Template:Did you know nominations/Truman Taylor

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 The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 16:27, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Truman Taylor

Truman Taylor in 1999
Truman Taylor in 1999

5x expanded by JGHowes (talk). Self-nominated at 01:04, 7 July 2020 (UTC).

  • In my view this article is ineligible for DYK because it is too short. It was 2328 characters when the nominator first edited it on 2 July 2020‎ and is now 4609 characters. In between these dates, it was completely rewritten. However, this is just the sort of situation discussed in a recent RfC so pinging @Valereee: who closed that RfC, for her opinion. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:09, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
Hm, this is a tricky one. The author did actually arrive at the article just before it got shortened, but just to drop some tags. They didn't start the rewrite until after Justlettersandnumbers had cut it. Pinging BlueMoonset and Gatoclass —valereee (talk) 10:33, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
If there's no evidence of collaboration between the two editors, and there doesn't seem to be, I think we can AGF that the expansion was begun in good faith after Justlettersandnumbers' reduction. Gatoclass (talk) 13:22, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
I'm not so sure. The article has been basically inactive for years except for minor edits in April, and JGHowes was the first to edit it on July 2, after which there was a speedy deletion request, a flurry of other edits including a minor cut by another editor, a COI tag placed by JGHowes, and then the big cut mentioned above leaving a single sentence of 90 characters three hours before JGHowes' initial formatting a few minutes after midnight on July 3. The article began growing again less than two hours later. I very much doubt that there was any thought about whether this would qualify for DYK or not, just taking an article that had been gutted after making it active again and giving it some substance. The big problem we have here is that we never did hash out the exact details of the wording after that close, so we're in an ambiguous situation here. I would be inclined to count the beginning as from before the first edit on July 2—so compared with April 27—but I can see the argument for the other way, even if I don't necessarily agree with it. BlueMoonset (talk) 13:52, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
I'd be willing to assume it's completely innocent, definitely. I was wondering about the sudden flurry of activity, too...the first thing I did was check to see if the guy had just died. :D —valereee (talk) 16:21, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
I first became aware of this article through correspondence at OTRS concerning C:COM:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Colomron, whereupon it emerged that there was a COI issue. I can't go beyond that, and in fact had to change visibility on a couple of the article's edits and history. Hence the flurry of activity. Suffice it to say that this resulted in practically all of the article content being deleted by others. At that point, having become involved from my OTRS and admin role, I decided to write a virtually new article meeting Wikipedia's requirements for npov and rs. —  JGHowes  talk 16:35, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
Yes, I figured that something like that had occurred. Your explanation is more than satisfactory to me, and I see no further need to question the eligibility of this nom - hopefully the others will agree. Gatoclass (talk) 16:54, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
I'm all for allowing it to go ahead, but I did think it was my duty to query it. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 17:30, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
OK, some clarification, please – am I supposed to have colluded with someone? and, if so, with whom, and for what imaginable reason? And what exactly is supposed to be "completely innocent" here?

I'm not 100% sure at this point, but I think I glanced at the page after seeing this message on a talk-page on my watchlist, and perhaps this reply to it. I found one reference, wrote two brief sentences based on it, and removed some unsourced stuff added by the COI editor in 2011. I did those things of my own volition, without any discussion with any other editor, as part of a general process of cleaning up our encyclopaedia. I checked for copyvio, but wasn't able to verify any violation (though it rings all the warning bells), so I don't see that copyvio exemption to the A4: Fivefold expansion rule could apply here; nor do I see any other exemption that might be applicable. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:13, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Justlettersandnumbers, no, no one is suggesting that's what happened. We're just concerned because that is a possible consideration in such cases. The concern is that editor A would have editor B cut out bloat so editor A could go in and more easily do a 5x expansion in order to get that shiny, shiny DYK credit. We don't think you did that. :) —valereee (talk) 20:26, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
  • This article is acceptable as a five-fold expansion and has been nominated in a timely fashion. The image is appropriately licensed, the hook facts are cited inline and either hook could be used, the article is neutral and I detected no copyright issues, although Earwig did produce a rather strange result. A QPQ has been done. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 18:58, 2 August 2020 (UTC)