Template:Did you know nominations/Street Artists Program of San Francisco

The following discussion 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 — Maile (talk) 01:51, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Street Artists Program of San Francisco edit

  • ... that the street artists program, under which local independent artists may sell their arts and crafts at designated selling spaces in San Francisco, started over 40 years ago?
  • Comment: Not a self-nom

Created by James Carroll (talk). Nominated by Orlady (talk) at 21:14, 8 February 2014 (UTC).

  • Date, hook, length all check out. I'd suggest a more interesting hook, however, like the one below. — Hunter Kahn 20:20, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
  • ALT1: ...artists participating the Street Artists Program of San Francisco carried a coffin to city hall to protest frequent arrests for illegally selling work?
  • Sorry, striking ALT1, poor grammar. C679 22:02, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
  • Obviously ALT1 is better; why don't you just fix the grammar?
  • ALT2: ... that artists participating in the Street Artists Program of San Francisco carried a coffin to City Hall to protest frequent police arrests of illegal sellers? Yoninah (talk) 10:11, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
  • Pulled from Prep 2 - page has several paragraphs and blocks of information that are not cited. Page also needs to be checked for close paraphrasing. Like the hook, the article is also quite wordy and is written like a newspaper article. Is there any way to condense the prose? Yoninah (talk) 09:50, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
  • The San Francisco Street Artists Program Article is a History Piece, and not a News Release or a Promotional Advertisement
I can not fathom how anyone would see this as a news piece, when the substance of the article is really historical in nature. The article is about the history of the invention of a new branch of San Francisco's government, and like most of the articles that I create, it is primarily focused on history.
Please read the original release of the article of 9 February 2014 [ https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Street_Artists_Program_of_San_Francisco&oldid=594692426 ]. You can see that it is populated with an enormous amount of references to newspaper articles that span 40 years, which I have researched at the San Francisco Public Library.
Once again, history is the substance of the topic and its original form shows that it is tightly sourced to historic facts from newspaper articles. If it was really promotional in nature, then the majority of its text would be without referenced sources. The abundance of sourced references guarantees the essential neutrality of this history piece. The San Francisco Street Artists Program is a public municipal arts program, not unlike the public market in Seattle called Pike's Place. Please read the Pike's Place article, and tell me how it is any different than this piece. Do you also think that the Pikes Place Market should also be deleted because it is a news piece or is promotional in nature? That would be absurd.
The San Francisco Street Artists Program article is also about a part of San Francisco's government, in much the same way that the San Francisco Arts Commission article describes a branch of government. Do you also think that the emerging San Francisco Arts Commission article is a news piece should also be deleted or buried? Again, it would be a mistake to capriciously delete any article about a branch of government, or the history involved in the formation of a branch of government.
When reading the article the way it was written on 9 February 2014, notice how it later received massive edits from an unregistered Wiki user whose IP address is 2601:9:1b00:629:20d:93ff:fe7d:f8c8. The many new entries of the name "Bill Clark" are by Bill Clark himself, and his edits are obviously self aggrandizing, and almost always without sources. He is an obsessive individual with no experience with Wikipedia, no interest in sourcing his statements, and should really be banned from the article. Wikipedia should consider reverting the article back to its original state of 9 February 2014, and ban Bill Clark and other unregistered Wiki users from screwing up the piece any further. If Bill Clark is allowed to continue to anonymously make edits from various IP addresses, then this article will be a non-stop Edit War which will only fatigue the sincere contributors of Wikipedia, and enable the destruction of a historic record.
I created this article because I witnessed an extraordinary sequence of unlikely political events which shaped a new and innovative branch of municipal government, and not because I need to advertise or promote the San Francisco Street Artist Program itself. At present, I am in no way affiliated with the San Francisco Street Artists Program, nor do I profit in any way by its existence. Do the right thing and let the facts of history remain in the annals of Wikipedia, and not be discarded by hasty and subjective judgement.
Also, to condense the article would be a big mistake. When examining history, we need to see the complete sequencing of events in order to truly understand a phenomena and its causes. Would we really see an advantage in condensing the World War I article? I think not. When it comes to history, more information is better than too little information. James Carroll (talk) 18:14, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
  • If you want to make changes to the article, please discuss your proposals on the article's talk page. We are supposed to be doing this by consensus. Right? James Carroll (talk) 18:14, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
  • OK, we'll continue this on the talk page. Yoninah (talk) 19:24, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
  • Copyedit underway; I hope to finish this in a few days. Yoninah (talk) 16:13, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
  • ALT2 hook sounds OK with a little tweaking (below), or my other latter suggestion,
  • ALT3: ...that artists in creating legislation for the Street Artists Program of San Francisco carried a coffin to City Hall to protest police arrests of artists who informally sold their artwork on the city's sidewalks?
  • ALT4: ... that San Francisco is one of the rare cities where a Street Artists Program law enables artists and craftspeople to legally sell their work on a city's sidewalks? James Carroll (talk) 01:16, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
  • Thanks for your input. I think ALT4 works best, but the part about "one of the rare cities" needs to be stated and sourced in the article to meet DYK rules. I completed the copyedit and the article is in great shape. New enough, long enough, well-referenced, no close paraphrasing seen in online sources. No QPQ needed for non-self-nomination. Yoninah (talk) 01:28, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
  • Or we could adopt this if there is a problem with ALT4,
  • ALT5: ...that San Francisco artists and craftspeople fought the police and city hall for years to bring about a Street Artists Program that lets them legally sell their work on the city's sidewalks? James Carroll (talk) 21:24, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
  • Thanks, that works better. Offline hook refs AGF and cited inline. ALT5 good to go. Yoninah (talk) 21:48, 24 February 2014 (UTC)