Template:Did you know nominations/Zeitenwende speech

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 Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 17:39, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Zeitenwende speech

Olaf Scholz
Olaf Scholz
  • ... that, according to Patrick Wintour, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (pictured) initiated a "180-degree course correction" of German defence policy? Source: Yet by the following weekend, two days after the invasion began on Thursday, Germany’s coalition government had started that 180-degree course correction

Created by Modussiccandi (talk). Self-nominated at 19:41, 18 August 2022 (UTC).

  • Modussiccandi! i had been planning to write an article on the same subject, but am glad i saw this before i actually started drafting anything, as your article turned out much nicer than what i think i would have ended up producing. anyway, this will be my first dyk review, so apologies if i end up making any errors. any suggestions or advice is welcome.
    • general: article is new enough and long enough.
    • policy: article is sourced and neutral. earwig appears to reveal nothing of concern, as the long passage highlighted in a number of the results is the long quote from the speech.
    • image: image was taken by a wikimedia commons regular who has released it under cc by-sa 4.0. it is used in the article and is clear at 100px.
    • qpq: provided.
    • hooks:
      • re alt0: i think the word "proposed" here may be too weak. i had the impression that, in the speech, scholz was describing what he has already planned to do. on the other hand, i think the phrase "180-degree course correction" may be too extreme, and the hook does not make it clear that the words are not scholz's own, but those of the guardian's patrick wintour, who appears to have been using hyperbole. (i think an actual "180-degree course correction" would be very dangerous.) can the provenance of the quote be made more clear?
        • Reasonable points all. I have changed the wording and added Wintour's name. Modussiccandi (talk) 07:11, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
      • re alt1: interestingly, i think the word "promised" here may be too strong. to me, scholz's speech was not an emotional one with passionate words, but one it appeared he regretted having to make, even though it was filled with determination and resolve. perhaps a word such as "announced" or "committed" may be more appropriate. also, may i suggest using the phrase "armed forces" instead? the bundeswehr article also uses that phrase.
      • re both: since there is space in the hooks, i think it would be useful to note who scholz is, e.g., "German chancellor Olaf Scholz" or "Chancellor Olaf Scholz". i am not sure if this would be insulting our reader's intelligence, though, so feel free to ignore this if you disagree. also, the dyk reviewing guide states that the statement of a hook fact in the article "must be immediately followed" by a citation, while for both hook facts in this case, the citation appears after the sentence following the fact. is this generally considered close enough? by the way, the sources were not mentioned in the nomination, but i was able to figure them out myself.
        • I have added the Chancellor title for clarity. When it comes to citations in the article, I personally think it's okay to have them at the end of the next sentence. I have, however, now added citations at the end of the sentence proper to make it more straightforward for you to pass this nomination. Modussiccandi (talk) 07:22, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
    • points outside of the dyk criteria:
      • i think main page captions of photos of people generally do not include the year it was taken unless the photo was taken either significantly earlier or significantly later than the subject being discussed.
      • would it be more appropriate to place the quoted german text in a footnote? shorter foreign phrases are often used alongside a simple gloss, but i do not remember the last time on wikipedia i have seen a block quotation of foreign text include both the original text and its english translation.
          • I think it is most encyclopaedic this way, but I realise that I might have to adjust if I take the article to GAR or such. For the time being, I'll leave it as is. I might use the official translation, though. Modussiccandi (talk) 07:27, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
        • did you know that a translated version of the speech (or at least the advance text of it) has been provided by the government? i am not sure if you would consider its translation of the quoted section to be better than the one you had provided in the article, but i thought you might find it useful in any case.
dying (talk) 04:54, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
@Dying: thank you! I wouldn't have been able to tell that this was your first review; a very thorough job indeed. I hope I have managed to address your main concerns. It says a lot about the weaknesses of en.wiki that it has taken us nearly half a year to write an article on this crucial topic in European defence policy. When I got the idea, I was convinced that someone else must have already written something on this, but here we are. Anyway, thanks for the review and let me know if more work is required. Best, Modussiccandi (talk) 07:32, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
thanks, Modussiccandi. yeah, i had also been wondering why the article had not been written yet, but admittedly had avoided starting it myself as i kept on thinking that i did not have the experience to tackle the subject properly. anyway, both hooks are now under 200 characters, interesting, accurate, cited, and neutral. everything looks good.
alt0 and alt1 approved. thanks for writing the article! dying (talk) 09:49, 22 August 2022 (UTC)