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Template:Did you know nominations/Miriam T. Griffin

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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 Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:14, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

DYK toolbox

Miriam T. Griffin

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  • ... that Miriam Griffin hosted the first Women in Classics dinner at Oxford?
    • ALT1:... that Miriam Griffin analysed the reasons for the fall of the Emperor Nero?

Created by DonPantalone (talk). Nominated by Andrew Davidson (talk) at 16:31, 23 January 2017 (UTC).

  • (Not a full review) Sorry, a minor matter, but the article is presently ineligible because the single-sentence paragraph in the "Personal life" section of the article has no inline citations, which is required per D2 of the DYK Supplementary guidelines. North America1000 12:20, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
That section has been updated and a citation added to support it. Andrew D. (talk) 20:52, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
  • New enough and long enough; the lead does not strike me as too short now given the article's overall size, and it obeys WP:LEADLENGTH. QPQ has been done. Earwig found no likely copyvio — the biggest hits it found were book title and editor listings. I have to admit that I'm not too excited by either hook: the first is "woman organizes dinner party" and the second is "scholar analyzes some historical detail that nobody cares about any more". (Actually, I think people should care about the reasons for the fall of Nero, as history tends to repeat, but that doesn't mean they do.) Also, although the article as a whole is adequately sourced, the dinner party hook is not: one source mentions her and the dinner but doesn't say she was the host, while the other is written by her rather than being about her. Some of the article also looks like filler: "The Oxford University library catalogue (SOLO) shows that she frequently donates academic books"? It's not needed as the article would be long enough and punchier without it. But that's not really a DYK rules issue. We just need a better and better-sourced hook and we can be good to go. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:24, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
  • The Women in Classics dinner was a big deal to the women who are trying to establish themselves in this male-dominated field and this aspect was the point of the editathon. But I grant that this will be of limited interest to others. Nero and his downfall, on the other hand, is quite topical, because Nero was a populist leader who was reviled by the patrician class. Here's a selection of headlines which demonstrate that people do still care about this historical detail:
  1. "Donald Trump: the modern-day Nero ready to burn down America" (Guardian)
  2. "To understand Trump, we should look to the tyrants of ancient Rome" (Guardian)
  3. "Donald Trump could be America's Nero — if we're lucky" (Spectator)
  4. "Trump as Nero - Europe Must Defend Itself Against A Dangerous President" (Der Speigel)
  5. "Bring Your Own Applause - What Donald Trump and Roman Emperor Nero Have in Common" (JSTOR Daily)
  6. "Caligula, Nero, Donald Trump?" (PennLive)
  7. "Emperor Nero has now taken power in Washington" (Financial Times)
  8. "Dealing with Emperor Trump: Field Notes from Ancient Rome" (Common Dreams)

So, given these parallels, please reconsider ALT1. Andrew D. (talk) 10:12, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

  • A DYK hook should be attention-catching. These are not, regardless of how significant what they describe is. If you want to include Nero, can you at least briefly describe something surprising that she concluded about Nero (and include it with appropriate sourcing in the article so that we can use it as a hook)? We leave the hook and the article knowing no more about Nero than we did before. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:09, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
  • I've added a line of contextual information to the page to make clearer why it is not of only very minor interest or untopical why such a celebration was held - women were debarred from entering Oxford University as full entrants until 1920, and the numbers of women entrants were limited until 1957. Recognition of a change to the "male-dominated" field is therefore noteworthy in and of itself. —Claire 75(talk) 14:39, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
  • It's a better hook, but the article doesn't currently say or source that she hosted the dinner, only that she was on the committee that organized it and that it was held at her home institution. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:11, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
  • It is a requirement of DYK that this information appear in a sourced sentence of the actual article. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:00, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Agree it would be better to have clarity about what it was that she did - so I've amended the article and added the source Andrew Davidson provided that supports this. Claire 75 (talk) 09:55, 3 March 2017 (UTC)—Claire 75(talk) 09:54, 03 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Ok, but now we have a ridiculous run-on sentence "In 2013, she was on the steering committee of the Oxford Classics Conclave and hosted a dinner to which all women engaged in classics teaching or research at Oxford were invited, in celebration of their increased presence on the faculty within approximately the last ten years, given that Oxford University did not admit women as full members of the University until 1920, and limited their numbers until 1957." that would surely be an embarrassment to any classicist. Can we split it up, at least? Writing quality is not actually part of the DYK rules, so I don't want to hold it up forever over this, but I think it would be preferable to get it cleaned up before this goes on the main page. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:27, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
  • I've jumped in with both feet on this one, and done some rewriting to break up and expand the Women in Classics dinner section. I've also removed the mention of the library donations (nice, but unsourced and not highly significant, unless she's donated something pretty astounding). I've added a section giving more detail about her published books, which is cited to support ALT1, along with some reviewer's reactions. Based on what I saw, an acceptable rephrasing of the dinner hook might be the following:
  • ALT2: "... that historian Miriam T. Griffin arranged to host the first Women in Classics dinner at Somerville College, Oxford, to celebrate increased gender equality in the field?" Mary Mark Ockerbloom (talk) 20:26, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the improvements! Finally, good to go with ALT2. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:10, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
  • OK, now we have the first Women in Classics dinner at Somerville College cited. But the article doesn't say anything about her reason being "to celebrate increased gender equality in the field". Yoninah (talk) 21:04, 7 March 2017 (UTC)
  • See source sentences: "Yet it is only about a decade since the appointment of women as tutorial fellows in classical subjects at former men’s colleges was a rarity." and "an opportunity to these women to get together for a meal in their honour". These support the Wikipedia article sentences "hosted a dinner to which all women engaged in classics teaching or research at Oxford were invited. Sixty-two women were invited to celebrate their increased presence on the faculty." This is followed in the Wikipedia article by a discussion of the history of hiring of women in Classics at Oxford. Although the identical wording is not used, this should support the idea that the dinner was held "to celebrate increased gender equality in the field". Or if you prefer a closer wording, see ALT2a below. Mary Mark Ockerbloom (talk) 17:47, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
  • ALT2a: "... that historian Miriam T. Griffin arranged to host the first Women in Classics dinner at Somerville College, Oxford, where guests celebrated the increased presence of women in the field?" Mary Mark Ockerbloom (talk) 20:26, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Well, Yoninah, if you're going to unilaterally veto all the hooks with any interest in them, you're going to need to find another reviewer (again), because I think that "woman hosts dinner party" without any additional explanation is both boring and too laden with sexist stereotypes to make a good hook by itself. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:44, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
  • @David Eppstein: Sorry. I arrived at the end of the discussion about the dinner party hook and I see I basically narrowed it down to the ALT0 which you originally rejected. The page creator has expressed an interest in ALT1, and I agree that that one should be developed instead. Would you like me to work on that more? Yoninah (talk) 20:37, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Sure. It would be good if we could say something specific (properly sourced of course) about what original conclusions she might have drawn about Nero. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:40, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
  • OK, I added more from the source. What do you think about this:
  • ALT3: ... that classical scholar Miriam T. Griffin believes that the Roman emperor Nero was hounded by fear, panic, and persecutory delusions at the end of his reign? Yoninah (talk) 20:57, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Much more interesting, and quite topical. Adding this to the article has improved it, and it is properly sourced by the NYT. Good to go again (this time for sure, I hope). —David Eppstein (talk) 23:25, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
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