Template:Did you know nominations/Great Siege Tunnels

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: rejected by BlueMoonset (talk) 05:07, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Great Siege Tunnels edit

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... that the Great Siege Tunnels (pictured) are part of the 70 kilometres (43 miles) of tunnels inside the Rock of Gibraltar?

Reviewed: newbie?

Created/expanded by Tappinen (talk). Nominated by Victuallers (talk) at 20:45, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

~~Looks good, hook and refs fine, original, interesting Victuallers (talk) 23:10, 9 September 2012 (UTC)~~

I was very tempted to put the orange X on this, since this is a case of someone reviewing an article they nominated. That's simply unacceptable. An independent review is required. BlueMoonset (talk) 00:56, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Sorry for that error. I had forgotten I nominated this one. Victuallers (talk) 07:55, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Reviewer needed to do complete, independent review of nomination. BlueMoonset (talk) 15:17, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Article checks out OK. Nice hook, however, I see that p.90 of reference says "...and there are now said to be about 35 miles (50 km) of tunnels in the Rock" which is different from the hook. So, an alternative hook or a clarifying reference is required. Gaius Cornelius (talk) 16:12, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

This is a rather odd situation. The Chartrand book (ref 1) gives two different figures: page 24 has "said to be honeycombed with some 30 miles (48 km)", and page 90 goes for 35 miles (50 km)—35 miles is 56 km, not 50, which does not exactly inspire confidence, nor does the phrase "said to be", used in both places. But three of the sources are in basic agreement: gibraltar.gi (ref 2) goes with "adding some 30 miles", while gibraltar.com has "more than 30 miles", which gives 30 again, but as a floor. The one source that gives a different number is ref 4, the lonely planets review, which is the only one positing a different figure, "more than 70 km", which is the equivalent of 43.75 miles. Under the circumstances, I can't see any justification for hook or article claiming anything more than 30 miles, absent some other source. That's still a huge amount of tunnels. I'm a bit dubious about an article that is almost exclusively using tourist sites for so much of its information: what makes the two Gilbraltar-centric ones reliable? BlueMoonset (talk) 22:56, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I never edited this article. However, in a quick survey conducted on Google Books UK, where the main sources consulted were travel guides (and with information obtained from second-hand, most probably), the extent of the tunnels varies from 30 to 33 miles. However, there is another fact to be taken into account: part of the tunnels attributed to the "Great Siege", may actually be of much more recent origin (from World War II, to be exact). Until this point is duly explained, I feel better not to hook the article to the "DYK". - Al Lemos (talk) 02:51, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Next we entered the Great Siege Tunnels. The sieges of the late 18th century led to a network of tunneled defences being excavated in The Rock. The Duc de Crillon who commanded the enemy forces when shown the gallery said: "These works are worthy of the Romans". At the end was Holyland Tunnel, its name taken from the fact that the tunnel points directed to the holy land and constructed during World War II, as were most of the 33 miles of tunnels inside the rock. The soil from digging these tunnels was used to build the airport runway [sic] which was completed in time for the invasion of North Africa during World War II, used today by both military and civil aircraft. - (Eileen Edwards. "Fun and Laughter on Our Summer Holiday", p. 78)

Victuallers nominated this and approved it, and sparked off some discussion on the WTDYK page. Victuallers credited it as a new article by Al Lemos. Al Lemos never edited any of it. Since it was created in 2007, it would have to be 5X. But for the record, here's the basic history on this article:

Article created as a Redirect on August 17, 2007 by RedCoat10
May 20, 2012, this was still a Redirect
September 4, 2012 article became a non-redirect on September 4, 2012 by Tappinen with 1,173 characters of readable prose
The very next edit, also on Sept 4, was Victuallers
Tappinen and Victuallers were the editors of the prose who brought it to 2,416 characters by the nomination date of Sept 5
Since the nomination date the main editors have been, Victuallers, Tappinen, Gibmetal77, Gibman87 and Chase Me Ladies, I'm The Cavalry.
No QPQ has been done by the real creators/editors

There's nothing wrong with any of these editors working on this article, but it makes you wonder why neither Tappinen nor Victuallers were credited in the nomination. And if there are questions on the article, perhaps it should be the article's real editors who need to take care of that. Maile66 (talk) 17:15, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Should the credit at the top of the nomination be fixed so that the error cant be propagated by a bot? John Vandenberg ^(chat) 12:05, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

I changed the credits to the editors mentioned above. Froggerlaura ^ribbit 03:30, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Having done diffs of all the significant changes, it seems to me that Tappinen is the only one who truly deserves editorial credit on this one. It's not about how many edits, but how much was actually contributed. Victuallers' spate of edits on September 12 were separating the article into sections, about a sentence worth of new material, a caption, and one new reference cited half a dozen times. Chase Me Ladies, I'm The Cavalry added the infobox, with about half a dozen field filled in. Gibman provided two half sentences, one ref, and a bit of rewording. Gibmetal77 beefed up the infobox, including adding coordinates, and did some rephrasing and copyedits (the two edits that added 799 bytes between them were both called "ce"). Tappinen contributed 2400 prose characters, and the others another 500. Under the circumstances, I'm going to put him as sole creator unless someone more versed than I believes additional credit should be apportioned to one or two of the others. However, I don't really see why this matters if the article is going to be rejected anyway. (That is what the orange X above means, after all.) Unless you want to give Tappinen a chance at this one: I'm not sure he should have to bear the brunt of Victuallers' many and odd mistakes on this nomination, though Al's arguments must be given due consideration, as must be the sourcing issues. BlueMoonset (talk) 03:57, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Upon review of the listing, why is it being rejected? The article was created as a redirect in 2007 and did not have any prose until September 4, making it a valid new article (it is not merely a copy of the text at the parent page). Has anyone asked Tappinen to do a QPQ or is it being rejected due to the sourcing? Froggerlaura ^ribbit 04:06, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Tappinen wouldn't owe a QPQ even if said user had nominated the article; there's no record of any prior DYKs in Tappinen's talk page history. But Victuallers nominated it, and at a point where he'd only done a tiny copyedit. So, no QPQ since nominated by someone other than the creator/expander. I honestly don't think Victuallers' later contributions amount to him deserving an expansion credit such that he'd owe a QPQ. It wasn't rejected above due to sourcing, though that may prove to be the article's ultimate downfall. I think the rejection may have come from the sheer number of irregularities in the nomination itself: giving the wrong creator/expander or reviewing your own nomination is pretty bad: to do both on the same nomination is very bad. BlueMoonset (talk) 04:19, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Given the many strikes this has against it, including a hook that remains inaccurate after four weeks, dubious and contradictory article and hook fact sourcing, and the irregularities in the nomination including initial crediting to Al Lemos for the article and his problems with it, I think this one has failed to make its case as a DYK submission. BlueMoonset (talk) 04:56, 4 October 2012 (UTC)