Template:Did you know nominations/Hotel Normandie (New York)

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 Bruxton (talk) 21:27, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Hotel Normandie (New York City)

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• ... that the Hotel Normandie supported the Leaders of the World? Source: "An Electric Chariot Race.; New Moving Sign on Broadway Attracts Thousands of Spectators". The New York Times. June 19, 1910. "A roman chariot race was started at 8 o'clock last night atop the Hotel Normandie"
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Brian Kalbas

Created by RoySmith (talk). Self-nominated at 19:51, 2 August 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Hotel Normandie (New York); consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

• RoySmith, i thought this nomination seemed rather apropos in "light" of recent events. note that the numbers used below to refer to the sources are taken from this version of the article.
  • general: article is new enough and long enough.
  • policy:
    • article is neutral. earwig shows nothing of concern, although i believe that is largely because earwig does not appear to be able to retrieve most of the relevant sources. the article appears to be largely based on sources in the archives of the new york times, which i do not have access to, so i am assuming good faith with respect to those sources. reviewing the remainder of the sources did not reveal any close paraphrasing.
      • source 2 appears to be a self-published source. i easily found a number of errors on their site after a cursory review, so i do not think it is a reliable source, but since the information supported by this source all appears on an image of what seems to be an advertisement for the hotel, i am assuming that this source really should be treated as a primary source instead (assuming that the advertisement has been accurately reproduced). with this in mind, i think there is no issue with the statement about the daily rates, though i think, in the statement about the amenities, "Amenities included" should be replaced with something like "The hotel advertised amenities such as".
      • source 5 appears to be a self-published source authored by one person. is there a reason why we should consider this a reliable source? the author appears to have published a couple of books, but i do not know if this means that the source is reliable. alternatively, i found another source for you that might be a suitable replacement. please see page 194 of this pdf file on commons.
      • the citation for source 7 appears to have a malformed url.
      • source 9 appears to be a wiki, and therefore would likely violate wp:usergenerated. is this wiki generally considered an exception? it looks reliable, and cites an entry in tchaikovsky's diary which it has also reproduced online. would it be more appropriate to simply cite the diary itself?
      • source 10 appears to be a post on a forum. my understanding is that such posts are not considered reliable sources. is there a reason why we should consider this post reliable?
      • source 11 appears to be a self-published source authored by one person. is there any evidence that this source should be considered reliable? the author appears to have earned the accolade "New Travel Writer of the Year" from a travel guide publisher in 2016 and 2020, though i am admittedly skeptical about the importance of the accolade if one can earn it more than four years after first writing about travel. also, the source appears to be focusing on the life of one person, rather than what one would ordinarily consider travel writing.
    • the last paragraph appears to be unsourced (and missing terminal punctuation).
  • qpq: provided. thank you.
  • hook:
    • hook is under 200 characters, interesting, accurate, cited, and neutral. i do not have access to the cited source, so am assuming good faith.
    • it looks like you are aiming for the quirky spot, so i won't question your use of the word "supported" or the definite article after it, though i am not sure if it is appropriate to leave "Leaders of the World" unitalicized. the article on the sign itself seems to generally treat the phrase as the sign's title, in which case i believe it should be italicized to conform with mos:italictitle. however, if "Leaders of the World" is simply a name for the sign, and not its title, i believe it would not be italicized, as noted in mos:vatitle. i noticed that you are also the main author of the article on the sign. do you know how reliable sources generally treat the phrase "Leaders of the World"?
  • points outside of the dyk criteria:
    • i think the semicolon in the second sentence of the paragraph about the 1887 fire should be a colon, as "some cracked windows and a burned awning" is not an independent clause.
    • i find it funny that tchaikovsky is introduced as a composer, but marsden needs no introduction. part of me thinks you should leave it as is, but i thought i might point this out in case you'd rather not.

dying (talk) 04:03, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

• dying thank you for the excellent review.
  • Source 2 (Hotel Normandie advertisement). For sure, stuffnobodycaresabout.com is not a WP:RS, but I'm only using them because they host the image of the advertisement, not for any actual content on the blog. I'm open to better ways to cite this. In any case, I've added the "were advertised to include" language.
  • Source 5 (ephemeral NY). I often use them as a starting point to explore, but you're right, they're not a WP:RS. Good find on the replacement source, I'll use that (and as a bonus, it gives me a good source for the date the hotel opened).
  • Broken NY Times URL, fixed.
  • My take on http://www.en.tchaikovsky-research.net is that it's probably a RS. It's running on MediaWiki software, but what makes something a RS is not the software it's running, but what kind of editorial oversight it has. I'll ask on WP:RSN and see what people think.
  • I'll look for a better source for the Mardsen citation. I see what happened there; that was one of the first things I found and just tossed it in there as a placeholder and never got around to finding something more solid.
    • Found the original source.
  • I'll address the remaining items later. RoySmith (talk) 16:02, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
  • Regarding Leaders of the World, see where I say "It is unclear if the sign had an official title." in that article :-) I do however see that epicgenius has put the artitle title in italics, so I've followed his lead here.
  • I found a good source for the unsourced paragraph and reworked it a bit.
  • I've started a discussion at WP:RSN about the Tchaikovsky source.
  • I think that addresses all your comments. RoySmith (talk) 17:44, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
  • I have updated the Tchaikovsky references to cite the diary directly.
• ALT1: ... that Tchaikovsky and Kate Marsden both stayed at the Hotel Normandie? RoySmith (talk) 23:32, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
  • RoySmith, thanks for addressing all of the issues i raised.
    • i admittedly can't think of a good way to cite the advertisement with the image. there doesn't seem to be enough information available about the image to cite the advertisement itself. i assume that, since the information used in the article is based on what is found on the image, rather than anything written by the site's contributors, what is relevant is whether the site seems reliable enough that it likely would not have tampered with the image (or obtained it from others that may have done so). i had found nothing in the site to suggest that they were acting in bad faith, so i think it is reliable enough for this purpose; the only issue i found was that some of their research and writing was sloppy. (that being said, some of wikipedia's is too.) it is unfortunate that there doesn't seem to be a better way to cite the image, but i wouldn't worry about it.
    • yeah, it was pretty clear that you weren't sure if "Leaders of the World" was officially considered a title, which is why i was wondering if you had noticed whether reliable sources tended to treat it as one, regardless of whether or not it officially was. i also noticed that the article on the sign has recently been moved pursuant to a discussion in the ongoing ga review, and am now fairly confused as to whether or not you think the phrase should be italicized.
      to be clear, i am fine with however you think the phrase should be formatted in the hook. i simply think it would be best if the hook conformed with how the phrase is presented in both articles. my main worry is that, if it is not italicized in the hook but italicized in either article, a main page reader may complain that they were unfairly mislead by the hook (when i think your current goal with the quirky hook is to fairly mislead them). right now, the hook does not italicize the phrase, the article on the building does, and the article on the sign seems to be doing both.
    • regarding hook alt1, it is under 200 characters, accurate, cited, and neutral. i do not have access to the cited gould source, so am assuming good faith. also, although the two may have been among the most interesting guests of the hotel, i am not sure if their staying at the hotel would be of interest to the average main page reader. perhaps a mention of why the guests stayed there would be more interesting, although i don't know why marsden was there, so maybe her reason may have been mundane. in any case, if you can't think of a better way to present this but still think it is interesting enough, i'm willing to approve the hook and let the promoter decide.
    • points outside of the dyk criteria:
      • i'm sorry for being unclear before, but the semicolon i was referring to is in the second paragraph of the "Fireproof construction" section. it is immediately after "minor damage" and before "some cracked windows and a burned awning".
      • by the way, did you find a source that explicitly mentioned the floor count? i had assumed that you had just counted the visible floors in the image found in the advertisement (which is fine by me, since i don't think mansard roofs were often used in new york city until after the 1916 zoning resolution was adopted), though if you did have a source, it would be nice to include it.
      • i think the mention of the characters from the thin man would be more appropriate under an "in popular culture" section, as the fictional characters aren't, strictly speaking, famous occupants. i am also not sure if the mention is appropriate if the hotel in the novel was actually meant to be a different hotel. (also, i haven't read the novel, but the wikipedia article on the novel tells me that the story is set in 1932, so the reference may be anachronistic.) would "a fictional version of the hotel" be a more appropriate description? (as an aside, i think the novel's title should be in italics.)

  by the way, i like the photo provided in the first of the external links you recently added. i had actually been wondering if commons had any good photos of the building itself, but after looking at the pictures in the category for the sign, i noticed that all three pictures that had a decent view of the building and the front of the sign also shared the same street scene, despite all having different messages featured on the sign. obviously, at least two of them have been manipulated, but if one hasn't been, i don't know which one it is, so i couldn't suggest one for use in the article. dying (talk) 10:34, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

• I added a source for 8 stories. My apologies that so many of the sources are behind the NYTimes paywall, but "The old eight-story hotel structure occupies a plot ...".
• As for italics in the title, that's the kind of thing that I find difficult to get excited about :-) We do seem to have wiki-gnomes who are more up on that kind of WP:MOS thing and I'm happy to leave the decision to them. How about I wait for the dust to settle on Talk:Leaders of the World sign/GA1 and then I'll go back and make everything match whatever is decided there?
• As for ALT1, I just offered it as an alternative. I actually prefer my ALT0.
• I reworked the "minor damage" sentence to remove the semicolon completely.
• I did some copyediting on the Thin Man paragraph. Strictly speaking, "in popular culture" might be a better place, but I think proliferation of small sections would make for chopping reading, so I'd argue to leave it here. RoySmith (talk) 16:15, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
  • RoySmith:
    • no worries about using articles from the archive of the new york times. it's a reliable source, and there don't seem to be many other online reliable sources discussing this hotel. it's not your fault i do not have access to it. i apologize for being unable to help verify your research.
    • it is also difficult for me to get excited about mos issues, so i've pretty much overlooked every mos violation in the article itself unless it dealt directly with the hook, as i think the hook undergoes a lot more scrutiny at wp:errors. anyway, it looks like the ga review is now settled. have you decided yet on whether to use italics?
    • if you prefer alt0 over alt1, i think it makes sense for me to just approve alt0 once it is ready. i do appreciate the alternative offered, though.
    • you are right about the issue with small sections; i had not considered that. in that case, i think how you have sectioned the article is fine. thanks for pointing this out.

  dying (talk) 01:48, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

I've gone with no italics. It is, after all, a roman chariot race. RoySmith (talk) 01:59, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

haha! that is as good as reason as any. dying (talk) 02:16, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

• alt0 approved. dying (talk) 02:16, 8 August 2023 (UTC)