Template:Did you know nominations/George Strock

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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  — Crisco 1492 (talk) 10:19, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Close paraphrasing

George Strock[edit]

Created by Btphelps (talk). Self nominated at 04:32, 26 October 2013 (UTC).

  • ALT3: ... that the first photograph to depict fallen American troops to be published during World War II, taken by George Strock, required President Roosevelt to overcome the objection of U.S. Office of Censorship?
Noting that ALT3 requires review by another reviewer; ALT1 or ALT2 can be passed without it. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 09:20, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the suggestion, except that it's not quite accurate. Elmer Davis, who headed the Office of War Information, actually persuaded Roosevelt to loosen the standards. There's no source to prove that Roosevelt told the Office of Censorship to loosen their standards, it can only be inferred.
Based on your idea...
btphelps (talk to me) (what I've done) 17:50, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
@btphelps, and CC User:BlueMoonset: Hmmm, wait a sec. I am talking about Offce of Censorship, but you are talking about Office of War Information. I think my alt 3 is still pretty valid, and while your alt 4 is fine, I'd still like to ask another reviewer to review the alt 3. I just think that linking Office of Censorship in the hook will make it quite interesting (plus, it's timely, with the NSA scandals and such). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 04:27, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
@Piotrus, the Office of Censorship may be more interesting vis a vis current events, but it's just not accurate. I didn't find any sources to support Roosevelt telling the Office of Censorship to loosen their standards, nor that the Office of Censorship objected to loosening the standards, so the DYK wouldn't pass muster. The facts I found show that Davis, head of the Office of War Information, persuaded Roosevelt to reconsider the limits on press reporting. If you can find a source to support your theses, that'd be great, Meanwhile, this DYK is getting awfully stale. The article was nominated almost a month ago. Can you please put aside your personal agenda and just approve this? — btphelps (talk to me) (what I've done) 09:38, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
  • I'd hoped to break the logjam—we give due deference to nominator's hook preferences, so if btphelps objects to ALT3 and there are perfectly good alternatives, that should be that. However, ALT4 is not accurate, having lost the key "battlefield" qualifier of the original hook and ALTs: this was the first battlefield photo, as dead troops under blankets had been shown in pictures, according to the article. (I'd add "battlefield", but that takes the hook over 200 characters; it would be 198 if "first photograph to depict" was replaced with "first battlefield photograph". More problematic, however, is some close paraphrasing I found while checking the source for Roosevelt's permission, to make sure the exact Roosevelt sentence had an inline source citation as required in the DYK rules: the Persico source (FN32) has the sentence "War bond sales went up, but enlistments went down.", and the article the far too close "War bond sales increased but enlistments went down." This and any other instances of close paraphrasing need to be dealt with. BlueMoonset (talk) 03:31, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
@BlueMoonset, I modified the paraphrase in the article that you felt was too close. Here's another take on ALT4 that's 196 characters:
  • There's actually a fair bit more close paraphrasing in this article: further examples include "Strock’s photograph was needed to inject a dose of reality on the home front who he thought were growing complacent about the war effort (surce: "Strock’s photograph would provide a badly needed dose of reality for those on the home front who were growing complacent about the war effort") and "partly for fear that Americans would be demoralized if they had any graphic understanding of the human price being paid in the war" (source: "partly for fear that Americans would be demoralized if they had any graphic understanding of the human price being paid in the war"). The article needs to be thoroughly checked and properly paraphrased. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:24, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Thanks for your time, but I don't have the time to re-write the article to exclude every possible instance of paraphrase until I'm sure you're happy. — btphelps (talk to me) (what I've done) 20:14, 25 November 2013 (UTC)