Jakob (talk) aka Jakec 21:25, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

@Jakec: I padded it a bit. How is it now? Daniel Case (talk) 05:33, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

ALT3 seems too debatable. The most famous street in Canada, by a long way, has to be Yonge Street. Lists such as this don't even mention Ragged Ass Road. And note that we have yet another verbose Yellowknife hook on the main page today: "that contrary to what its interpretive plaque says, the Fireweed Studio log cabin in Yellowknife was never used as a blacksmith's shop?" These are more like anchors than hooks – too big and heavy. Andrew D. (talk) 13:30, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Andrew, would you please restrict your comments to the hooks under discussion? Thank you. Daniel Case (talk) 20:35, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

We seem to be stalled out here. Could a new reviewer step in? Daniel Case (talk) 19:26, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

DYK checklist template

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: 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: Passes DYK checklist.

Review Good to go! 5X Expansion. Meets core policies and guidelines, and in particular: is neutral; cites sources with inline citations; is free of close paraphrasing issues, copyright violations and plagiarism. DYK nomination was timely and article is easily long enough. Every paragraph is cited. No copyright violations or too close paraphrasing. Earwig's copy violation detector: Ragged Ass Road (Street) report gives it a clean bill. Hooks are hooky enough, I think, and relate directly to the essence of the article. I would go with either hook 2B or hook 3. They are interesting, decently neutral, and appropriately cited. QPQ done. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 12:19, 6 November 2015 (UTC)