Template:Did you know nominations/Dorothy Blum

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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 Zanhe (talk) 17:40, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

Dorothy Blum[edit]

  • ALT1:... that Dorothy Blum "significantly changed the way NSA did cryptanalysis"?
  • Reviewed: Seán Kinsella
  • Comment: Not sure if it is better with or without the "according to the NSA" clause.

Created by 97198 (talk). Self-nominated at 13:41, 18 April 2016 (UTC).

  • New enough, long enough, and appropriately sourced. There may be a small issue with close paraphrasing, e.g. the individual phrases within the sentences of the first paragraph of the Career section match up almost exactly (though with different wording) to the phrases in the corresponding paragraph of source [2]. However, since all English-language sources are public domain (US Govt.), this may be a non-issue. I prefer ALT1 but the NSA acronym should not appear unexpanded, so how about:
David Eppstein (talk) 05:53, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
  • On second thought, that's a direct quote, so we shouldn't modify it. But that means that ALT1 is also problematic, because it doesn't explain what the acronym means. So let's just go with the original hook. Otherwise good to go. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:46, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
  • Quotes in a hook take away the punch. What do you think about:
  • ALT3: ... that NSA cryptanalyist Dorothy Blum was using the Fortran programming language three years before its public release in 1957? Yoninah (talk) 22:51, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
  • @Yoninah: I'm also happy with that – I was a little unsure of the significance since I'm not very familiar with computer programming and its history, but I agree it's a more concrete fact than the original hook. 97198 (talk) 11:46, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
  • Thanks. New reviewer needed for ALT3. Yoninah (talk) 19:30, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
  • New hook is more interesting (because it's more specific) and is appropriately sourced. Since that was the only remaining issue, I think we're good to go now. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:44, 21 April 2016 (UTC)