Template:Did you know nominations/Gay Women's Alternative

The following discussion 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 Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:07, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Gay Women's Alternative

(

Comment or view
Article history

)

... that the Gay Women's Alternative (logo pictured) in D.C. began as a home gathering called the Gay Women's Open House at Lilli Vencez's home in 1971?

Created/expanded by Kels.bran (talk). Self nom at 17:58, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

GWA is clearly an important subject, but the article has Wikipedia problems in that the sources are, by an large, not "reliable" under WP definitions: Most of the sources for the article are primary sources (e.g. meeting minutes), which WP policy holds are not appropriate sources on which to base large portions of an article. A particular problem in this vein is that the Rainbow History Project source that is the support for the fact in the proposed DYK hook appears to be a transcript of a panel discussion in which the founder of GWA recounted its history -- again, a primary source. The cites to the Washington Blade -- the longtime paper of record for news of Washington's LGBT community -- are helpful, but at least one of them appears to be a letter to the editor, rather than a more "reliable" (per WP policy) news article. (Not clear whether the other cites to the Blade are news stories or LtEs.) If you can find some more WP-appropriate sources, at least for the DYK hook, I think this article could be approved for DYK. --JohnPomeranz (talk) 17:42, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately, that is the only source (the panel) that supports the hook, as the secondary (not primary) resources are limited from that time period. Could I offer an alternative DYK? How about:

... that the Gay Women's Alternative(GWA) (logo pictured) was formed to provide the lesbian community in DC with an alternative and safe space to socialize?

This statement is supported by Ref. #11, an article from The Washington Blade by Bonnie Becker, as well as another article from the blade entitled, "GWA's 10th Birthday" (11 Jan, 1991) p. 32 (See External Links and Resources). This statement, is of course, supported by several primary sources, including the minutes of the meetings and flyers, but those are not supported by WP policy. kels.bran (talk) 14:11, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Including the date in the hook is better: ... that the Gay Women's Alternative(GWA) (logo pictured) was formed in 1980 to provide the DC lesbian community with an alternative and safe space to socialize? kels.bran (talk) 14:20, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Better, but per the guidelines for reviewing DYK nominations, you'll need to revise the article to include the hook fact followed by a cite to the Blade article -- "The hook fact(s) must be stated in the article, and must be immediately followed by an inline citation to a reliable source." That will be enough to get me to give it the thumbs up for DYK, but if you'd like to further improve the article, you might see if there are any academic texts -- e.g. histories (or "herstories") of the LGBT movement, or treatises on community organizations in D.C. -- that talk about GWA. --JohnPomeranz (talk) 15:31, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I revised the article to include the most recent hook followed by the two citations. I'm continuing to research the topic -- hoping I will find academic texts containing information about the GWA. Thank you for your help. kels.bran (talk) 15:59, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Looks good enough for DYK to me. Length, age, etc. all OK. Would appreciate confirmation from a second reviewer. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JohnPomeranz (talk • contribs) 17:03, 28 June 2012 (UTC)