Template:Did you know nominations/List of Egyptian obelisks

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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) 16:42, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

List of Egyptian obelisks

The tallest standing Egyptian obelisk, in Rome
The tallest standing Egyptian obelisk, in Rome
  • ... that there are only about 30 Ancient Egyptian obelisks left standing worldwide—and Italy has more than Egypt? Source: Allen, D. (2013). How Mechanics Shaped the Modern World. Springer International Publishing. ISBN 978-3-319-01701-3. Retrieved 2022-01-23. By the way, there are 29 extant Egyptian obelisks in the world today. Nine are in Egypt, and eleven in Italy (eight of which are in Rome, having been pilfered by the Romans after Augustus defeated Antony and Cleopatra in 31 BCE, thereby conquering Egypt). Others are scattered across the world.

Created by Onceinawhile (talk). Self-nominated at 06:10, 23 January 2022 (UTC).

  • Hi Onceinawhile, great idea for a new list article. However it does not currently meet the DYK requirements. The rules require "a minimum of 1,500 characters of prose (ignoring infoboxes, categories, references, lists, and tables etc.)". I only count around 850 characters outside of your list/table. Also each entry in your list needs a reference to show where the data came from - Dumelow (talk) 09:40, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
@Dumelow: thank you. I have fixed it all now. I hope you like the improvements.Onceinawhile (talk) 11:35, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
Hi Onceinawhile, thanks. Length is now good. I am a bit unsure about most of the entries being cited to an 1843 source when it is stating that these are obelisks currently standing (other queries, does modern scholarship still support the details eg. of builder and origin location?). Other parts to sources of 1885, 1922, 1809, 1897, 1899, 1877, 1898. Surely there must be better, modern sources for these? Also the following are presented as sources but I have no idea what they are:
  • Petrie, Tanis, I, plate VIII (48, North Obelisk)
  • Flinders Petrie, Tanis, I, plate IX (51, North Obelisk)
  • Kuentz, "Obélisques", 45-50, plate XIII
  • Cairo Museum JE 42955 C (CG 17023 & 17024)
Per WP:VERIFIABILITY it needs to be clear to the reader where they need to go to check this information. Other sources need checking, for example the sources for the Tahrir Square obelisk both only say that it will be erected, not that it has been. Could you also confirm what makes obelisks.org WP:RELIABLE? Another query comes to mind, you state "The list also excludes approximately 40 known obelisk fragments" but the last two on your list are less than a metre tall and represent between a third and a fifth of the original stone. Beyond stating that it comes from obelisks.org, what definition of "fragment" is used? Finally, you ought to include imperial conversions in the table as per MOS:CONVERSIONS. Thanks - Dumelow (talk) 13:58, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
Hi @Dumelow: many thanks for looking so closely at this. There are many sources confirming the Tahrir obelisk is up; I didn't include them because I felt we already had a lot of sources for that topic. We also have this excellent Dec 2020 photo in the table File:TahrirSQ-2020(1).jpg from user:Faris knight which I figured was evidence enough. I have fixed the four sources in bullets that you mention above.
On your other source comments, I wonder if some of them may be veering into WP:GA level assessments?
I have searched for about a week to find all known scholarly list of Egyptian obelisks. The only ones I have been able to find are Bonomi and Gorringe from the 19th century, and then two self-published websites. On your question re Obelisks.org, I used it only for one sentence, and I believe its usage in that sentence meets WP:ABOUTSELF (and the quality of sourcing on the specific claim is good).
Onceinawhile (talk) 17:32, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
Hi Onceinawhile. You may be right, perhaps I have my GAN head on right now. More than happy to hand this off to another reviewer with a fresh pair of eyes. I hope you don't think I've been too harsh on your article, I really enjoyed reading it!- Dumelow (talk) 19:30, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
Thanks @Dumelow: much appreciated. I have also added a little map to the article. Hope you like it. Onceinawhile (talk) 23:47, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
Will review. DigitalIceAge (talk) 18:11, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
New enough, long enough, neutral, no close paraphrasing detected. Regarding Bonomi Jr., he seems to be well-regarded (1, 2, 3), or at least his work cited without challenge, in modern scholarship, and I've certainly seen sources just as old cited heavily in featured lists, so I trust that the 1843 book is good enough. Gave it a light copyedit and tweaked the formatting of the table a little. I also changed the comma to an em dash in the hook to make the "punchline" stand out more.
The first paragraph of the "Number" section should have a citation. Also I wasn't clear on what some of the parenthetical meter measurements were supposed to represent—if they are outdated measurements, the correct ones also should have a source. Overall great work @Onceinawhile: DigitalIceAge (talk) 19:03, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
Hi DigitalIceAge, thank you for the review and the excellent improvements. On the parentheticals, they are intended to show the height including the base or plinth that the obelisk sits on (often the base is not original). I had included that in the column header but I now see that it wasn’t clear. Onceinawhile (talk) 23:58, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
Ah, I see now, thank you. I've undid my edit and added in "with base" for added clarity. Should also note that the QPQ has been fulfilled, just waiting for a citation for the hook fact in the body. DigitalIceAge (talk) 00:14, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
@DigitalIceAge: thank you very much. I have added the citation as requested. Onceinawhile (talk) 09:27, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
No problem, should be good to go now. DigitalIceAge (talk) 15:45, 3 March 2022 (UTC)