Talk:Vandal conquest of Roman Africa

A fact from Vandal conquest of Roman Africa appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 2 November 2022 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Saint Augustine died during the Vandal conquest of Roman Africa?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2022/November. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Vandalic conquest of Roman Africa.

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Did you know nomination[edit]

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 SL93 (talk) 20:44, 29 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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... that Saint Augustine died during the Vandalic conquest of Roman Africa? Source: https://www.google.de/books/edition/Aetius/lZYF07gFqckC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=isbn:9781783461349&printsec=frontcover
- Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Euclidean minimum spanning tree

Created by Whatever748 (talk). Nominated by LordPeterII (talk) at 16:48, 25 October 2022 (UTC).[reply]

— Article is new enough and long enough. Sources check. Image has a Creative Commons license. Earwig's Copyvio Detector shows 'zero' copyright issues. QPQ completed. Hook is somewhat interesting, but gives the impression that Saint Augustine was killed as a direct result of the siege, during battle, whereas he was seriously ill during the siege, and, according to the source, "died, probably of a fever", compounded by the hardships people had to endure during the siege. I would make the hook more clear on that point as it's a bit misleading as it is. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 18:46, 25 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Gwillhickers: Hmm I did not include a picture in this nom, you probably mixed that up with another review ;) (or do you mean it should run with the map as an image?) As for the hook, I can see what you mean. I'd like to keep some connection, because we don't know whether he would have fallen ill if there had been no siege (possible, but less likely). Plus, some ambiguity makes a hook hooky. Still, how about

ALT1 ... that Saint Augustine died from an illness during the Vandalic conquest of Roman Africa?

I think it sound much less interesting than the original hook, because a lot of people die from disease, regardless of what's going on. We could also say

ALT2 ... that Saint Augustine died from an illness during a siege during the Vandalic conquest of Roman Africa?

which might be slightly more interesting, but now is significantly more wordy. I wouldn't mind either of these being used, but yeah I feel like they're less exciting. –LordPeterII (talk) 14:49, 26 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

— Yes, the image I was referring to was the map in the info-box.
ALT2 sounds the best. Good to go. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 17:04, 26 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I can't find a better way to phrase it, but the repetition of "during" is awkward here. Also, it's worth noting that until fairly recently, most fatalities during wars were due to disease. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:30, 27 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@RoySmith: Good point, in that view we could use ALT0 without feeling dishonest. I mean, ALT0 was never wrong, it's just the one with less information, and ALT2 the one with the most. I guess it's up to the promoter to decide wether more or less background is better here. –LordPeterII (talk) 18:09, 29 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Title[edit]

"Vandal conquest" is much more widely used than "Vandalic conquest". Srnec (talk) 02:10, 26 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]