Template:Did you know nominations/John McLean (explorer)

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: rejected by Yoninah (talk) 22:52, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
Tagged for cleanup; nominator unresponsive

John McLean (explorer)

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John McLean

• ... that, despite what the historical marker says, John McLean (pictured) was not the first white man to cross Labrador?
  • ALT1:... that Scoto-Canadian author John McLean (pictured) considered the War of 1812 an act of unprovoked American aggression but complimented American English as "elegance itself"?
  • ALT2:... that explorer and fur trader John McLean (pictured) was secretly Viator, the writer sometimes credited with saving the western half of Canada from American annexation?
  • ALT3:... that John McLean (pictured) was the first European to find Canada's Churchill Falls?
  • ALT4:... that John McLean (pictured) was the first European to find Canada's Churchill Falls, an accomplishment that posthumously became less impressive when a hydro project diverted almost all its water?
  • ALT5:... that, after his monopolist employer repeatedly passed him over for promotion, ruined his health, and refused him a pension, John McLean (pictured) spent his retirement starting a conservative newspaper?
  • ALT6:... that Scottish-Canadian grocer John McLean (pictured) was forced to admit that dog was "food for the gods"?
  • ALT7:... that Canadian trapper and author John McLean (pictured) felt that the Hudson's Bay Company owed its success to the Quebecker Northwesters?
  • ALT8:... that, expecting "to fare like a dog" in British Columbia, John McLean (pictured) found instead that it was the most beautiful place he'd seen in Canada?
  • ALT9:... that trapper, trader, and explorer John McLean (pictured) took his first vacation in 20 years to visit his mother in Scotland?
  • ALT10:... that John McLean (pictured) was "a person of intelligence and information beyond what one might expect from a man who has all his life been scraping beaver skins together"?
  • ALT11:... that John McLean (pictured) is sometimes credited with having saved western Canada from American annexation?

• Reviewed: Will do. Zhai Xiangjun
• Comment: Don't worry. You only need to review the hook most interesting to you. There's a lot to this guy/article, so if you prefer other hooks instead (his first wife the Métis or his second and the bank robber etc.), I can figure it out. Kindly don't add extraneous links to the hooks above. If people want to learn more, they can click through to the article I've worked on, learn some stuff, and move on from there.

Created by LlywelynII (talk). Self-nominated at 21:14, 19 August 2019 (UTC).

• This article is about a Scotsman and his work and travels in North America in the 19th century. It makes heavy use of the subject's memoirs, and some quotations and information from them are unnecessarily long or unnecessary altogether. The memoir and McLean's other book are listed in the article, but should also be included in the bibliography under References, since they are used as sources. Other 19th- and early 20th-century sources are only used for uncontroversial claims, and are complemented by a good selection of modern sources.

There is an issue with readability. Some sentences are full of details about travel stops, how long it took to cover a particular distance etc. This flows poorly, and while the info can be fun in a travelogue, it isn't relevant in an encyclopedia unless there is something remarkable about it (if there is, that's not clear in the article). I suggest that some quotations are removed or replaced with very brief summaries, and that less relevant details about specific journeys are removed.

There are many alternative hooks. ALT5 is just above the 200 character limit. The rest are short enough and interesting. I'll focus on the first one, assuming that's the one the nominator prefers. Bryant (1892), pp. 5–6 makes it clear that McLean was not the first to cross the Labrador Peninsula, although the text in the article comes dangerously close to WP:SYNTH. The text says that it is "sometimes" claimed that McLean was first, but it's sourced with one example in the form of a memory plaque. It would be more accurate to simply say that a plaque claims this, unless it can be replaced with a source that uses "sometimes" or has more examples. It is also slightly spurious to write that McLean "credited Erlandson's earlier trek", when the original claim was about being "the first European to have crossed the entire peninsula". The source neither mentions Erlandson by name nor anything about ethnicity. (The plaque does this, but it's still very close to synthesis). Maybe there is another source that can get around this, otherwise it's probably best to reword the note.

Other than that everything looks good. The article was nominated for DYK two days after its creation, the prose size is grand, there are no copyright violations, everything is sourced, QPQ is done. Ffranc (talk) 18:07, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

• @Ffranc: The nominator hasn't edited in about two weeks now. Are there any further suggestions to let this nomination move forward? Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 01:37, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

No, the big problem is readability. The article is ambitious and interesting, but perhaps because of that, it has too many "darlings" that need to be "killed". They make the article too hard to follow. I feel bad for saying it, especially since the nominator hasn't responded, and he's clearly a very positive contributor. But at least some of the excess needs to be trimmed before the article is ready for the main page. I have added a couple of cleanup templates. Ffranc (talk) 12:34, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

• @LlywelynII: Will you be able to address the article concerns? Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 00:05, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
• Apart from a single edit on October 1, the nominator has not been active for about three weeks, and has not responded to talk page messages and pings. Unless they are able to comment on the nomination soon, this is now marked for closure as stale. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 05:06, 5 October 2019 (UTC)