Template:Did you know nominations/Cissie Cahalan

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Template:Did you know nominations
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

flyer
10:59, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Cissie Cahalan

Created by Vanamonde93 (talk). Self-nominated at 07:23, 15 September 2016 (UTC).

  • Article creation date and filing date okay. Article length okay at 2843 characters readable prose size. Article neutrality good, sourcing good. No real copyvio's, but much of the article is taken from one Irish Times profile and at times the wording is a little close – for example in "In 1932 she married John Burns, and was widowed in 1936." → "She was married to John Burns in 1932, but was widowed four years later." it would be better to use an alternative to "was widowed". There's a tense typo right at the beginning of the "Views" section.
  • Hook length and neutrality okay, hook interest not jazzy but important, hook sourcing hinted at online and AGF for rest offline.
  • QPQ done via useful involvement in a nomination. There is no image here to check, but you could certainly add one to the article, from the Irish Times profile if nowhere else. It would either not be under copyright or would qualify for the 'Non-free historic image' fair use licensing. Look for some additional articles that could link to this one, such as List of suffragists and suffragettes.
  • I know "Personal life" sections are a Wikipedia cliché, but I never use them and it really doesn't work in this case. Her working-class upbringing and employment clearly informed her activism, as did her long friendship with a nationalist and suffragette. What sense does it make to treat them separately, like they existed in two different worlds? I think you need to combine the first two sections into one, ordered chronologically. And there is also a little biographical material in the third section, that being her activities during World War I, that could be merged in as well. I had to hop around this article the whole time I was reading it, to get any sense of the narrative and development of her life. Wasted Time R (talk) 12:22, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
  • Wasted Time R: Those are fair points. I've addressed the wording and the typo, and I am still on the lookout for places where a link can be added. I've never been terribly comfortable with image licensing, but I'll give it a shot, by and by. I take your point about the "personal life" section, and in principle, I would agree. The only trouble is, the article is too long to not have sections, and I honestly cannot think of any other way to organize it. D'you have any suggestions? Vanamonde (talk) 12:57, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
There are a couple of approaches. If you want to keep the separate "Views" section, you could combine the first two sections and the "A staunch opponent ..." sentence of the third, reorder all this material chronologically, and call the new section "Biography", which will then be followed by "Views". Or if you want to merge everything together chronologically, including the gender-and-trade-unions debate, you could have an "Early life and career" section that goes up to 1912, an "Activist leader" section that goes from 1912 to 1925 or so, when she held leadership positions in these various organizations, and then a "Later activities" section that covers her continuing to write for the journal, her continuing to work at her shop job, her marriage, and then her passing. Wasted Time R (talk) 11:10, 18 September 2016 (UTC)
The issue with the chronological approach is that the dates on many of her activities are fuzzy. I have therefore reorganized it into "biography" and "views" as you suggested, except that I think the "staunch opponent" sentence should stay where it is: the source seems to club it with her views, and joining that committee seems to have been more taking a stand than anything activism of substance. Vanamonde (talk) 14:00, 18 September 2016 (UTC)
I'm okay with that and the new organization is definitely an improvement. However the "Biography" section is still out of order in places. The "She continued to write for the journal in the 1930s." sentence can be moved until after "and also worked part-time at St Ultan's Hospital". The Irish Times profile dates the strike at Arnotts to 1918, so the "She also led a strike at Arnotts ..." sentence can be moved up a bit. And since that profile says she was a lifelong friend of Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, that mention, while not dated by these sources, should appear earlier than it does. But overall this is good enough to go up as a DYK, so I'm giving it the approval mark. Wasted Time R (talk) 15:53, 18 September 2016 (UTC)