Talk:Theodore Silverstein

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: promoted by Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 13:04, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

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• Article history

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• ... that medieval literature scholar Theodore Silverstein accidentally shot his commanding officer during his service in World War II? Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/24/us/dr-theodore-silverstein-96-scholar-of-medieval-literature.html "To be sure, his intelligence career contained stunning mishaps as well as brilliant successes. In trying to show his commanding officer a captured Belgian pistol, he accidentally fired the gun, hitting his superior in the groin."
  • ALT0b: ... that medieval literature scholar Theodore Silverstein accidentally shot his commanding officer in the groin during his service in World War II? Source: See above
  • ALT1: ... that medieval literature scholar and World War II intelligence agent Theodore Silverstein published two definitive books on the Apocalypse of Paul separated by over 60 years? Source: http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/011018/silverstein.shtml
  • ALT2: ... that medieval literature scholar Theodore Silverstein's unit in World War II took over the Eiffel Tower to intercept communications of German aircraft? Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/24/us/dr-theodore-silverstein-96-scholar-of-medieval-literature.html Dr. Silverstein's participation in an elite intelligence unit, which did indeed take over the tower to intercept communications of German planes during World War II.
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/One Astor Plaza
  • Comment: Yes, the QPQ is old, but I've checked my contribs and it has not been used yet. I get that the intro could be misread as a medieval (beat) literature scholar, but hopefully the reference to World War II clears up that ambiguity, and "scholar of medieval literature" sounds a bit stilted to me.

Created by SnowFire (talk). Self-nominated at 01:04, 18 August 2022 (UTC).

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

Policy compliance:

• Adequate sourcing: - ?
• Neutral:
• Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook eligibility:

• Cited: - ?
• Interesting:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: An interesting article, but there are some issues with the citations currently:

• All the hooks need an inline citation directly after the corresponding sentence(s) in the article.
• Some sentences don't seem to be properly cited by just the inline at the end of the paragraph. For example, I strongly doubt that After the war, Silverstein and Mary Poindexter married. At his wife's request, he dropped his first name "Hyman". is to be found somewhere in the short Guggenheim Fellowship portrait. Likewise, I am sure that this Despite his skill, Harvard did not offer him a tenured position; it has been speculated this might be related to informal Jewish quotas of the period that prevented "too many" Jews from being hired. is supported by "Jews in American Academy, 1900-1940: The Dynamics of Intellectual Assimilation"; but I'd be surprised if that book holds the detailed account of Silverstein's publishing history. It might, but I invite you to check again – maybe you just need to duplicte some refs a bit :)
• I see the ambiguity with the "medieval scholar" as well, and am somewhat surprised you'd object to "scholar of medieval literature" here, when it is worded such in the article? Hmm no, I get it, in the hook it reads a bit weird. And indeed it's impossible to misunderstand once you get to the WWII part (unless you want to assume him a time traveller), so I'm not objecting to the current hooks. (If promoting admins disagree, they may change it.)

Btw, I see yet another potential hook, that his Sir Gawain and the Green Knight translations were considered (by some) superior to those of Tolkien – certainly not an easy feat! That part is currently not in the article, but is reported in the obituaries in both the New York and Los Angeles Times. --LordPeterII (talk) 21:29, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

... and I just realized that the accidental shot was into the groin – the current ALT0 hook omits that. I'm not one to laugh at such accidents (although some do), but the fact that he was later lauded anyway by that officer is indeed high praise for Silverstein. I understand if you want to keep it how it is, but I would also accept if you added "in the groin" to ALT0. Because sometimes, that's what it takes. --LordPeterII (talk) 21:39, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

• • Thanks for the review!
  • The "Hyman" bit is sourced to the NYT obit, yes, as is the parts prior to the speculation on why he didn't get a job at Harvard. I realize there are different schools of thought on citation density, but I'm personally not a fan of the school that requires repeating the cite constantly - to me, it was clear that just the Guggenheim part was sourced to the Guggenheim, and so the rest fell to the obituary. I've repeated the cite to be clear here, though. (And I added a direct repeat cite for the two hooks that could need that.)
  • Yeah, to be clear, if the promoter likes "scholar of medieval literature" better they're certainly feel free to adjust it, I just mildly prefer the existing phrasing.
  • I'd rather avoid "a newspaper obituary writer who is not an expert on Middle English says one version of a Middle English manuscript is better than another" hook, if you don't mind. I don't really trust them on that topic too much - the NYT also says "Old English" rather than "Middle English" (not really the right word, although I get they're writing for a casual audience that may not realize that Old English is barely English), and what Silverstein did was more like a "Critical edition" than a "translation", casting doubt on an obit that praises it as a "translation". (Silverstein's version is still in Middle English; Tolkien did both a Middle English version and a modern English translation.). Maybe if I can find some journal article comparing the versions, I'll add a comparison of Tolkien & Silverstein; I'll take a look.
  • I've added ALT 0b that includes "in the groin" - was just generally trying to keep the sentence not overstuffed in the name of concision. SnowFire (talk) 02:49, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

• @SnowFire: DYK has somewhat stronger citing requirements in general, and I'm a fan of it. The issue with the article as it was is not that it wasn't clear what was sourced to what (I could deduce that easily after all); the issue is that if there were several people working on the article later on, the initial clarity might be lost and you might get the illusion that certain sentences were properly sourced, when indeed they were just added as "sneaky vandalism". It's a real issue, though not so much for low-profile and "obscure" articles as the one at hand. Anyway, it's all perfectly clear now, so that's fine for DYK.

As for the Tolkien bit, that totally makes sense, you've more expertise there than I do (although I'd get annoyed by the "Old" and "Middle" mixup as well, didn't realize that; I really like hearing Old English because it sounds so German to me ^^). The extant hooks are great already, so that was just an afterthought.

Approve with personal preference for ALT0b or ALT2, although promoter may chose any of the hooks since they are all fine (thus striking none). --LordPeterII (talk) 11:16, 21 August 2022 (UTC)