Talk:International Institute of Modern Letters

A fact from International Institute of Modern Letters appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 30 August 2022 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the name of the International Institute of Modern Letters has been criticised by its founder Bill Manhire for being "almost at odds with the fine use of language"?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2022/August. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/International Institute of Modern Letters.

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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 Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 17:14, 28 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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Article history

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Bill Manhire House at the International Institute of Modern Letters

... ~~that Bill Manhire, founder of the International Institute of Modern Letters (building pictured), prefers to call it "Victoria University's creative writing programme"?~~ Source: [1]: "Manhire resolutely calls the institute "Victoria's creative writing programme". "[The International Institute of Modern Letters] is such a mouthful. It's almost at odds with the fine use of language.""
- ALT1: ... that the International Institute of Modern Letters (building pictured) is celebrating its 21st birthday this year? Source: [2]
- Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Ann Kiemel Anderson
- Comment: Tried to form a 3rd hook option from the Colonel Sanders quote at the end of the history section, but I failed. If anyone has any better hook ideas, feel free to suggest. Also, relaxed about inclusion of the picture, it's not especially exciting. Thanks :)

Converted from a redirect by Chocmilk03 (talk). Self-nominated at 03:46, 23 August 2022 (UTC).[reply]

Article length good, article creation from redirect versus filing date good, article sourcing and neutrality good, no evident signs of copyvio. QPQ done. Image licensing is good – and I like the image a lot, it has a sense of place and purpose to it and I hope it gets used when the DYK goes up on the main page.
I really like the article, however I'm not crazy about either of the proposed hooks. ALT1 is totally dull and ALT0 will likely be a bit confusing (and I would avoid Colonel Sanders, yuck). A better variant of ALT0 would be to use the "It's almost at odds with the fine use of language" quote. A different possibility would talk about how influential the institute has been, and yet another possibility might be to bring in a comparison/linkage to the Iowa Writer's Workshop, which literary-minded readers in North America at least are very likely to be aware of. Wasted Time R (talk) 00:41, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Wasted Time R: Thanks so much for the thoughtful review. Glad you like the photo (many thanks to Pakoire). And yeah, totally agree about the hooks. It's been massively influential but I'm struggling to make that "hooky" rather than just overly flowery. How about (noting that ALT2a would need to be added to the main text of the article, if preferred):

ALT2: ... that the name of the International Institute of Modern Letters (building pictured) has been criticised by its founder Bill Manhire for being "such a mouthful"?

ALT2a: ... that the name of the International Institute of Modern Letters (building pictured) has been criticised by its founder Bill Manhire for being "almost at odds with the fine use of language"?

ALT3: ... that New Zealand's International Institute of Modern Letters (building pictured) was the brainchild of an American casino businessman who had graduated from the Iowa Writers Workshop?

Cheers, Chocmilk03 (talk) 03:46, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I like ALT2a the best of these – the irony is definitely hooky – so I would say yes add the quote into the article itself. Wasted Time R (talk) 11:55, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Wasted Time R: thanks, done :) Chocmilk03 (talk) 20:11, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Okay thanks, we are good to go with ALT2a. Wasted Time R (talk) 00:00, 28 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]