Template:Did you know nominations/For sale: baby shoes, never worn

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 15:56, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

For sale: baby shoes, never worn[edit]

(

)

... that, although Ernest Hemingway wrote many words, he probably didn't write "For sale: baby shoes, never worn"?

Created by Matt Deres (talk). Self nominated at 17:09, 20 April 2013 (UTC).

The article is phrased in a way that makes it appear to be original research. On actually reading it, and looking at the sources, I'm not convinced that is the case, but it certainly needs to be written in a more encyclopaedic fashion so as to dispel that appearance. Ref #1 does not appear to be a reliable source, though it does appear to be a good read! Refs #1, 4 and 5 all need to be properly formatted, and the first paragraph of the "History" section needs to be referenced. The hook is only mentioned in the lead, and never asserted elsewhere in the article, and is certainly never referenced inline. Harrias ^talk 22:56, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Hm. I was actually thinking of writing this article myself sometime as this meme is encyclopedic (and a definite candidate for "Unusual articles"). I'm pleased that someone else has.

As to the reliability of Quote Investigator, see here: Articles on the Quote Investigator website have been cited by journalists and writers at The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Economist, The Washington Post, Slate, The Chicago Tribune, The Guardian, Real Clear Politics, The Jacksonville Times-Union, "A Way With Words" (Public Radio Program), ABC Television News, ABC (Australia), and more." I think that's a good index of reliability.

If we want to be on the safe side, why don't we cite the same sources QI does, with "cited at ..." afterwards. Daniel Case (talk) 02:35, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the feedback. I've fixed the Snopes link (don't know why I choked on that...) and have removed the 5th ref as it was kind of superfluous anyway. Could you clarify how the first ref is not formatted correctly? It has no author name because it appears to be pseudonymous ("Quote Investigator"); should I just put that? Or is there something else I'm missing? This seems to be a great example of why it's good to have someone else proofread your stuff... it sounded good in my head. :) I don't know how much time I will have for re-writes over the next day or so, but will see what I can do. Obviously, others are more than welcome to help. Matt Deres (talk) 19:34, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

OK, sorry to have been away for a while.

I found several articles that should establish that QI and its proprietor, Garson O'Toole, are considered reliable: The Boston Globe here, RealClearPolitics here and the Yale (his graduate alma mater) alumni magazine here. I would also say that Slate's willingness to more or less paraphrase the blog post testifies favorably.

So we'll work with the cites, and just cite the original documents in "cited by ..." to be sure.

I'll see if I can find any better free baby-shoe pics than what we've got at Commons. Daniel Case (talk) 20:15, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Found one (it's black and white, but those are more like what most people think of when they think of baby shoes). Now let's work on the text. Daniel Case (talk) 17:22, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

It's been five days since the last activity in this nomination. How is this "work on the text" coming along? —♦♦ AMBER^(ЯʘCK) 14:58, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks; I've been meaning to sit down and do this soon. I was sort of waiting for comment from the nominator on the last. But I guess it's been long enough. I'll be on it tomorrow. Daniel Case (talk) 05:18, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Alright. I wound up purging some of the OR-ish stuff and putting references where they belonged. I request a new review de novo. Daniel Case (talk) 14:38, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

While the article is much improved, I have to admit that I still feel uneasy about some of the synthesis in The Story section. Lines like "...if the baby shoes were never worn, presumably something happened" and "If it was the case that the baby was simply too large upon birth, they would likely be kept for a later child." really feel like this Wikipedia article is trying tell us what the story means instead of simply reporting what has been written about it. Maybe if those theories about the meaning behind the story could be put into quotations that were directly attributed to someone then it would be appear less OR-ish. Though, truth be told, I personally don't think it would hurt the article at all to simply remove the entire section. Agne ^Cheese/^Wine 05:45, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

OK, I took it out completely. The article is now just barely big enough, though. Daniel Case (talk) 21:46, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

It's more than twice the minimum size requirement for DYK so that is not worry. With the OR-ish section removed and after your previous edits, I feel that all concerns have been addressed. The articles passes all other DYK criteria for date, length and referencing and is good to go. Agne ^Cheese/^Wine 06:38, 16 May 2013 (UTC)