Template:Did you know nominations/Froebel star

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify it. 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 PumpkinSky talk 11:02, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Froebel star

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... that the Froebel star (pictured), although a common Christmas decoration in Germany, cannot be woven by many people?

Reviewed: Jean-Claude Bajeux
Comment: A Christmas submission, obviously. I hope I'm not too late.

Created/expanded by Catfisheye (talk), Pgallert (talk). Nominated by Pgallert (talk) at 10:32, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Interesting little article and a nice Christmas item. Length and dates are good. I didn't detect any plagiarism. I am bothered, however, that the sources for the facts in the article regarding the history of this star, its popularity in Germany, etc., are not exactly WP:RS. The article discloses the uncertainty of the history. I'm reluctant, however, to use the proposed hook when it is not based on sources more solid than privately maintained German websites and blog-postings on the British Origami Society website. I've looked for additional sources on this topic, and did not find anything particularly reliable yet (evidently this is not the sort of topic that scholars investigate!). I did find some interesting old books online that tell about Froebel's ideas about paper folding and weaving as activities for young children. (I particularly liked this book.) I also found an English-language source that confidently states that "traditionally the stars were dipped in paraffin wax, sprinkled with glitter, and hung on the Christmas tree", but there's no indication of the authority behind this confident assertion. And there are this German news story and this one about people whose grandparents taught them to make these stars.

I'd be happier with this article and hook if the support for statements like "common Christmas decoration in Germany" were more solid. Can additional sources that describe this be added to the article? It is unlikely, however, that there will be solid sources supporting the statement that there are not many people who can craft these things, so I don't think that's a good fact for the hook.

One possible alt hook:

ALT1 ... that the Froebel star (pictured), a common Christmas decoration in Germany, is created by folding and weaving strips of paper? --Orlady (talk) 03:00, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi Orlady, thanks for your review and your copyedits. You are right about the sources---I hoped to find papers about the mathematical properties of this star, unfortunately there do not seem to be any. Otherwise the chances of somebody doing research about this item are obviously slim, even though the Geisler source is actually published by CUT, and Geisler is a professor there.

I am happy with ALT1, although I thought the original hook might lure readers into actually trying to weave such a star for Christmas (I will certainly try!). I have implemented the two newspaper articles you mentioned, but there is not much substance in them, they probably belong to the "passing mention" class of sources. The book about Fröbel contains the word "star" only once, the other one I cannot access (no view into most Google books from my location, maybe paper folding is regarded subversive by my government).

The assertion that not many people can weave them is based on a privately-maintained we site, that's right. However, seeing the amount and the diversity of the information collected there, is it too much to state that Jürgen Köller has established some authority on the topic of Froebel stars? I do not see that distinction of academic vs private sources in black and white, there are some papers and books that are outright crap, and there are some private web sites with consistency and accuracy. --Pgallert (talk) 11:45, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Could we reword ALT1 into ALT2 ... that the Froebel star (pictured), a common Christmas decoration in Germany, is created by folding and weaving four identical strips of paper? --Pgallert (talk) 11:45, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out the affiliation of the Geisler source. That's a nice reference, but it's mostly about the construction and mathematical aspects of these stars. It does not provide support for statements about their traditional uses, nor about how many people can make them. Do you know anything about the person (Jürgen Köller) behind the site mathematische-basteleien.de? We need to work with Wikipedia's definition of reliable sources...

Like you, this has tempted me to try to make these stars, although the number of steps in the instructions is daunting. Your ALT2 hook is an improvement over my ALT1, and I think that the hook would make users curious to learn more. The trouble I had with the "not many people can weave them" assertion is that statements like that one ought to have some sort of quantitative or semi-quantitative support, such as results of a survey or at least something like an interview with a star-crafter who says something like "When I display my stars at craft fairs, people tell me they've never met anyone who could make these stars."

When I listed those documents I found, I did not intend to suggest that they were good references to the article, merely that they were the most worthwhile things I found that were not already cited. I'm pleased and impressed to see that you were able to make use of those two articles about people who make stars, as the articles help to substantiate the information from the more anonymous sources.

For what it's worth, I believe that sourcing is a challenge with many articles on holiday traditions. While researching this topic, I happened to look at the article Tinsel (because I found a source that mentioned German paper stars in passing, but had some actual information on tinsel), and I found that the existing article was based entirely on content from non-RS content farms. The content appears completely unsourced because someone had removed the citations to unreliable sources, but not the content that had come from those sources. I've spent some time adding validated content to the article, but I've left most of the previous content, so the article is still a mess. I imagine that many other holiday articles have similar issues. --Orlady (talk) 17:15, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

I am afraid I know nothing about Jürgen Köller, and, to be honest, the Geisler source is not too reliable after all: I guess that neither Geisler not the CUT have any particular scientific authority on this. OK, now looking at ALT2, I have three hook claims:

The Froebel star is woven from four identical strips of paper. That's referenced by the 1891 reprint on Köller's web site, and the reprint is certainly RS.
The Froebel star is a common Christmas decoration in Germany. That's more or less directly supported by the first four refs.
That the pictured item indeed is a Froebel star. That's OR, like with most pictures, but can easily be checked by following the folding instructions and see what comes out.

I am not entirely sure how to progress from here. Any ideas how to further improve this? Thanks, Pgallert (talk) 15:21, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree that there's no doubt that this is a German Christmas decoration (I don't know how common it is, but the articles do pretty well support that it is well-known) and that the folding instructions and the image are valid. Further, the information in the article about Froebel's interest in paper-folding is valid. Still, it would be nice (but probably not vital for DYK) to have slightly more solid substantiation for the rest of the article. I was thinking of going to the library to see if I could find a published book on German holiday customs that would support this. --Orlady (talk) 17:10, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Uhm, my library is closed over Christmas and unlikely to store such books. I found and added a few more references explaining the link to Origami, but the top-notch RS might just not be there, unfortunately. Unless---someone Japanese could possibly dig out more, as Froebel seems to have influenced Japanese Origami quite a bit. --Pgallert (talk) 07:55, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

User:Catfisheye found a better picture, I implemented this above. Also added yet more refs. --Pgallert (talk) 08:32, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I've re-added the original picture, which I think is a better illustration of the craft and would be more effective for DYK. --Orlady (talk) 17:00, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Calling this one "good". Sourcing of the article could be better, but there are many citations now, and the hook is credibly supported. Let's use ALT2:

... that the Froebel star (pictured), a common Christmas decoration in Germany, is created by folding and weaving four identical strips of paper? --Orlady (talk) 21:35, 21 December 2011 (UTC)