Talk:Acer cascadense

Latest comment: 3 years ago by Cwmhiraeth in topic Did you know nomination

Did you know nomination

edit
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 Cwmhiraeth (talk07:27, 2 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

  • ... that the extinct maple Acer cascadense was described from a helicopter found in the 1950s? Source: "Collections were made by Eleanor Gordon Thompson in the 1950s (donated to University of California Museum of Paleontology, Berkeley – specimens with catalog numbers prefixed by UCMP)." (Manchester et al 2018)
    • ALT1:... that the extinct maple Acer cascadense is named for its type locality in the Oregon Cascades? Source: "Type locality is in the northern part of the Cascade Range of Oregon" (Wolfe & Tanai 1987 pg.102)

Moved to mainspace by Kevmin (talk). Self-nominated at 19:27, 30 December 2020 (UTC).Reply

  •   Article meets DYK requirements, no close paraphrasing was found, a QPQ has been done. ALT1 is cited inline and uses an offline source so AGF, but it feels rather routine so it doesn't really seem very interesting; as such, I would suggest not going with it (I have nonetheless made some typographical errors). If we have to use a hook, it would be ALT0. However, there are currently a number of issues with it. Firstly, the source doesn't seem to mention that the fruit was found in the 1950s, the closest wording I could find was the aforementioned donation. Secondly, I understand that "helicopter" is an alternative name for the samara (I will leave it to another editor to decide on the appropriateness on using "helicopter" since it could be hooky and fitting for the quirky slot but nevertheless misleading since readers would likely think of the aircraft and not the fruit). However, the source only uses "samara" and does not use "helicopter" (or indeed any of the other nicknames). Once these have been clarified we should be good to go with some variant of ALT0. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 01:00, 31 December 2020 (UTC)Reply
Helicopter is a common alternative to the technical term samara, most people will not know what a samara is, and is makes a very bland hook at that point. The secondary source (Manchester) addresses the UCMP collections Moose mountain flora, which were collected by Thompson in the 1950 and then donated to the UCMP.
What makes alt1 banal to the lay public?--Kevmin § 01:14, 31 December 2020 (UTC)Reply
I know admittedly little about botany, but I'm pretty sure that a species being named after where it was found (or its discoverer) is so commonplace it's not even quirky. If there was a story behind said naming (like for example, if the type was named after a place or person because of a particular interesting reason), then that would have been an interesting fact. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 01:50, 31 December 2020 (UTC)Reply
You are missing that many lay people like finding out where and what things are named for. I have not seen any issues with similar hooks that I've proposed before. I feel it will be interesting to a broad audience. You have to remember you do not have an unbiased view of hooks, since you work with them daily rather then the one time the vast majority of the millions of viewers who look at the mainpage daily. --Kevmin § 17:03, 31 December 2020 (UTC)Reply
Lay person and biologist chiming in: Alt1 is a neat fact, but not really 'hooky': it doesn't seem likely to draw readers if posted on the main page, which is the primary purpose of the hook. An etymology-based hook would be more suited to a more unusual namesake, like Gagadon or Aptostichus stephencolberti. --Animalparty! (talk) 03:51, 7 January 2021 (UTC)Reply
Really not a fan of ALT2 but perhaps another editor may think otherwise. @Animalparty:? Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 10:24, 18 January 2021 (UTC)Reply
  I'm approving ALT2 as the most interesting fact in the article. Let's just move this along. SL93 (talk) 23:12, 29 January 2021 (UTC)Reply