Talk:Thomas Beck (engineer)

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A fact from Thomas Beck (engineer) appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 16 June 2022 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Thomas Beck designed a syphon for the Rangitata Diversion Race made of 723 concrete pipes each weighing 28 tons, with another pipe section used as an explosives store (pictured)?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2022/June. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Pipe Shed.

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 SL93 (talk) 23:16, 11 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

( Comment or view )

( Article history links:

)

The Pipe Shed in Methven

... that Thomas Beck designed a syphon for the Rangitata Diversion Race made of 723 concrete pipes weighing 28 tons each, with another pipe section used as an explosives store (pictured)? Source: The siphon, of 723 pipes, each 12 feet in diameter and length, and weighing 28 tons, had to be built when the country began to slip and the RDR was designed by Thomas Beck, the Public Works Department's engineer, who had the challenge of overcoming the difficulties posed by intervening rivers and unstable hillsides.
- Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Jacopo Tissi
- Comment: "Syphon" is (now) the New Zealand spelling (evidently not in 1942 when the article cited above was published). I'm trying to get my hands onto a better photo. Schwede66 wrote "Pipe Shed" and Marshelec (DYK exempt; only 1 credit yet) wrote "Thomas Beck (engineer)".

Created by Schwede66 (talk) and Marshelec (talk). Nominated by Schwede66 (talk) at 05:20, 10 May 2022 (UTC). Both articles:[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: Great work. This nomination has just two points that need to be addressed. Epicgenius (talk) 13:44, 25 May 2022 (UTC) I think this can be shortened, since the exact stats may not be as hooky. How about something like these:[reply]

ALT1: ... that Thomas Beck designed a syphon for the Rangitata Diversion Race made of concrete pipes, with another pipe section used as an explosives store (pictured)?
ALT2: ... that a section of concrete pipe, designed by Thomas Beck as a syphon for the Rangitata Diversion Race, was used as an explosives store (pictured)?

WP:DYKCRIT seems to indicate that QPQ reviews should be based on how many reviews the nominator has performed, rather than how many reviews the page creators have performed. I know the criteria say "If you have previously nominated fewer than five articles (whether self-nominated or otherwise), no QPQ is required", but Schwede66 seems to be the only nominator listed here. Thus, another QPQ may be required, unless page creators are also considered to be nominators. I understand there may be ambiguity about this point, since I've never seen a nomination in which QPQs were done based on who created each respective article. Epicgenius (talk) 13:44, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Epicgenius. Let me ping Marshelec in case he has thoughts, too. The DYK criteria don't deal with multi-hooks and I suggest we should look at it from first principles. For a start, there is no provision for more than one nominator when you use the new form. Hence, I fixed the nomination form manually to reflect what's going on: there's one credit for me for the Pipe Shed and one credit for Marshelec for the bio. If we take your argument that "the nominator is responsible for all QPQs", I could have asked Marshelec to nominate and by your logic, no QPQs at all would have been needed despite me getting a credit. That sounds like gaming the system and hence we never even considered doing that. Thus, I suggest that all needed QPQs have been provided. With regards to your ALT hooks, I find the original more impressive given the weight and number of pipes used. But I don't feel too strongly about it and wonder what my co-nominator has to say about this. Schwede 66 08:30, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @Schwede66: Thanks for your response. Like I said in the review, I've never seen a situation like this in which only a partial QPQ was done. The QPQ requirement isn't something I'm too concerned about (but yes, technically no QPQ would have been required had Marshalec had nominated these articles). I can definitely waive the QPQ requirement for Marshelec, as this would be his second nomination, considering he is co-nominator.
  My main concern is about the length of the hook. In particular, the fact that the pipes are 12 feet wide and 12 feet long seemed superfluous to me, which is why I proposed the ALTs. We can include the number of pipe sections if that makes the hook more interesting, though. Epicgenius (talk) 13:24, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  - Sorry for the slow reply, Epicgenius. I don’t understand the concern because the dimensions, which agree would be trivial for the hook, are not mentioned. The mass of the pipes is stated and that’s relevant because they are … massive! Combining the (massive) mass with the large number of pipe sections makes an interesting hook in my view. But granted, if a reader doesn’t grasp the weight then the hook will not appeal to them. Personally I find the alt hooks much less interesting. But if you’d like to run with them so be it. Schwede 66 18:59, 8 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    - No problem. I forgot about this nomination as well. I suppose on further consideration, the dimensions of the pipes may indeed be interesting. My concern was that the hook may be too long, but the original hook is barely 150 characters (after excluding "(pictured)" and the second bold link from the hook length per WP:DYKSG#Other supplementary rules for the hook). So this is good to go. Epicgenius (talk) 21:15, 8 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]