Template:Did you know nominations/William W. Cooper

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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: promoted by BlueMoonset (talk) 05:01, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

William W. Cooper[edit]

Created/expanded by David Eppstein (talk). Self nom at 23:07, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

  • Article is new, long enough, and well-written. Hook is short enough and interesting, and I've verified the hook facts with the online source. However, DYK rules require that the hook fact(s) are immediately followed by a citaton in the article, per eligibility criteria, 3. b): "The hook fact must have an inline citation right after it, since the fact is an extraordinary claim; citing the hook fact at the end of the paragraph is not acceptable." Sasata (talk) 02:57, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
  • That rule is ridiculous and leads to a style of writing that makes Wikipedia look ridiculous. All of the sources are usable for each sentence in the paragraph, although some are slightly more precise than others about some details. What is the point of writing text like "Article[1][2][3] is[1][2][3] adequately[1][2][3] sourced.[1][2][3]" ? I greatly prefer a style where each footnote indicates a *change* in sourcing, and where omitting the footnotes from sentences (within the same paragraph) means that the source is the same as the following sentence. That said, I used the "pepper every independent clause with footnotes" style in that one paragraph, just for you. Happy now? —David Eppstein (talk) 04:18, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
  • No, although that's not relevant, and this isn't about me. If you're not a fan of the DYK requirements, then bring it up at the appropriate venue, or don't submit articles for consideration. I didn't make the rules, and don't necessarily agree with them either. As I mentioned above, you're free to revert to your favored citation style after the main page appearance is complete. Sasata (talk) 04:59, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Sorry to vent on you. I know you don't set the rules yourself. And I don't intend to revert, but I do think we can be overly pedantic sometimes, and that this rule is an example. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:30, 18 October 2012 (UTC)