Template:Did you know nominations/Margaret Cote

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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 Bruxton (talk) 20:14, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

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Margaret Cote

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Created by Ornithoptera (talk). Self-nominated at 06:00, 27 February 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Margaret Cote; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

  • Comment (not a full review): the article and many of its sources say only that she was the first to do so in Saskatchewan. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:13, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
  • A bit of an odd comment to note to someone who had written the article but there's reliable sources for either point and the former is more hook-y. Ornithoptera (talk) 17:22, 28 February 2023 (UTC)


General: Article is new enough and long enough
Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
QPQ: Done.

Overall: Thank you for a worthwhile and fascinating article. And power to those who are keeping the language alive.

  • I did a minor copyedit on the article (for tenses). That will not affect DYK. I shall put a note here to help you in the future. To use "would" in a tense - e.g. "She married and would have several children" is a complex operation, and should be used sparingly. It means that in retrospect you know what was going to happen after she married, because you know her history. It is usually used as a summary of events which a person kicked off - for example, "As a teenager, the thief stole one apple from a shop, and received a caution, but he would go on to rob banks and face long prison terms". That kind of story-telling setup is normally done to introduce a detailed history of (in that example) the thief's bank-robbing. Also, if you use "has", as in "Cote has published a lot of books", it sounds as if she is still alive and publishing books, but Cote is deceased, so we can't use that tense. I hope that helps? If in doubt, keep it simple: "she attended", "she published", "she had children".

Meanwhile, this article is good to go. Thank you again for your hard work in researching this article. Storye book (talk) 11:07, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

@Ornithoptera and Storye book: I agree with David Eppstein that something does not sit right about this hook. Simply being able to cite a source doesn't make it a robust and viable claim. (First person to teach a First Nations language in a public school where? In Saskatchewan? In Canada? In the whole world? What counts as a "public school"? Have we looked for counterexamples?) I'm happy for someone else to promote it, just wanted to contribute my two cents, as this is one of the hooks I have scrolled by many times wanting to promote, but not being able to bring myself to (as we do get grilled after the fact when we receive questions and complaints all the way up to the day it appears on the main page, when it could even get pulled if we haven't bulletproofed). Cielquiparle (talk) 16:59, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
ALT1 ... that Saulteaux linguist Margaret Cote was the first person to teach a First Nations language in Saskatchewan? (See 3 citations after the quote, in the article)
ALT2 ... that Saulteaux linguist Margaret Cote was the first person to teach a First Nations language in a public school in Saskatchewan? (See 3 citations after the quote, in the article)
ALT3 ... that Saulteaux linguist Margaret Cote was the first person in Saskatchewan to teach a First Nations language in a public school? (See sources mentioned above, and Strong Nations )
New reviewer required, for ALTs 1, 2 and 3 only. Storye book (talk) 20:52, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
Approving ALT2 and ALT3 without the scare quotes (which a proofreader would remove down the line anyway). Striking ALT1 though, as the public school part is important. One final comment is that the article does repeat the first claim rather a lot (for example in the lede, where it's repeated in two back-to-back sentences), I imagine as a function of trying to justify ALT0, and that really should be fixed. Cielquiparle (talk) 04:53, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
Thank you, Cielquiparle. I have removed the quotation marks from hooks 2 and 3. Storye book (talk) 09:27, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
I have checked the article for repeats of "first". You have already removed one iteration of that, leaving only two examples of "first" being used in context of "first person to teach" (one in the lead and one in the body). All the other iterations are parts of phrases which cannot be changed, e.g. "First Nation". So there is no remaining problem relating to "first" in the article. Storye book (talk) 09:38, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
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