Talk:Mihailo Tolotos

Did you know nomination

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: rejected by BorgQueen (talk) 18:33, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

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[[File:|140px|Mihailo Tolotos ]]

Mihailo Tolotos

• ... that the Greek monk Mihailo Tolotos (pictured) purportedly never saw a woman in his entire life? Source: Constable Colgan's Connectoscope: How One Thing Leads to Another
  • ALT1: ... that the Greek monk Mihailo Tolotos (pictured) purportedly never saw a woman in the entirety of his 82-year life? Source: Constable Colgan's Connectoscope: How One Thing Leads to Another
  • Reviewed:

Created by Knightoftheswords281 (talk). Self-nominated at 00:10, 9 April 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Mihailo Tolotos; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

• Comment: I'm sure I'm not the first to ask this, but how is it possible that he never saw his mother? theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 19:09, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Starting review.Alex2006 (talk) 17:54, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

Image: Image is freely licensed, used in the article, and clear at 100px.
Freely licensed: Used in article: Clear at 100px:

QPQ: None required.

Overall: The article would be ok, but it has been nominated for deletion.However, at the moment it seems that the prevailing opinion is to keep it. If so, I will give the OK after choosing the Hook, otherwise it should be rejected. Let's wait... Alex2006 (talk) 18:11, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

@Alex2006, the article has been closed as keep. - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk-Contribs) 12:49, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

I had no doubt about it! Go with ALT0. Alex2006 (talk) 04:55, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

I have de-promoted the nomination based on discussion at DYK talk. Bruxton (talk) 18:53, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

• I'm giving this a hard fail. I've been going through the sources in the article. All the sources that say anything about Tolotos are all just crappy blogs that are reprinting the same dubious story from The Edinburg Daily Courier. Even the photo is something found on twitter with nothing that verifies that it's Tolotos (and on its way to being deleted). This never should have gotten past the initial DYK review. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:14, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Curious case, but raises some questions. He must have seen his mother, but it may well be that he never saw one from the age that most people start remembering. Can we be sure that this story is completely true, or that the age at which he was abandoned may have grown in the telling? Given the isolation of the Mount Athos community, can he be the only monk with a similar story over the centuries? Did they normally take in foundlings? Did the monks have much ability to look after babies? Obvious problem: since they didn't even allow female animals on the peninsula, where did they get the milk to feed him? Could he be sure that he had never seen a woman, since if that was what he thought then would he have recognised one if one had sneaked onto the peninsula? PatGallacher (talk) 21:42, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Better sources needed

Continuing the discussion from WT:DYK, and to clarify my reasons for adding the "better source needed" tags, I'd like to reiterate some of the concerns I raised in the AfD.

• The first paragraph of the "Biography" section is sourced only to Weird Universe and Vintage Everyday, which are both self-published blogs. This paragraph makes several claims which are not found in any other of the article's sources, such as that Tolotos' mother died four hours after his birth; that he was abandoned on the steps of the Mount Athos monastery; and that the local monastic community ... gave him his name. These details are of the kind that readily develop around a story through repetition and embellishment, and shouldn't be accepted as fact without much stronger sourcing than is currently present.
• The date of death stated in the article is wrong. The paragraph from the Edinburgh Daily Courier, cited as the first known mention of his story, is a reprint of a Reuters report that first began appearing in British papers from 19 September 1938. We don't know when the report was written, so the best we can say is that he died some time before this date.
• If we don't know when he died, then it follows that we can't calculate his year of birth. The birth year given in the article is another piece of information cited only to Weird Universe.
• Lest anyone be misled by the presence of TIME and BBC sources in the article, I'd like to make it clear that neither of these sources make any mention of Tolotos, and are only there to source the facts about the women who snuck into the monastery.
• Constable Colgan's Connectoscope is also a dubious source in my opinion (published via crowdfunding, and checking the footnotes reveals numerous refs to Wikipedia), but it's hardly worth debating because it contains no further information on Tolotos than the Reuters report.

I conducted a fairly extensive search during the AfD but was unable to come up with any useful sources. If no better sources can be found, I think any information about Tolotos which is not derived from the Reuters report should be removed from the article. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 19:24, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

I agree. I see two kinds of sources: those that are reliable, and those that mention Tolotos. No overlap between those two groups. This feels like an urban legend that just won't die. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:52, 30 April 2023 (UTC)