Talk:Mombasa tusks

A fact from Mombasa tusks appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 19 December 2021 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that United States Marines have repainted the Mombasa tusks (pictured) several times?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2021/December. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Mombasa tusks.

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Did you know nomination

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 Theleekycauldron (talk) 07:26, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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Article history

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The Mombasa tusks in 2007

... that the Mombasa tusks (pictured) were rebuilt when Moi Avenue was expanded into a two-lane road? Source: "At first, Moi Avenue was just a one-lane road and there were only two tusks, later on the lanes were added to four when the road became a two-lane road' Nation
- ALT1: ... that United States Marines, visiting Mombasa, have repainted the Mombasa tusks (pictured) several times? Source: "Their fame shot beyond the coastal borders rapidly when US Marines volunteered to give them an upgrade by painting them on several occasions whenever they were visiting the coastal town. " The Standard
- Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Tiger Flowers (book)

5x expanded by Eviolite (talk). Self-nominated at 04:55, 10 December 2021 (UTC).[reply]

Hi Eviolite, review follows: article 5x expanded on 10 December, well written and cited inline throughout to reliable sources; I found no issue with overly close paraphrasing from the sources; hooks are interesting, mentioned in the article and check out to sources cited; I would suggest the image is run with this one, it is quite striking; the image is freely licensed; a QPQ has been carried out. Looks good to me - Dumelow (talk) 08:19, 10 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Modified ALT1 to T:DYK/P5

I'm afraid I'm disappointed with the hook used for this interesting article. Is something about Africa only of significance because the US military is involved? Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 03:23, 19 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Mr Serjeant Buzfuz: I think this has less to do with the United States than you might think, and more to do with hook wording. The Mombasa tusks are undoubtedly impressive; but "look at this thing" often doesn't make a very enticing hook, even if the object itself is interesting. To make a hook like this cohesive, it helps to have something secondarily interesting about it, so that it can still pass off in the format of "Did you know <this thing> <unexpecting thing about thing>?" But make no mistake, the primary attraction of this hook, the thing that lured in over 17,000 viewers in 12 hours, was the tusks, not the marines. The marines are the unexpected thing that makes this look like a good hook, and it helps, but the tusks still do the heavy lifting. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/she) 01:53, 22 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]