Template:Did you know nominations/Lake Billy Chinook

The following discussion 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 19:36, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
Previously promoted to Prep 1 by Ohconfucius[1]

Lake Billy Chinook

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... ~~that the Island of Lake Billy Chinook (pictured) is one of the last unaltered ecosystems in the United States, even though it isn't an island?~~

Comment: I'm not sure if it's "new" or "expanded" because it used to be nothing but a redirect to The Cove Palisades State Park. (I haven't done a DYK nomination forever)

Created by Smithers7 (talk). Self nominated at 03:04, 12 January 2014 (UTC).

, The statement in the hook is different from the statement used in the article and in the source. Both the article and reference qualify and say that the island is one of the last unaltered ecosystems "of its type." This doesn't mean it is one of the few unaltered ecosystems in the United States, as the hook states. Also, the "even though it isn't an island," isn't supported by the reference. This implies that most unaltered ecosystems are islands, which isn't supported. I suggest qualifying the hook with "of its type" and dropping the "even though." The article qualifies as new because it had been a redirect and meets the other criteria for a DYK.--Bkwillwm (talk) 04:13, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

@Bkwillwm: would

ALT1: ... that the Island of Lake Billy Chinook (pictured) is one of the last unaltered ecosystems in the United States of its type?

be passable then? smithers - talk 06:15, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that sounds good to me.--Bkwillwm (talk) 06:37, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Reviewer needed to recheck the above, and determine whether the all the criteria are indeed met: neutrality, sourcing (including reliability), close paraphrasing, etc. BlueMoonset (talk) 18:56, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

The proposed ALT1 hook is supported by the cited source, but the cited source doesn't indicate what "type" of ecosystem it is -- and, anyway, an attractive color brochure about a state park hardly qualifies as a reliable source for scientific information of this sort. The article is long enough and new enough (former redirects don't count as articles), and it has enough footnotes. However, none of the sources is of particularly high quality; that state park brochure is probably the best of the lot. Furthermore, "the Island" is actually a peninsula, and should not be described in the article as an island. I found a good (and scientifically defensible) source about the Island in this document. That document has a lot of information about the ecology of the Island. It indicates that the Island is similar ecologically to the surrounding region; it is unusually isolated in being surrounded on three sides by high vertical cliffs, and its claim to ecological uniqueness is that (unlike the surrounding region) it was never grazed by livestock, except for one episode in 1921. Another source does indicate that it is "one of the best known and least disturbed examples of native juniper savanna within the Columbia Plateau" -- that would be the "type" of ecosystem that it represents Iand the lack of livestock disturbance is what makes it "least disturbed"). I also learned (from the PDF noted above) that the Island has been designated a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Area of Critical Environmental Concern / Research Natural Area (ACEC/RNA) since 1986, and that it became a National Natural Landmark in 2011.[2] I recommend that the article creator expand and revise the article using those sources (and others you may find) and devise new hook wording; if you encounter difficulty with that, let me know and I may be able to help. (Additional note: QPQ is not yet required for this contributor.) --Orlady (talk) 20:45, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
- Doing... I'll reword the hook in a second, I'm adding those sources in and changing some things in the article. smithers - talk 01:52, 2 February 2014 (UTC) @Orlady: I've took your advice (thanks a lot for the PDF file by the way, that was an awesome source) and made two alternative, how do they sound?

ALT 2: ... that the Island of Lake Billy Chinook (pictured) is one of the last remaining unaltered communities of western juniper, Wyoming big sagebrush, and bluebunch wheatgrass in the United States?

ALT 3: ... that the Island of Lake Billy Chinook (pictured) was designated a National Natural Landmark of Oregon in 2011?

Through my eyes, ALT 2 obviously reads more like a refined and improved ALT 1 and would be my first choice of a hook, but I wanted a backup which is why I wrote ALT 3. Thoughts? smithers - talk 08:23, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for attending to the revisions. I made some additional edits for various reasons (including some minor rewording intended to ensure avoidance of close paraphrasing). The image license is OK, and it's used in the article. This is good to go, but with some revisions to your hooks (to put "pictured" in the best place, because "unaltered" and "undisturbed" don't mean quite the same thing, to remove links and details that would detract from the focus on the target article):

ALT 2A: ... that the Island (pictured) of Lake Billy Chinook contains one of the United States' last remaining undisturbed communities of two native vegetation types?
ALT 3A: ... that the Island (pictured) of Lake Billy Chinook in Oregon was designated a National Natural Landmark in 2011?

ALT2A and ALT3A are both approved. --Orlady (talk) 23:57, 2 February 2014 (UTC)