Template:Did you know nominations/Jean Berko Gleason

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 Allen3 ^talk 11:11, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Jean Berko Gleason

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• ... that Jean Berko Gleason found that children can pluralize wug, conjugate spow, and identify quirky dogs?

5x expanded by CassandraRo (talk). Nominated by EEng (talk) at 17:44, 2 May 2014 (UTC).

• The article was expanded within the time period, and the hook and subject matter is quite interesting (do to my curiosity I ended up having to look up the wug test). However, most of the article relies on primary sources written by Gleason. It needs analysis by third-party sources to demonstrate notability. Also, most of the article essentially just gives abstracts of her research. They need to be summarized better and have third-party sources demonstrating notability.--¿3family6 _contribs 17:39, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to review, but there seems to be some confusion here. You're confusing notability (which is part of the test for whether an article should exist at all) with the question of what goes in the article -- article content need not be notable, only the subject of the article. And while, in general, content should be drawn from secondary sources, descriptions of a researcher's work is routinely cited directly to their research papers. (As to the subject's notability, that's abundantly established by the sources cited in the lead and bio sections, and all the biographical facts are indeed cited to appropriate secondary sources.)

As a result the banners you added are not appropriate. Nonetheless it would be desirable (though not necessary for DYK) for some improvement to be made. Unfortunately I missed that, after long delay, something had finally been done here (not your fault -- you're the first person who did anything!) and now all of a sudden several things I nominated are getting attention all at once. Further, I'm not the one who expanded that article so I'll ping that editor. EEng (talk) 15:08, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

• The top two banners added are perfectly appropriate. The article is underreferenced (not even near the "1 citation per paragraph" minimum at the supplementary guidelines) and about 80% cited to her papers, which is undesirable because 1) it suggests that nobody else has commented on her views, countered them, or analysed them, and 2) it is fundamentally incapable of presenting a neutral POV, as it is only from one person. She's notable enough to survive an AFD, but with the state of the article now I wouldn't be surprised if somebody nominated. That you rejected my closing (I expected this, sadly) with the statement of "Bullshit" is another matter, for wider discussion at WT:DYK. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 16:31, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Notability? Are you kidding? The subject's status as a Fellow of AAAS and APA, her editorship of Language, her citation count [1], her authorship of the standard text in the field -- any one of these confers notability per WP:NACADEMICS. Oh, wait -- did I mention she's considered one of the founders of the entire field of psycholinguistics?

Maybe I didn't mention it, but the article does -- in fact it says all those things except the citation counts. If you're unfamiliar with NACADEMICS, that's OK, but what's not OK is that you don't seem to know there are things you don't know, and go around making pronouncements like "with the state of the article now I wouldn't be surprised if somebody nominated [for deletion]". And if you knew what a festschrift is (mentioned in the article) you wouldn't embarrass yourself by suggesting the possibility that "nobody else has commented on her views, countered them, or analysed" her work.

You say that the top two banner items are appropriate. They are not. What they say is:

• This biographical article relies on references to primary sources.
• This biographical article needs additional citations for verification

All the biographical material is cited, though it looks like paragraph breaks have been inserted so that you have to read forward to the next paragraph to find the cite callout, so I've duplicated the cite callouts at the end of each paragraph. As to "relies on primary sources", an academic's personal homepage, hosted by her department, is acceptable for routine, uncontroversial CV-type statements, such as positions held. (Please don't make me go dig up the guideline on this.)

Re your "1 citation per paragraph minimum", what WP:Did_you_know/Additional_rules#Other_supplementary_rules_for_the_article says is

The article in general should use inline, cited sources. A rule of thumb is one inline citation per paragraph, excluding the intro, plot summaries, and paragraphs which summarize other cited content.

A "rule of thumb" is not an absolute "minimum" that an article is or isn't "even near", and articles aren't quantitatively "underreferenced" or "overreferenced" -- rather they either have appropriate citations where needed (and that might be many or few, depending) or they don't. This one does. Next you'll be turning MOS:PARAGRAPHS's general reminder --

The number of single-sentence paragraphs should be minimized, since they can inhibit the flow of the text; by the same token, paragraphs that exceed a certain length become hard to read.

-- into one of those high-school cookie-cutter rules like, "Every paragraph must have between three and five sentences."

If I seem pissed off it's because I am. You just pulled the same stuff at Template:Did_you_know_nominations/Widener_Library, where you quibbled about stuff such as in which sections of the article various images appeared. And yes, sadly, it's bullshit.

EEng (talk) 19:19, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

EEng (talk · contribs) left a note on my talk page asking for a second opinion here. As he already clearly stated, she passes WP:PROF in at least four ways: AAAS and APA fellows (criterion 3), president of a notable academic society (criterion 6), and heavily cited academic publications (top publication cited over 2000 times according to Google scholar, and some 14 publications cited over 100 times each, well past the usual threshold for criterion 1 according to the precedent of many hundreds of AfDs). Notability is not only clear and obvious, but well demonstrated within the text of the article. If that's the only reason for holding up this DYK, then it should not be held up. The statement of the reviewer about "not being surprised if nominated" for AfD is misleading — I would not be surprised either, given past behavior of some Wikipedia editors — but anyone who made such a nomination would be in for a severe trout-slapping by the regulars at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Academics and educators.

As for the other concerns: the only issue I see is that there are still a couple of paragraphs (a small fraction of the whole article) that don't have any inline citations. This is generally considered inadequate at DYK — the minimum standard is one footnote per paragraph — but most of the article is well-referenced and it shouldn't be any trouble to add a couple more to fill these out. This is an appropriate reason to delay the nom until it is fixed, but highly inappropriate as a reason for the DYKno full denial given above. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:22, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

• The issue is not only that the article is underreferenced, but that it depends (or depended, at least) almost exclusively on citations to her books and articles to discuss her ideas. As I said before, that is suboptimum owing to the possibility of being both POV and WP:UNDUE. For somebody as widely cited as Gleason, there should be some third-party sources discussing her ideas... maybe reviews of her books, responses to her article, etc. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:45, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) EEng, no matter how you slice it, the inline source citations in the entire Research section are problematic in what they cover. Only the first sentences of paragraphs there are cited, if they have any citation at all, which leaves the vast majority of the material in the remainder of every paragraph uncited. This is bad practice for a Wikipedia article. It might be a placement issue—do the inline cites belong at the end of these paragraphs rather than the beginning, and should they be repeated for the subsequent uncited paragraphs?—but something needs to be done here. BlueMoonset (talk) 22:44, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

• @EEng: I don't object to the article citing her work directly. The problem I see is that nearly all of the article relies ONLY on that, with no third-party analysis. I was actually surprised by that, considering how important Gleason is.--¿3family6 _contribs 23:34, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Side note: It's obvious just from some of the titles in the bibliography that there's lots and lots that's been written about her work; absolutely the article would be improved by incorporating such comment; and no doubt someday someone will do that -- I might even have done so by now, had my time and psychic energy not been so completely sapped by all this fuss about primary sources and so on. But incorporating such additional material isn't a requirement for DYK, because (as explained once again below) the material currently in the article is already adequately sourced. EEng (talk) 13:55, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Crisco, BMS, Family:

Just as killing isn't always murder, primary sources aren't always unacceptable, because context matters. For example, secondary sources aren't needed to give a plot summary of a work of fiction; it can be based directly on the work itself -- the primary source. Similarly, a straightforward abstract of what a research paper says (as opposed to how important it is, whether it's more convincing than other people's research, etc. etc.) needs no secondary source, but can be can be based directly on that research paper.

But don't take my word for this -- take a look at J._Robert_Oppenheimer#Scientific_work, an FA:

• Oppenheimer also made important contributions to the theory of cosmic ray showers and started work that eventually led to descriptions of quantum tunneling. In 1931 he co-wrote a paper on the "Relativistic Theory of the Photoelectric Effect" with his student Harvey Hall,in which, based on empirical evidence, he correctly disputed Dirac's assertion that two of the energy levels of the hydrogen atom have the same energy.
• In the late 1930s Oppenheimer became interested in astrophysics, probably through his friendship with Richard Tolman, resulting in a series of papers. In the first of these, a 1938 paper co-written with Robert Serber entitled "On the Stability of Stellar Neutron Cores", Oppenheimer explored the properties of white dwarfs.
• This was followed by a paper co-written with one of his students, George Volkoff, "On Massive Neutron Cores", in which they demonstrated that there was a limit, the so-called Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit, to the mass of stars beyond which they would not remain stable as neutron stars and would undergo gravitational collapse.
• Finally, in 1939, Oppenheimer and another of his students, Hartland Snyder, produced a paper "On Continued Gravitational Attraction", which predicted the existence of what are today known as black holes.

I repeat: the Oppenheimer article is an FA. Observe:

(1) These statements about the content of Oppenheimer's research are cited to his (primary-source) research papers -- no secondary source needed (though of course it's OK to work from a secondary source if that's more convenient). Citation to a research paper, for a description of the content of that paper, is perfectly OK.

(2) Each citation comes in the middle of the narration of the research it contained, just at the point where the paper itself is mentioned -- after which the text continues with the details of what the paper said. This is not as common as placing the cite callout completely after everything it covers, but it's certainly OK, because a reasonably alert reader can be expected to understand what's going on.

This is a good time to point out that, though I did some work on the bio section a long time ago, it was another editor (who seems to have fallen off the face of the earth, or perhaps is just scared away by the ridiculous goings on here at DYK) who carried out the recent expansion by adding the research sections -- all I did was nominate, and now I have to face this shitstorm of misguided bossiness. So with respect to (2) above, I didn't put the cites where they are, and I've now moved them to the end of each paragraph to reduce by one the points at issue here. But -- I'm sorry, it must be said -- that here again, as with notability, you guys are absolutely certain about something you completely misunderstand.

So unless you will now tell us that DYKs must meet higher standards for citation than do FAs, please stop embarassing yourself.

EEng (talk) 07:43, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Again, I have NO PROBLEM with how the primary sources are used in the article. But I think that there should be more content summarizing what is found in third-party sources. That is all.--¿3family6 _contribs 15:24, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

I think there should be more content summarizing what's found in the third-party sources too. But what we disagree on is whether that must happen in order for this article to satisfy DYK rules. It doesn't -- see below. And above. And below. And above. EEng (talk) 05:14, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

• EEng is talking to me. You seem to be "embarassing (sic) yourself" in that you've completely missed my point. I don't recall saying that we should not cite her papers when discussing her views. I've said we need balance, which can only be provided with third-party responses to her theories. I.e. there should be additional citations from "third-party sources discussing her ideas... maybe reviews of her books, responses to her article" (as I've said above) Or are you saying "it's okay to have 60% of an article cited entirely to primary sources"?

Furthermore, comparing her with Oppenheimer (a physicist) is like comparing apples and oranges. Firstly, in the humanities, a theory can be challenged by another mainstream theory without being considered entirely wrong by experts in the field (just look at the plethora of literary theories out there that are still in use), whereas (AFAIK) in physics this is not true. Secondly, the percentage is completely skewed. Give or take 60% of the content in Gleason's article versus what, 5% in Oppenheimer's article? — Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:35, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

• That being said, you've made some good progress with the referencing. Just finish off those citation needed and clarification needed tags, add a few tertiary references supporting the more controversial aspects of her research, and this should be golden. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:39, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

• 60% of Gleason's article relies only on primary sources, because 60% of the article is material (description of the content of her research papaers) which is of the kind that is permitted to rely only on primary sources. So yes, that's OK. The reasons only 5% of Oppenheimer's article are: he had a short research career (publishing only 5 papers after WWII); he had a complex life that's been covered in multiple full-length bios (so his article is five times the length of Gleason's, making the research section shorter as a percentage); and most of his research is discussed at length in other articles on those topics. None of that is true of Gleason so your talk of percentages is a red herring.
• Your talk of theories and challenges is largely unintelligible, but you seem to be saying that citing a research paper for a description of its content is OK in physics, but not OK in psycholinguistics, because physics never has UNDUE or POV problems, whereas psycholinguistics (which you seem to think is a "humanity", which it is not -- it's part social science and part natural science) does has such problems. Are you kidding? All fields, even physics, have such potential problems.
• Therefore, your attempt to distinguish Oppenheimer's field vs. Gleason's field, to justify requiring different citation approaches for them, is specious. We are therefore back where we started: you can't explain why the citation approach used in the Gleason article (i.e. citing to a research papers directly as the only support for what that papers says -- not whether it's a fabulous theory, or other evaluation and so on) -- which you say is insufficient -- is exactly the approach used in the FA Oppenheimer article.
• Your continued talk about UNDUE is absurd. There's no "due weight of competing views" in saying what's in a research paper, because ... well, what's in the paper is what's in the paper. There are no "competing views" on that. If I want to say that the paper displaced older theories, or was of fundamental importance to the field, I'd need a secondary source for that.
• DYK rules say an article should be free of "dispute tags", and that's a good idea. But somewhere along the way the idea took hold that , , and are dispute tags. They are not. Saying, "We'll need a cite for this ... this could be written more clearly ... I guess this source will do for now but in the long run let's find a better one" is nothing like . Requiring that and so on banished from DYKs has caused a HUGE amount of unnecessary and useless expenditure of effort that could be better invested elsewhere.
• It's one of the pathologies of DYK that it demands a lot of work from persons (i.e. nominators) who may not be in a very good position to do such work, instead of using the article's DYK appearance to attract people who are in a good position to do such work. If you guys would get over your fetish for forcing DYKs to present themselves as all shiny and perfect, then here's what might happen... the article is linked from the main page with a few cite-needed and please-improve tags here and there. Some graduate student sees the hook, looks at the article, and thinks, "Wow! I can supply those cites and improve the presentation." Voilà! We have a new, enthusiastic editor contributing! Instead, you want me to spend my time doing something I'm ill-equipped to do, leaving nothing left for the graduate student to do.
• I'll say it again: I didn't expand the article, I know nothing about psycholinguistics, and I don't have the sources. If I did have the sources there would be no need for this discussion -- I'd happily add the sources. But I don't have them, and I don't have the time to run to the library just because you don't understand the finer points of Wikipedia citation.
• Wow. You noticed I misspelled embarrassing. Score a point for you!

EEng (talk) 05:14, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

• The article looks a lot better now, thank you. There are a couple cite needed and clarification needed tags, but for the most part those shouldn't keep the article off DYK. The only major issue I see is the claim "both of these were major matters of theoretical controversy at the time." That does need a source, or else should be removed.--¿3family6 _contribs 20:04, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

• @ 3family6: I have removed the offending clause; it can be reinstated at any time if/when a citation is found. I found only one disambig link and corrected it. I agree that the clarification tags should not keep the article off DYK. --Storye book (talk) 10:28, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you. Unfortunately so much time has been absorbed by the debate above that I haven't had much time to actually copyedit the research sections, which really need it. (I also had somehow missed 3family6's initial comments two weeks ago, which is why nothing happened all that time). I'd like to beg another week to improve the article before review -- why, I might even have time to go to the library and scare up more secondary sources for the research section! EEng (talk) 12:01, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Can a more experienced DYK reviewer confirm if it is acceptable to allow User:EEng another week to clean up the article?--¿3family6 _contribs 14:27, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

• I am happy to confirm that EEng can safely delay this nom for another week, to correct the article for DYK purposes. Many nominators languishing way back in the current DYK nom backlog have suffered delays far longer than this already, so we are not in a position to penalise EEng for causing a far shorter delay. Also, EEng is a regular and reliable contributor to this page, so is not expected to waste our time, especially as this is a worthy article for DYK.--Storye book (talk) 14:45, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I've begun a significant copyedit for style only. But here's an important point: I'm happy to say that I've found some experts who can help vet and improve the technical content, so in doing so I've tagged on stuff that I, as a layman, don't quite get, for attention by the experts. I hope that, by now, it's been sufficiently established elsewhere that such tags are not badges of shame, but joyful invitations to collaborative editing, so that if some still remain a week from now, there won't be any tsk-tsking about main-page embarrassment. EEng (talk) 21:27, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Where does this nomination stand? I see that there were a number of edits made, but the last was on June 13, and there's been nothing new for over a week. How soon will it be ready for a review? Thanks. BlueMoonset (talk) 02:44, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

I thought I was waiting for an email from one of the boffins who was helping me, and (thanks to your message here) I just checked again and found I'd already got it a week ago but missed it. I'll need tmw to make further edits then ask for another readthrough by them. Let's say Tuesday for sure. How embarrassing to be bringing up the rear of the DYK foot-draggers. EEng (talk) 04:58, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

• @ EEng. I guess the lesson we can all learn from this is that if we nominate an article for DYK but we don't know enough about the subject matter to bring it up to DYK standard, then it's going to get delayed and possibly blocked. The addition of "clarification needed" tags just confirms the problem. A reviewer can give nominators moral support and general advice, but cannot do the job for them. You have given tomorrow (Tuesday 24 June) as your own deadline, and I think that should also be the deadline for confirming viability of this nom. Please ping me or any other reviewer tomorrow when you have finished editing, in the hope that this nom can be saved. --Storye book (talk) 07:28, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, it's one of the serious weirdnesses of the way DYK works. The article's expansion was carried out by an editor (I'm guessing a non-Endlish speaking grad student in the field) who never did anything else on WP before or after -- see Special:Contributions/CassandraRo. I nominated, but then the expanding editor disappeared and I, who know absolutely nothing about this field of research, was left with the responsibility of bringing the article up to snuff. It's not that I mind, it's just I needed to find expert help to do it.

So I understand your frustration, but try understand mine -- to keep all of this work from going to waste, I had to email Psychology Department chairmen at various universities, asking for help, hoping for a response, explaining there's a rush (and this was right at the end of the school year). And the whole time I'm thinking -- This is all because of the idiot five/seven-day rule. Why insist that nominations be done in a rush? Why couldn't I have worked on this over time, and then nominated? It makes no sense at all and is the cause of huge amounts of gnashing of teeth and tearing out of hair, for no reason at all.

So while moral support and so on are all nice, what reviewers (or anyone else) can do to help is think of a way to get the idiot seven-day rule changed so that DYK is no longer the Land of the Bleary-Eyed Editors Rushing to Meet an A Deadline That Has No Purpose. EEng (talk) 11:12, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

P.S. I was in the exact same situation on Template:Did you know nominations/Jack and Ed Biddle, and it's just my bad luck they both happened about the same time, so you can appreciate what a pain this has been. EEng (talk) 11:37, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

• Thank you, EEng. It is now nearly two months since you nominated this article for DYK, and yesterday was the deadline which you set yourself for bringing the article up to DYK standard, as per the above discussion. Thank you for kindly spending up to 1.5 hours (according to your contribs list) editing the article yesterday. Unfortunately the article is still not up to standard, because it still has far too many "clarification needed" tags. That is fine for a normal article, but not for a DYK article. The front-page DYK section is part of our shop window (store front in US) which displays our best new articles. An article asking many times for help, like a student requiring help with an essay, is not best. I think we can all learn from this that if we nominate an article for DYK, then that is our number one priority in the DYK department. If however we are unable to find time to bring that article up to standard because (according to our contributions page) we are spending all day spot-checking all the other DYK hooks and overriding all the other reviewers, then perhaps we all need a re-think about how not to waste everyone's time by adding to the backlog of redundant nominations. If we understand our subject matter and we really want a successful DYK nom, then the simplest solution is to initially work up the article in a new user subpage until it is good enough for DYK. When, and only when, it is good enough we can then move the subpage into mainspace and immediately nominate the article. Thus the 7-day rule should not affect us. If we do not understand our subject matter or if for any other reason the article is never going to reach DYK standard within 7 days however hard we try, then we should not nominate it. If we have done all this in good faith, then realise that we have nominated in error, then it saves everyone a lot of time and hard work if we are prepared to withdraw our article immediately and with good grace. When I say we can all learn, I mean we can all learn; this is not about picking on one editor. We need to make sure that this kind of situation can be turned to the benefit of all of us. We have all learned a lot here and are still learning. So let's close this nomination down with consideration and respect for all the above contributors. Thank you, everybody for your patience beyond the call of duty in this nom, and I hope that we can now continue to support the DYK department in peace. Peace and love. --Storye book (talk) 09:56, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
• Admin please close this nomination down now because the nominator has been unable to bring the article up to standard after nearly two months. Thank you. --Storye book (talk) 09:56, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

As explained I've had to recruit expert help for the research sections of the article, and it's taken a great deal of time to integrate those comments, including circling back for clarification. I hardly see why the passage of time matters at all. Plenty of articles which are truly awful, but are free of tags which they desperately need, run as DYKs; meanwhile careful work with expert help to make an article actually accurate is punished for taking too long. I spent several hours at it last night, as you will see from the edit history, and hope to finish today. EEng (talk) 11:33, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

• The article's edit history only shows 22 minutes spent on the article, because it cannot show the time you spent on the first edit. Your contribs page gives the impression that you allowed yourself a max 1 hour 29 minutes gap for editing the article between many hours of spot-checking other people's hooks. Regarding the clarification tags: presentation counts; that is why for example we are not allowed to pass articles which are still graded stub on their talkpage, even though they are clearly no longer stubs. The time problem here is not just the day-count. It's the original poor standard of the article which has caused reviewers to spend unnecessary hours attempting to help you, and this has been exacerbated by your repeated deadlines for completion, and no foreseeable end to it. Complaining that other DYK noms are even worse than yours does not help your case. You have just given us another deadline which ends today. We wait in anticipation to see whether you actually fulfil your own deadline, or whether you spend yet another long day overriding all the other reviewers and pulling their hooks instead. --Storye book (talk) 12:58, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

What took up editors' hours was not helping (and I'm not saying there weren't people who were trying to help) but raising all kinds of objections e.g. that secondary sources were needed for a straight description of the content of research papers, and not a single one of those objections was sustained. Once that was all over I said:

Thanks to both of you. Unfortunately so much time has been absorbed by the debate above that I haven't had much time to actually copyedit the research sections, which really need it. (I also had somehow missed 3family6's initial comments two weeks ago, which is why nothing happened all that time). I'd like to beg another week to improve the article before review -- why, I might even have time to go to the library and scare up more secondary sources for the research section!

That was 22 days ago. All that was needed was some copyediting of the research sections. Since then I've (finally) found some expert help with that, though it's taken way longer than I thought. If we hadn't had this ridiculous circus about an "underreferenced" banner and so on, this nom would be three weeks old, and this would be no different from any number of other noms that have dragged on a while. Now let me finish this in peace. EEng (talk) 14:32, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

• New reviewer required. --Storye book (talk) 07:31, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Almost done now. EEng (talk) 05:08, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

• I'm coming fairly fresh to this. Here's a review:

A1. The prose of the article was expanded fivefold. Y

A2. The article is easily long enough. Y

A3. The article seems reasonably compliant with policy. Y

H1. The hook is short enough. Y

H2. The hook is interesting but seems to lack support by specific citations. For example, consider the "quirky dogs". The citation seems to be Sunday Morning Exercise: Take "The Wug Test". This gives sample questions such as "What kind of dog is he?" but it doesn't give the answer and the word quirky doesn't appear in the source or the article. This won't do. N

I've added the expected answers to the text, following the quotes, and ref'd them to Gleason's original article, http://anthropology.uwo.ca/faculty/creider/027/wugs.pdf where they are discussed. Hopefully that will enable the hook to be accepted, since I think it's very well written and will interest readers. Mary Mark Ockerbloom (talk) 04:58, 1 July 2014 (UTC) Y

• Thanks for adding the paper and picture. The paper explains that the children were told that the dogs were quirky. They were then invited to supply the comparative and superlative forms of the adjective. Therefore the hook is wrong and so I have struck it. Quirky dogs sound amusing but they seem to be a poor example of the Wug test because quirk and quirky are standard English words, not invented ones. N Andrew (talk) 06:33, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

O1. There's no QPQ but it was not a self-nom. Y

O2. There's no picture currently but there doesn't seem to be a problem with the lead image and so I recommend that we add it. Y

I've attempted to add the picture (hopefully I did it correctly), and I checked to confirm that the appropriate OTRS was filed on commons. Mary Mark Ockerbloom (talk) 05:12, 1 July 2014 (UTC) Y

So, we seem to be nearly there. Please add the image and either improve the citation support for the hook or try some ALTernates. Andrew (talk) 21:36, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

• @ Andrew. Please read original reviews above by 3family6 (19 May) and Crisco 1492 (30 May and 1 June), both of which still pertain to some extent. As of today, 13 out of 23 references are by Gleason. 11 prose paragraphs in the text are unreferenced at the end, and in some cases that leaves most of the paragraph unreferenced. There are still 5 "citation clarification needed" templates in the text. Your review needs to tackle these issues in the light of the above discussion, and say whether the issues are now resolved. --Storye book (talk) 08:25, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

• Storye book I don't see any "citation needed" tags, but rather "clarification needed" tags, which are not necessarily a disqualification from DYK.--¿3family6 _contribs 12:29, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

• Oops, typo - yes you're right. Thank you, 3family6. --Storye book (talk) 15:13, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Let's continue the hook discussion down here, shall we?

Side note: believe it or not, the word quirky (though not quirk) was almost entirely unknown in 1958 -- see [2]. I don't know whether Gleason is responsible for the 1960s upswing. EEng (talk) 07:05, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

How about

ALT1 ... that quirky dogs, plural wugs, and yesterday's spowing helped Jean Berko Gleason show that young children extract rules from the language around them, rather than simply memorizing words they hear?

I hope, BTW, we're beyond this re-emergent concern re citing descriptions of the research to the research papers themselves. There's nothing wrong with doing that when the papers' conclusions are described in neutral terms such as found, indicated, concluded -- instead of proved, overturned, showed, demonstrated, etc. (except in math, I suppose). The Wug test is an exception, however, since abundant secondary sources really do refer to it as having proved this and that etc. EEng (talk) 07:05, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

• Familiarity with the word quirky may be an Anglo-American difference. It sounds quite normal to me and the OED has various shades of meaning going back to 1789, "The discussers and hearers of such Absurdities, with their dry quirky Declamation in the old Nature." Andrew (talk) 08:14, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

• And, by coincidence, I see that unfamiliar words are in the news. There's a test for that too, which is fun. My score was 89% — top level! Wikipedia should perhaps have a battery of such tests of competence. Andrew (talk) 09:17, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

• Re the Anglo-American differences in usage of quirky. In my experience a traditional UK usage would be e.g. "The archbishop, a most sober personage, never wore his mitre upright at 12 o'clock, but preferred it a little aslant, at 1 o'clock.". That is to say, it traditionally implies eccentricity or at least some intentional cultural variation from the norm, but it does not automatically carry an implication of a positive quality such as coolness. During the past couple of decades I have heard an American usage which consistently implies a positive quality which may include coolness, e.g. "Blah's quirky singing style made her famous." So my understanding is that Gleason had never heard the UK usage of quirky in 1958, and that the US usage of the word was not yet current in her own culture, so that her use of it in tests in the US at the time was valid. Issue: The difficulty comes in using the word in a hook on an international platform at a time when the word has attained a current international usage (albeit a varied usage) - so that the hook is at risk of being slightly misleading. That is to say: in today's world the quirky dogs are no longer puzzly dogs, but are now either different-but-cool, or somewhat eccentric. In my own opinion all that stuff doesn't matter because the word-combination "quirky dogs" still doesn't make sense, so I think the hook is OK as it is. --Storye book (talk) 09:54, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

• The ALT1 hook resolves the quirky dogs issue well enough but seems too long, pushing right up against the 200 limit. It might be trimmed by removing the clause, "rather than simply memorizing words they hear". Andrew (talk) 18:19, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

I'd rather leave it. I think the "extract rules - not just memorize words" combination makes it much more likely that a laymen will grasp the significance of the result and click through. EEng (talk) 02:52, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

• To get people to click through, it may be better to mystify them. How about the following ALT2? Andrew (talk) 07:00, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

• ALT2...that Jean Berko Gleason (pictured) invented the Wug Test?

• Review of ALT2 needed. For the attention of the reviewer: the main citation for ALT2 is online #11 (there may be others). It's a primary source by Gleason herself, but it's a peer-reviewed paper, therefore valid as a source. Regarding the article, there are still issues outstanding: please see my comment of 30 June, above. --Storye book (talk) 08:18, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

• ALT3...that quirky dogs and plural wugs helped Jean Berko Gleason (pictured) show that young children extract linguistic rules from the language they hear as well as memorizing words?

• Given that the word "quirky" was novel when she used it, I'd keep it in the hook. I've tried to shorten the rest of the sentence by removing spowing (grammatically not parallel, so awkward) and tightening the rules + memorization parts of the sentence.
• I've also gone through the article and added citations to any uncited paragraphs I saw; there are a couple where the end sentence of the paragraph introduces a quote with a reference, where I didn't add refs. In most cases, a single citation had been given at the end of several paragraphs related to the same source, so I repeated it on the preceding paragraphs; in a few other cases I referenced books or other sources online. Must now get some sleep before leaving on holiday; have fun finishing this one up.Mary Mark Ockerbloom (talk) 05:03, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Reinforcing my note on your talkpage... thanks so much for pitching in! Let me suggest

ALT3A ... that quirky dogs and plural wugs helped Jean Berko Gleason (pictured) show that young children extract linguistic rules from what they hear, rather than just memorizing words?

EEng (talk) 15:38, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

• Thank you, EEng and many others, for your extended hard work and patience in sorting out this delayed nom. I cannot review this because I have contributed to the article a little, but as far as I can see, all issues are now resolved except that a review is now needed for ALT3A. Meanwhile, EEng please could you kindly strike out any previous ALTs which you now consider redundant? Thank you.--Storye book (talk) 16:04, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Having gotten an involuntary education in psycholinguistics over the last 2 months, I believe 3A is by far the best, and will attract the most clicks (which, as SB observed long ago, is a good thing -- it's fascinating research, brilliant in its simplicity). EEng (talk) 03:43, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

ALT3A seems too wordy and, by explaining too much, is a spoiler. ALT2 still seems better and I have unstruck it. We need an independent hook reviewer to choose between them, please. Andrew (talk) 07:01, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Andrew, I do appreciate your taking on this monster. But whether 3A gives away too much is of course debatable -- personally I believe the reader will think, "Really? She showed that? I wonder how? And how did quirky dogs get into the act? <click>" One thing that isn't, I think, debatable is that ALT2 tells the reader nothing of what the article is about at all -- for all the reader can tell the Wug Test might be a way of telling who prefers Coke and who prefers Pepsi. Some will randomly click, but it will only be by chance that someone goes to the article who will be interested in what he finds there. Can we please just use with ALT3? EEng (talk) 07:42, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Maybe I can help out with

• ALT4: ... that in her research on children's knowledge of linguistic rules, Jean Berko Gleason (pictured) uses wugs, quirks, zibs and spowing?

--Quartl (talk) 13:54, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for pitching in, but this was an entirely oral exercise, so spelling didn't come into it. EEng (talk) 15:32, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Okay, replacing 'spelling' by 'linguistic'. --Quartl (talk) 15:45, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

I prefer ALT4 and find ALT2 a little boring, but ALTs 2, 3, 3a, and 4 are all fine. Other criteria have all been checked by others several times, so I'm giving this nomination a polite but firm shove in the direction of the prep builders before EEng starts trying to claim some record. (Photo is fine too but would be more exciting if it was an animation of her mouthing strange words) Belle (talk) 23:29, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

I had originally envisioned an image of the cute little "wug" to go with the hook, but fair-use images aren't allowed on MP. I was going to without an image but then someone added the image of the subject herself, and she looks so perfectly like a retired professor of psycholinguistics!

But please -- I specifically would like ALT3A because it will attract the kind of people who will find the article interesting. ALT4 is similar but I think 3A has better balance and rhythm and, again, it clearly foreshadows the research result without giving away how it was done. EEng (talk) 04:05, 9 July 2014 (UTC)