Talk:Jack Johnson vs. James J. Jeffries

A fact from Jack Johnson vs. James J. Jeffries appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 17 October 2022 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that The New York Times claimed that if Johnson beat Jeffries (fight pictured), black people would "misinterpret his victory as justifying claims to much more than mere physical equality with their white neighbors"?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2022/October. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Jack Johnson vs. James J. Jeffries.

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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 Cwmhiraeth (talk) 16:06, 15 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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Jack Johnson vs. James J. Jeffries

... that The New York Times claimed that if Johnson beat Jeffries, African Americans would "misinterpret his victory as justifying claims to much more than mere physical equality with their white neighbors"? Source: Magazine, Smithsonian (2010-05-31). "A Year of Hope for Joplin and Johnson". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2022-08-14.
- Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Sand Springs Railway

Created by Onceinawhile (talk). Self-nominated at 02:38, 14 August 2022 (UTC).[reply]

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

Image: Image is freely licensed, used in the article, and clear at 100px.
Freely licensed: Used in article: Clear at 100px:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: A very interesting article, congratulations. I found no substantive issues myself and the hook seemed interesting to me. As I value additional primary sourcing for direct quotations, I would suggest adding a direct cite to the NYT ([1]). One possible concern is that the NYT article is a tiny bit more nuanced than the direct quote suggests, maybe the direct quotation in the article itself could be expanded? If you disagree, I will still consider approving this is as it is.

However, Earwig picks up a likely copyvio from able2know.org/topic/196794-1. Could you address the similar phrasing?

PS: This is my first review, If I made a mistake, please give me a hint! WatkynBassett (talk) 06:43, 14 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi WatkynBassett, thank you for your review. The text on the able2know blog was taken from Wikipedia in 2012, specifically this version of the Jack Johnson article. I brought text from the current version of that same article with this edit, and in my edit comment provided attribution as required by the WP:CWW guideline. Thanks for finding the direct cite, which is definitely better than just having the Smithsonian version – I have added it the whole piece as an image (it is out of copyright), as it provides excellent context. Onceinawhile (talk) 10:29, 14 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Onceinawhile - Many thanks for addressing my points so quickly! I somehow missed that the able2know-part was a backwards copy, thanks for clarifying this in detail. Using the whole NYT-piece as a picture is a nice idea and well executed. In my opinion, this is good to go - I updated the DYK checklist above in this spirit. WatkynBassett (talk) 06:55, 15 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Onceinawhile: Quick question: Did I miss something technical or is there another reason, why the hook is not being promoted? Sorry for the newbie-question by a first-time reviewer ...

@WatkynBassett and Onceinawhile: hi there! I had promoted this, but reverted after checking the length of the hook. At 203 characters, it weighs in (heh) a little too long. Might I suggest the shorter: theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 09:21, 3 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

ALT1: ... that "Big Jim" lost his fight (pictured) to prove that "a white man is better than a Negro"?

Hi @Theleekycauldron: thank you for looking at this further. I had always understood there was some (minor) flexibility in the 200 rule ("…no more than about 200 characters…")

I do like the concision of your alternate, but I think it loses the deep significance of the event. Sounds more like it is an overconfident racist in a bar-fight. Actually it was the first time in history that a black person defeated the person considered (by white America) top of their field in any professional sport. I don’t have a written source stating that so directly, but the National Museum of African American History and Culture has a whole room dedicated to it which places it in that context. The NYT comment is the most impactful way of communicating its import that I could find. Onceinawhile (talk) 12:49, 3 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Theleekycauldron: Thanks for chiming in and the nice pun! I saw it like Onceinawhile that some minor flexibility in hook length is possible. If this is not the case, I would prefer using the original hook with their first names ("Jack beat James") to shorten the hook. The admirable short ALT1-hook in my mind carries the risk of being misunderstood: One could misread it in a way that James lost his fight on purpose to further his opponent's cause. WatkynBassett (talk) 14:47, 3 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I've raised a query at Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know#Inconsistent_rules_on_hook_length about an inconsistency in the rules, but in the mean time to formally propose the suggested change and hopefully move this nomination forward: CSJJ104 (talk) 19:37, 10 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

ALT2: ... that The New York Times claimed that if Jack beat James, African Americans would "misinterpret his victory as justifying claims to much more than mere physical equality with their white neighbors"?

A possibility might also to use NYT, if such abbreviations are allowed. –LordPeterII (talk) 22:03, 10 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Theleekycauldron: it's been more than a month since this was pulled from the queue, and we are only talking about how best to remove 3 characters from the hook. What would you recommend I do to help get this resolved? Onceinawhile (talk) 19:28, 4 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Onceinawhile: well, the hook needs to be under 200 characters – ALT2 doesn't fly, we don't use first names that way. We could always take ALT0 and switch "African Americans" to "Black people", or something like that. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 19:37, 4 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Theleekycauldron: that is a great solution. We use the same terminology in the first line of the Black Lives Matter article:

ALT0: ... that The New York Times claimed that if Johnson beat Jeffries, black people would "misinterpret his victory as justifying claims to much more than mere physical equality with their white neighbors"?

Onceinawhile (talk) 20:06, 4 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

allll righty! I think we've settled on something that basically works for everyone. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 20:08, 4 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

T:DYK/P2