Talk:How To (book)

How To (book) received a peer review by Wikipedia editors, which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

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A fact from How To (book) appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 6 July 2020 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that while researching for his book How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems, Randall Munroe enlisted Serena Williams to knock a drone out of the sky with a tennis ball?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2020/July. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems.

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Interview

Probably useful interview: https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/3/20847227/xkcd-randall-munroe-how-to-book-math-science-physics-interview-what-if-lava-moat-interview blohod ^{let's chat} ^{about stuff} 06:42, 6 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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 The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 06:01, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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... ~~that in How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems Randall Munroe explores how to power a house on Earth and on Mars?~~

Reviewed: Still have to do

Created by Blohod (talk). Self-nominated at 13:33, 13 May 2020 (UTC).[reply]

Long enough. New enough. Inline citations are there but some of the cited sources don't support the prior text. I've marked a couple CNs in the article. The hook is interesting, and its source is citation 8 (WorldCat). It's unclear if the book cover image is free / under fair use. QPQ may not be required since the nominator/contributor appears to be new. Anyway, fix the CNs, and confirm that the image is good for fair use. Hybernator (talk) 02:31, 16 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- @Hybernator I have fixed the cns and I believe the image is ok, but someone who knows more about that stuff than me should confirm. blohod ^{let's chat} ^{about stuff} 00:57, 22 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The CNs have been fixed. Assuming the image is of fair use and a QPQ is not needed for a new editor, this is GTG. Hybernator (talk) 22:54, 24 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I came by to promote this. WorldCat is not a source. Could you find the book on Google Books? Even a snippet view would be fine. Thanks, Yoninah (talk) 00:27, 27 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Yoninah The book itself is the source, not WorldCat, I put the ISBN into the automatic citation tool and that is what was generated, I don;t see how a google books link is any different. I may be entirely wrong though, as I am quite new to Wikipedia and unsure of the policies regarding this. blohod ^{let's chat} ^{about stuff} 01:25, 27 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: DYK prefers that in-universe hooks be avoided. ("If the subject is a work of fiction or a fictional character, the hook must involve the real world in some way.") How To isn't a fictional work, but given the out-of-this-world nature of its topics, this might seem somewhat borderline. --Paul_012 (talk) 17:36, 9 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Blohod, Paul_012, and Yoninah, How about:

ALT1 ... that while researching to write How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems the author enlisted Serena Williams to knock a drone out of the sky with a tennis ball?

Also, I'm going to take a shot in the dark and ask Monrue to license an image CC-BY-SA for the DYK. The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 00:18, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hybernator, can you please take a look at ALT1 and let us know if it works? Sorry you were left off the original ping. The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 19:56, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi The Squirrel Conspiracy, yes that works. Hybernator (talk) 21:11, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Restoring tick per Hybernator's comment immediately above. The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 21:35, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to suggest this grammar tweak, and also link the author's name:
ALT1a: ... that while researching for his book How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems, Randall Munroe enlisted Serena Williams to knock a drone out of the sky with a tennis ball? Yoninah (talk) 21:58, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Since Hybernator is the reviewer (my tick was just because he didn't add it when he approved ALT1) and since ALT1a is substantially similar to ALT1, I don't see any reason why I can't be the one to move this to prep, and am doing so accordingly. The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 06:01, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]