Template:Did you know nominations/Ba'athism

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 PFHLai (talk) 06:14, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Ba'athism

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• ... that the ideology of ba'athism was developed mostly in Syria by Zaki al-Arsuzi, Salah al-Din al-Bitar and Michel Aflaq (pictured), who is considered the founder of ba'athist thought, as a way to unite the Arab world into one nation?

• Reviewed: Théâtre de la Mode

Expanded by Trust Is All You Need (talk) with help from R-41 (talk). Self nom at 11:39 (Oslo local time) 27 November 2011 (UTC)

• Haven't done a full review - was just skimming what was nominated and was curious how such a well known topic didn't already have a large article. So I did an article length check, and the version before the expansion was 4012 characters. The current revision is 19018; however it needs to be 20060 characters to be considered a five fold expansion. Would be worthwhile seeing if there's anything that could be added as it's so close to meeting this. Miyagawa (talk) 10:02, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

• Before the expansion there were only 484 characters. The nom is in collaboration with R-41. --TIAYN (talk) 10:14, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

• The article is an important one -- and inherently difficult to write -- that has undergone an impressive expansion. DYKcheck indicates that the 5x expansion began on 21 November. Considering the magnitude and difficulty of the task, and the fact that two contributors were collaborating, I deem it acceptable that it took a few days to finish the expansion.

The hook is fully supported by the article and by sources cited. I read some long passages in some of the cited sources, and did not see any similarity of wording with the article.

Not an issue for DYK, but I did find minor discrepancies between the article text and the citations to sources. For example, the first sentence of the History section of the article states (in part) that Al-Arsuzi formed the Arab Ba'ath Party in 1940; that Aflaq and al-Bitar founded the Ihya Movement in 1940; and that Ihya later renamed itself the Arab Ba'ath Movement in 1943. The source describes the founding in 1940 of Arab Ba'ath, but Ihya is not mentioned until page 139 of that book (outside the page range cited in that footnote), and the book cited does not mention its renaming (it does, however, say that they often called it Ba'ath), nor the date 1943.

The image license is OK. All things considered, this is good to go.--Orlady (talk) 15:58, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Close paraphrasing concerns. Examples: "it would interpose itself not only between the Arab nation and the imperialists, but also the people and the tyrants" vs "the party was to interpose itself not only between the nation and its foreign oppressors, but also between the people and their tyrants" and "In intellectual terms, Aflaq recast the conservative Arab nationalist thoughts and changed them to reflect a strong revolutionary and progressive tendency" vs "In intellectual terms, he recast the Arab nationalist idea to reflect a strong, progressive revolutionary attitude". Nikkimaria (talk) 22:19, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm not the article creator, but in my role as a public-spirited DYK reviewer, I've made some additional revisions to the article. The too-close wording issues seem to involve explaining ideas (philosophy and ideology); unless one is an expert on the subject, it can be difficult to explain ideas accurately without hewing rather closely to the content of the source. I made several edits to address too-close wording, add reference citations, change wording to better conform with my understanding of the source(s), etc. I kept the string "interpose itself" because I don't understand the topic well enough to feel comfortable choosing other wording. I think the article is in pretty good shape, but additional review eyes are needed. --Orlady (talk) 03:50, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I've gone through this and don't see any further paraphrasing concerns. I think the "interpose" sentence is now far enough away from the source not to be a problem, without detracting any meaning. I agree with Orlady's assessment of other aspects raised in their original review. All-in-all I think this is now adequate to go. Zangar (talk) 13:58, 15 December 2011 (UTC)